Lovingkindness Meditation

Learning to Love Through Insight Meditation

By: Sharon Salzberg

Narrated by: Sharon Salzberg

Length: 3 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's summary

Within your own heart is a limitless source of supreme energy, the energy of love. No other force in the universe compares to it. The world's great spiritual traditions, both past and present, agree on this simple principle. Can love be harnessed and applied to others, used as a "tool" for changing lives? Lovingkindness Meditation teaches a traditional practice for cultivating love, and applying it as a life-changing force. Dating back 2,600 years, the practice of metta (an ancient Buddhist term meaning "lovingkindness") is a timeless method for unlocking your heart's immense healing resources.

©1996 Sharon Salzberg (P)2005 Sounds True

I learned a lot!

Highly recommend! Sharon's narration is so calming! I'm not Buddhist but this explained Metta wonderfully and in a way I could understand.

Steps of learned behavior

I'm in the beginning steps of learning... This book gives good examples of living choices. I've lived with anger for many years, I also have been blessed with loving kindness from many friends. I can see loving kindness in humans, I desire to learn to get better at the practice. So this book gives good guidance on this practice.

Thank you

Short but powerful. Very well narrated. Inspiring

This is a great treatment of a common Buddhist topic. Most meditation retreats take some time for Metta (translated as Lovingkindness), and it's a good practice as one of many. What was inspiring about Sharon's story is that she went on a retreat for something like six weeks and only practiced Metta. This is the stuff of deep transformation especially in one's attitude toward the self. When you start meditating and, I guess, for a long time thereafter, who you're hearing is your self, after all, so it's good if you can cultivate some gentleness and friendliness towards your self, because otherwise you'll just be annoyed all the time. Sharon Salzberg's voice is perfect for her own work. Some Buddhist authors/narrators sound a little spacey and slow, but not so for this author. I really liked that I could listen to the whole book on one drive. Satisfying and not schmaltzy.

Metta, One of The Four Brahma Viharas

Cultivate the Four Brahma viharas: loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. Use them to walk amongst and through the eight worldly dharmas. Create merit, a moral force, and distribute it to all beings. Due to it they may find peace and happiness. Ms. Salzberg provides this and metta, merit, and walking meditation phrases. Realize your interconnectedness with everything. This is a short and concise book about Metta Meditation. Yes, good things do come in short small concise packages.

Easy listening

Wish it had more practice steps but overall gave me a great deal of information in regards to looking inwards towards loving myself and in turn learning to spread that love to others.

An audiobook I will definitely read more than once

Wonderful introduction to lovingkindness meditation.

Here's just one priceless nugget from the book: The practice of metta toward a difficult person, even someone who has hurt us greatly, does not mean we condone the harmful actions of the person, or deny injustice or suffering caused by the person. It should never be confused with being passive toward violation or abuse. We forgive out of the greatest compassion for ourselves, to create unobstructed love, which can dissolve separation and relieve us of the twin burdens of lacerating guilt and perpetually unresolved outrage.

A pleasure and greatly inisightful

Any additional comments?

Very descriptive and amazing to follow her instructions as one would as a Buddhist practitioner.

Excellent!!

I absolutely Loved this book soooo much!! Highly recommended. It was very soothing to listen.

what loving kindness me s

loved it and really helpful to my understanding of the Metta meditation. I recommend this program to others doing Metta meditation

One of the most enlightening books read

At first I thought the book included actual guided meditations but it does not. This does not make it any less amazing than what the book is. It is all about learning to love through insight meditation and the knowledge I've acquired in a time where I've been struggling to heal after a breakup is so incredibly valuable. The awareness and reminders of how we are all interconnected is powerful. Also, the author's voice is so very pleasant.