“But…ew, what is ‘lovingkindness?'”

Love? Yes please. Kindness? Sure, ok. Lovingkindness? Uh…

Things start to sound a little off-putting when we put two sappy-sounding virtues together and call it a meditation – like a Hallmark card or, as Dan Harris puts it, “something we’d get lectured about in kindergarten.” As quoted from this week’s Mindful.org article, many of us respond to hearing about loving-kindness practice with something to the effect of: “but… ew, what is that?” Or, we simply tune out and move on to something more productive. But Dan Harris and Sharon Salzberg want us to know that loving-kindness is anything but – and yes, this is the technical term – “ooey gooey.”