What’s the most loving thing you can do?
When I need clarity or support a key question that instantly serves as an inner compass to guide me toward wise action is:
What’s the most loving thing I can do right now?
For myself?
For others?
A great complementary practice to this question is cultivating the Four Boundless Qualities: friendliness, compassion, joy and equanimity.
These qualities are thought of as boundless because they are capacities we can develop without limit in order to bring more love and healing into the world for ourselves and others. Thich Nhat Hanh refers to these qualities as the foundation of True Love.
There’s incredible depth to each of these qualities and how inseparable they are to each other — -cultivating them is truly a practice for lifetimes.
Despite the depth, I want to offer these distilled explanations, grounded in my own practice as they are a helpful guide on how I can be more loving. Most importantly, the foundation of these qualities rests on understanding our inherent embeddedness.
Unconditional Friendliness — Not sentimentality, but rather feeling a quality of benevolence, goodwill and kindness toward all beings.
Compassion — Not just empathy but our ability to hold suffering with tenderness and engage in thoughtful action to alleviate the suffering we see.
Appreciative Joy — Not just delighting in the good fortune of ourselves or loved ones but relishing in delight and the good fortune of all. Comparison can rob us from experiencing great joy.
Equanimity — Not indifference but a feeling of solidity, like touching into the roots that can keep you stable.
So, take a deep breath and ask yourself: What’s the most loving thing I can do right now? For myself? For others?
Here’s a digital card of The Four Boundless Qualities (or scroll to the bottom of this page).
In the spirit the spirit of cultivating love, you’ll find a short guided meditation below and my personal practice songs for each of the Four Boundless Qualities.
My personal practice songs for each of the Four Boundless Qualities and a playlist with more songs that cultivate friendliness, compassion, joy and equanimity in me.
1.) FRIENDLINESS: Lean on Me — Bill Withers
2.) COMPASSION: Vaishnav Jan To — Global Tribute for Mahatma Gandhi
This short guided meditation that invites you to hold yourself with loving awareness and compassion as you cultivate mindful, heart-centered breathing. More FREE meditations available here.
Author Bio: Meena Srinivasan is a contemplative leader, celebrated speaker, accomplished author, and visionary edupreneur. She is an educator-activist at heart, consistently championing the fusion of Mindfulness, Emotional Intelligence, and Belonging. Meena was featured as one of 2022’s 10 Powerful Women of the Mindfulness Movement in Mindful Magazine and is the Executive Director of Transformative Educational Leadership (TEL)™ an organization that supports educational leaders in building more compassionate and just schools. A former public school administrator and National Board Certified Teacher, Meena is the creative force behind the SEL Every Day Online Courses, an instructor of graduate level Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) courses at UC Berkeley and the CEO of Karuna Consulting, LLC, an organization that takes its name from the Sanskrit word ‘Karuna,’ signifying compassion. Karuna Consulting is a certified Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) driven by a profound mission: to foster a more compassionate world through Meena’s keynotes, professional learning, coaching, and consulting services. She is the author of numerous publications including Teach, Breathe, Learn and SEL Every Day. The latter was honored as one of 2019’s Favorite Books for Educators by the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. Her TEDx talk on Tenderness is one of the most popular TEDx talks of 2024 (with over 2 million views). Meena has been practicing yoga and meditation for over 25 years, is an ordained Zen Buddhist and serves on the Board of the Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation. Learn more at meenasrinivasan.com.
