February is traditionally the month of love with Valentine’s Day and all. If you’ve read this column for long, you know that it is not one of my favorite holidays. So in thinking about what to write I thought I should acknowledge the obvious, but how to do so without sounding corny or insincere? In keeping with last month’s article about change over this year, I thought maybe it would have to do with deepening the relationship we have with ourselves, and I remembered the Metta Prayer.

For Christmas this year, I received a bracelet with the Metta Prayer engraved around it. Metta in Pali, the language of the Buddhist scriptures, means loving kindness, or empathy, or unconditional love for all living things. I read that it is a combination of two words one being gentle, the other friend. It encourages us to be loving kindness and then go out into the world with a sense of boundless, selfless love.

In looking online, it seems that there are various translations of the original words of the Buddha, and then various interpretations based on it. The one above is on my bracelet and appears online several times, but I didn’t find its source.

Anyway, the prayer or meditation is used to give metta to ourselves so we can pass it on to others. Some of the versions contain the image of a mother loving all that is as she would her only child, willing to give her very life to protect it. The variation of both words and how to share them is endless, but I like this one. It begins as a prayer for oneself. “May I be peaceful, may I be happy ...” Next this loving kindness is sent to someone respected, a spiritual teacher, perhaps. “May you be peaceful, may you be happy ...” It is continued for a loved one, then someone neutral, perhaps the bus driver or grocery store cashier, then for an enemy or one in need of forgiveness, and then finally for all beings, or the whole universe.

I’ve included a Metta prayer by Lama Surya Das, and urge you to go online and find more; they’re all so beautiful. Until next month and always I wish you peace, happiness, safety, the awakening to the light of your true nature and of course, freedom.

                May all beings be happy, content and fulfilled.

                May all beings be healed and whole.

                May all have whatever they want and need.

                May all be protected from harm, and free from fear.

                May all beings enjoy inner peace and ease.

                May all be awakened, liberated, and free.

                May there be peace in this world, and throughout the entire universe.

                                                          —Lama Surya Das, Awakening the Buddha Within