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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Vishvapani

Good morning. Last Christmas, stuffed with food and wading through piles of presents, I decided to allocate a certain amount of money to give away. I enlisted my son and together we watched videos about charities that caught our eye.

‘Two charities,’ I said, ‘Let’s decide which ones.’ It was sobering to expose ourselves to so many needs. Famine in Africa. ±«Óãtvlessness. Sick children. Caste discrimination in India. The preoccupation with presents faded as we sensed the big world beyond our little family and felt growing impulse to respond.

It was hard to choose, so my son put in some of his own money and I put in some more. Our Giving pot expanded. We felt excited – maybe a little smug as well, but we also sensed a connection to our new friends in a children’s hospital, a local charity and a big relief organisation.

That expansive sense of connection and care is what Buddhism means by loving kindness or compassion. It starts with small, everyday acts of kindness and generosity, like giving to a charity. These are the sparks.

What I’ve learned through practising the Buddhist meditation on loving kindness is that, if you cherish those sparks and encourage them, they can grow into a fiery sun that blazes out with love and compassion, touching the people we know, whether we like them or not, and expanding without limits to everyone in the world.
When the Buddha taught about this thousands of years ago he made his teaching into a prayer:

Let our thoughts of boundless love pervade the whole world: above, below and across without obstruction, without any hatred, without any enmity.
May all beings be well. May they be happy. May they not suffer.