by Taffy Jervey 8/3/2025
May I be happy
May we be happy
May all beings be happy
Even though there are more acts of kindness than of violence, hate and anger, our news outlets show mostly the negative news. Watching and reading the news can easily add to our personal anger and fear. Some level of anger can be beneficial to help us recognize and address injustice, but we have seen in the deep divisions in this country, using anger against anger is not helpful. As we heard in the Time for all ages story and in our reading, kindness is a better approach. And don’t we need that kindness to fight, no combat, no, — even these words are words of war and conflict
Don’t we need kindness in order to stand up to hate now?
This is easily said and I think understood, but it is not always easy to control our emotions is it?
I don’t know about you, but I sometimes have let my emotions take over and have trouble filtering out my negative comments and thoughts. I sometimes wonder if I went out and protested one of the many things people protest these days, would I let my emotions and my anger counteract any good I may be doing by adding fuel to counter-protesters anger? I am unsure of how I would react if someone’s anger was directed at me. Because of this I have wondered what can I do to help.
This leads me to 2 questions:
How do I help the world?
How do I help myself to release, remove, control, understand these emotions of anger, maybe even fear?
In looking into the 2 questions, it became apparent that to help the world I needed to help myself first. In The Book of Joy, the Dalai Lama talks about building “Mental Immunity”. He says that “Mental immunity is just learning to avoid the destructive emotions and to develop the positive one.” Piece of cake right? How do we do that?
The Dalai Lama talks about a few things to help us including Metta or Loving Kindness which I have done with the meditation group, so I looked into that a bit more.
Sharon Salzburg writes: “Metta is the Pali word for friendship or loving-kindness. It is taught as a meditation that cultivates our natural capacity for an open and loving heart. With its roots in practices said to be taught by the Buddha himself as an antidote to fear, Metta practice is a steady, unconditional sense of connection that touches all beings without exception—including ourselves. These practices lead to the development of concentration, fearlessness, happiness, and a greater ability to love.”
In the book Love your Enemies: How to Break the Anger Habit and Be a Whole Lot Happier, Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman say that we can use this technique either as a formal meditation or practice it anywhere – “walking down a street, sitting on a bus, waiting for a doctor’s appointment.”
They say that you can use “three or four phrases that come to mind that you would like to repeat as a blessing to yourself and others. Or you can repeat the classic phrases:
May I be happy
May I be healthy
May I be safe
May I live with ease.
Their instruction in that particular book is to repeat this for yourself and then expand to others that have helped you in some way, to friends who are doing well, friends not doing well, someone you have neutral feelings toward, someone you have difficulty with, and finally to all beings. This is a lot and it is often shortened in various ways such as in the Filled with Loving Kindness Hymn. You can extend this loving kindness out to as many as you want and you can repeat any of the phrases as many times as you like. Basically you can make this as short or as long as you want to.
You may find as you do this that it is difficult to repeat these phrases. For example, it may be difficult for someone you are having difficulty with. Personally if/when this happens to me, I try to remember that I have not walked in their shoes. Some have trouble saying it for themselves. As we repeat these lines the challenge is to pay attention to our feelings as we say the words. We may learn things or find we need to question these feelings within ourselves.
There is ongoing research on the benefits of this practice and the general findings, though not final and conclusive, indicate that it benefits not only the individual performing the Metta, but the people receiving the Metta. Much like the studies that show prayer helps the sick, it seems that this is like a prayer helping all people that are referred to, be happy, healthy, safe and at ease. Very often when we think of a difficult relationship, it is because one or both of us are unhappy. So we can improve relationships by making us both happy, healthy, safe and at ease.
While I do not think I can personally end terrorism and hate, on my own, I can do this and hope it will help make me and the world kinder and more compassionate. There are groups that do this and similar practices worldwide to help to heal the world.
I know we have a lot of love and kindness in this church and I would like to practice some loving kindness and send it out into the wider world. You can sit with eyes open, softened or closed. I will say the phrases and then you can silently repeat them to yourself.
May I be happy
May I be healthy
May I be loved
May I be at peace
May I be happy
May I be healthy
May I be loved
May I be at peace
May we be happy
May we be healthy
May we be loved
May we be at peace
May all of our friends and families be happy
May all of our friends and families be healthy
May all of our friends and families be loved
May all of our friends and families be at peace
May all those in this country be happy
May all those in this country be healthy
May all those in this country be loved
May all those in this country be at peace
May all of the leaders of the world be happy
May all of the leaders of the world be healthy
May all the leaders of the world be loved
May all the leaders of the world be at peace
May all beings be happy
May all beings be healthy
May all beings be loved
May all beings at peace
Thank you for sharing your love and kindness out to the world. Hopefully we can continue to build “mental immunity” and share kindness and compassion with the world.
Amen and blessed be.