Between Us Girls

What We Most Need to Remember about Loving-Kindness

Buddhism teaches that the first of the Four Noblest Qualities of Mind (also known as the Brahma Viharas)is loving-kindness.  It is said that making the commitment to love life unconditionally in all its forms is the way of the Dharma.  But cultivating this attitude of loving-kindness isn't so easy. 

Our days are full of reasons to not feel loving or to behave kindly.  It seems there are obstacles everywhere we look.  We feel anger toward the child who just callously knocked our little one over on the playground and contempt for the parents who didn't teach their child better manners.  We feel impatience with the elderly driver plodding along ahead of us at a snail's pace.  We feel hatred toward the pedophile being led away in hand-cuffs on the evening news. 

Feeling loving towards all people sometimes seems all but impossible but we are encouraged, not just by Buddhism but by most faiths and philosophies, to develop this noble quality of mind little by little.  We are told to start with prayers or meditations that focus on feelings of loving-kindness and that direct them, at first, towards those we already love - our children, spouses and best friends.  Little by little we are encouraged to let those feelings of love flow a little further outward.  We might begin to include more distant family members, neighbors, animals and others.  Eventually, we need to try to send loving, kind thoughts and prayers towards those people we like the least - the boss who is making our life a living hell, the neighborhood kid who broke into our car looking for cash, the politicians who have forgotten that they work for us, the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. 

Those of us who are so-inclined, struggle through this process.  We pray or meditate and try our best to send love out into the world.   But there is someone whom we often forget to include on our prayer or meditation list and this person is usually the one who needs love the most and gets the least.  Frequently neglected, sometimes downright hated, the person we most need to send love to is

The Top Twelve Scientifically-Proven Happiness Strategies

We are all searching for happiness these days and advice on how to find it abounds. But how do we know what really works and, more importantly, how do we know what is going to work for us?

Luckily, the scientific community has been working hard on these questions and they are beginning to come up with some answers. First, scientists have confirmed what we all know by now to be true and that is that money doesn't but happiness and neither does that new car, the vacation at the beach, the big wedding, the job promotion or the face-lift – not lasting happiness anyway. On the other hand, scientists have also found at least twelve strategies that do, in fact, lead to sustainable increases in happiness. The trick is first, to know what they are and how to employ them and, second, to know which ones will work best for you.

First, lets take a look at the top 12 scientifically-proven happiness strategies. Here they are:

Passage Meditation: How it Can Help You to Translate Your Spiritual Ideals into Your Everyday Life

Although meditation is much-talked-about, it is easier said than done for most of us. It can seem too foreign, too complicated, or too strange, but somehow the promised benefits keep drawing us back in to take a look again and again and to wonder:

Can I learn to do this? Will meditation really help me to think more clearly, get in touch with my true self, realize that I am more than my body, more than my mind, part of a greater whole? Can I learn to train my mind, to become more focused, to learn to think and act rather than to simply react? Will I ever be able to sit still long enough to even try?

I believe that we all have what it takes to do this, but we may need a little help. There are many, many different ways to meditate and we need to find the way that is right for us. I've been searching for the right way for myself for a while now and I think that I may have found it. So of course, I 'd like to share it with