Loving-Kindness
Everyday acts of care and friendship
Teacher Experience
A contemplative invitation for educators to reflect on before teaching.If loving kindness is understood to be the wish that the other have and experience contentment, then how can we dwell more and more within this natural good-hearted attitude? What situations tend to interrupt this experience of wishing well for others? Often it is when others (including students!) may seem to irritate us with their words and actions. If we are depleted, and forget to include ourselves with the gentle heart of maitri, it is quite tricky to restore our good hearted view. Contemplate receiving loving kindness from others who have shown you unconditional love in the past, whether a grandparent, a mentor, a friend, or a teacher. Practice receiving to consciously include yourself in the circle of well-wishing.
Student Experience
A contemplative invitation for students to connect with this learning goal.Think of someone you care about and silently wish for them to be happy and feel good. Notice what happens in your heart and body when you think kind thoughts about them. Practice doing one small act of kindness each day and pay attention to how it makes you feel.
Understanding
Students will understand...When we practice loving-kindness, we learn to wish for others to be happy just like we want to be happy. This creates good feelings in our hearts and helps us become better friends. We can show loving-kindness through our words, actions, and thoughts every day.
Action
Students are able to...Practice generating feelings of warmth and goodwill toward family, friends, and classmates while noticing how these feelings affect their own happiness and sense of connection, experiment with kind actions that create positive emotions in themselves and others, and develop trust in their ability to both give and receive care.
Content Knowledge
Students will know...Loving-kindness is a special practice where we train our hearts to feel warm and caring toward all people, even those we don’t know very well. In Buddhism, this is called metta or maitri, which comes from a word that means “friend.” When we practice loving-kindness, we learn to wish for others to be happy and feel good, just as we wish for ourselves.
We can practice loving-kindness by thinking kind thoughts about people, saying nice words, and doing helpful actions. The Buddha taught that happiness comes mainly from having a kind and peaceful mind, not just from having things we want. When we practice being kind to others, it makes us feel good too, and it helps create a happier world for everyone.
This practice usually starts with ourselves—learning to be gentle and caring toward our own feelings. Then we extend these good feelings to our family and friends, to people we don’t know, and even to people who have been unkind to us.
Guiding Questions
Implementation Possibilities
Establish a daily loving-kindness practice with hands on hearts, thinking warm thoughts about others. Create kindness experiments where students try caring actions and journal about emotions experienced. Practice partner activities, giving and receiving compliments. Design community research projects, interviewing people about how kindness affects feelings. Implement weekly sharing circles reflecting on moments of feeling cared for.
Assessment Ideas
Observe students’ ability to generate and maintain warm feelings during loving-kindness practice. Notice changes in their interactions with classmates and evidence of increased empathy. Review their kindness journals for insights about emotional effects of giving and receiving care.
