The Near Enemies of Loving-kindness

Doug Powers: Loving Kindness is unconditional. If you can keep your heart open to others no matter how others respond, this is loving kindness. Loving Kindness is very soft. Loving Kindness is just being respectful. It is not compassion. Compassion is acting and you get involved.  

Loving kindness is an attitude that softens you to the suffering of others, it softens you to the person. It gives you an attitude of open hearted warmth. Even though you can see someone else is trapped in the loop of anger or fear, there's a warmth towards the person. You will not be blindsided and only see the karmic habitual tendencies that lead that person to their predicament. 

What does loving-kindness feel like? The heart and the mind is open, aware, and paying attention. You are illuminating kindness. Doesn’t no matter if others appreciated it or not. Doesn’t matter if you have or will have a relationship with that person or not.

However, you have to be mindful and not get attached to the other person or to the identity that you are kind when you are emanating kindness. You may confuse this heartfulness with emotion. You have to be particularly vigilant and keep this kindness clear, open, and non-attached. If there is attachment, like you care because that person is important to you, to your identity, feelings, expectations, or to your projections of getting your pleasure met, having loving kindness towards them would be much more difficult, if not downright impossible. The attachment shrinks this unconditionality of the emanation of kindness. 

Your heart has to be warm and still when you are practicing loving-kindness, just like your mind is aware and still when you are meditating. You can only practice open heartedness to the degree that the heart is empty of attachment and experience stillness along with warmth. 

To really practice the open-heartedness of loving-kindness, you also need to work on getting your mind still through meditation and other practices like recitation.

[Edited from talks given on December 29, 2022]