Living With a Tender Heart
Loving Kindness, Compassion, Joy & Equanimity
Meditation Study and Practice Group
Wednesdays 5:30 – 7:00 pm
September 4 – December 25, 2019

Loving-kindness (metta), is the heartfelt wish for the well-being of oneself and others. It helps soften the heart, allowing us to feel empathy with the happiness and sorrow of the world. When love meets suffering, it turns to compassion (karuna). When love meets happiness, it turns to joy (mudita). When love is balanced with wisdom, we develop equanimity and true freedom (upekkha). These four arenas of natural human happiness encompass the universal description of an open heart.

We begin with the practice of loving kindness. Metta practice cultivates the innate friendliness of an open heart by inclining the heart toward expressing wholesome intentions. Recognizing and expressing goodwill may evoke feelings of love, tenderness, and warmth, or expose difficult or painful buried emotions. Allowing all these emotions to surface in their own time is one function of loving-kindness practice.

During the course of study and practice, we also cultivate practices of forgiveness, letting go, grief, compassion, gratitude and joy, equanimity and peace, while also deepening our understanding of how the heart practices and mindfulness support one another. Mindfulness is the practice of being present: a quality of attention that allows present moment experience to be known without preference, without resisting or attempting to manipulate or change it. Mindfulness infused with the caring quality of awareness generates a sensitivity and warmth that allows us to respond with kindness and compassion, receptive and responsive.

Guided meditations, silent sitting, peer-led Dharma talks, and small group discussion are used as the vehicles for this exploration.
To Inquire
Marcia Maynard
Email wellspringinsight@gmail.com