This talk explores core questions of lovingkindness practice: What is "metta"? What is its relevance in our lives and our world? How does it function to transform our hearts and world? And how do we strengthen metta?

Week One Homework: 1. Daily meditation: 15-20 minutes per day if new, normal amount if experienced. 2/3 appreciating & offering, 1/3 mindfulness (if you have practiced mindfulness) 2. Micro-practices: notice/recall feeling or offering kindness. Notice kindness between others.

The basic qualities needed for cultivating and manifesting loving-kindness

Using the directional method for spreading Loving Kindness outwards.

The First Four Principles ~Settling Sit ~Teachings on Individualism and Community ~Teachings on the Six Principles of Cordiality ~Guided Meditation (Bio break- not recorded) ~Lightly Guided Meditation: Generosity and Metta ~Teachings on Metta (Lovingkindness) ~Teachings on Generosity ~Lightly Guided Meditation (Ritual - not recorded)

Metta: The Practice of Loving Kindness 2-hour practice period ('module'); includes instruction and guided and silent practice. One of four modules each day on the daily retreat theme, with Howard Cohn, Carla Brennan or Genevieve Tregor.

A talk on Metta / Lovingkindness and the power of love

Do we know the truth of what we are? If not, how can we love unconditionally? When the heart abides in loving-kindness, the misery of fear, anger and despair is vanquished. If we look for unconditional love outside of us, we will never find it. Nor can we know it by thinking. The mind must grow in silence and stillness, in unsullied conscious awareness. Then we can see what we truly are – intuitively, beyond thought, in the quality of this very breath, this moment. We pierce through the dust of lifetimes to know the core of our being, to wake up – here and now. Just to live in that kindness is the truest life of all.