Why Meditate?

FindYourMiddleGround explains the purpose of meditation this way:

“We know the outer world of sensations and actions, but our inner world of thoughts and feelings we know very little. The primary purpose of meditation is to become conscious of, and familiar with, our inner life.”

Read the entire post via What is the Purpose of Meditation?


What is Loving Kindness?

A good question to ask this Valentine’s Day.

NSD Loving Kindness stencil

Just as compassion is the wish that all sentient beings be free of suffering, loving-kindness is the wish that all may enjoy happiness.

As with compassion, when cultivating loving-kindness it is important to start by taking a specific individual as a focus of our meditation, and we then extend the scope of our concern further and further, to eventually encompass and embrace all sentient beings.

~Dalai Lama

There are many paths to loving kindness…

NSD Loving Kindness stencil.facebook-post

Loving kindness is the wish that all may enjoy happiness.
~Dalai Lama

Happiness can be subjective.
Do animals know happiness? We do not know.
Today I saw this picture of  a starving polar bear.

polar-bear-MAIN2What can I do about it?
Besides doing my little bit to avert global warming om a daily basis, there is little I can do for this animal. But I could extend thoughts of loving kindness towards it, perhaps hoping it would find something to eat… or perhaps that death would put it out of its misery. So I did.