| This is interesting to me. Your description of metta is very similar to one aspect of how I... guess I must have been taught... to pray. Not that I do that much these days. Not even sure what I believe. But I could. The main difference seems to me to be the form of speech. Rather than using the subjunctive ("may they be safe"), here the "second person" is more explicit; you are using a kind of supplicating imperative to speak with -- well, God: "Please keep them safe." Feels funny to say out loud, that you're "talking to God". But there it is. There are also the established, formulaic prayers, of course. But the theme of forgiveness is big there too, like you hinted at. The most obvious being in the Lord's Prayer, which includes "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us". I assume these lines are famous, but, y'know, not everyone grew up with the same tradition; it may be worth me saying it here. I've begun to think mantras have a real effect. I know, for example, a person who used a mantra to overcome a fairly minor personal issue. That was a good enough thing to do, and was for personal ends. Well if mantras work -- are the prayers of Christian tradition really so different from them? What does it do to you, to repeat every day a prayer, one of whose stanzas is about forgiveness? Presumably it changes how you think? Maybe that's a good thing? I may yet return to religion. The older I get the more sense it makes. Without it you end up thinking other things, which maybe you wish you didn't. "Right thought, right speech, right action." These affect thought. |