Mindfulness Meditation (For Everyday Life)

purposefully direct loving kindness toward people you
have a hard time with, toward those you dislike or are
repulsed by, toward those who threaten you or have
hurt you. You can also practice directing loving
kindness toward whole groups of people - toward all
those who are oppressed, or who suffer, or whose
lives are caught up in war or violence or hatred,
understanding that they are not different from you -
that they too have loved ones, hopes and aspirations,
and needs for shelter, food, and peace. And you can
extend loving kindness to the planet itself, its glories
and its silent suffering, to the environment, the
streams and rivers, to the air, the oceans, the forests,
to plants and animals, collectively or singly.
There is really no natural limit to the practice of loving
kindness in meditation or in one's life. It is an
ongoing, ever-expanding realization of
interconnectedness. It is also its embodiment. When
you can love one tree or one flower or one dog or one
place, or one person or yourself for one moment, you
can find all people, all places, all suffering, all
harmony in that one moment. Practicing in this way is
not trying to change anything or get anywhere,
although it might look like it on the surface. What it is
really doing is uncovering what is always present.
Love and kindness are here all the time, somewhere,
in fact, everywhere. Usually our ability to touch them