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Theravāda — Pali Canon · Khuddaka Nikāya — The Minor Collection

Iti 27The Meditation on Love

Pāli / Sanskrit:Mettābhāvanāsutta

📖397 words · ~2 min read
2
Summary

Goodwill far outshines all other ways of making merit.

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Full translation (English)

– So It Was Said 27

The Book of the Ones Chapter Three The Meditation on Love

This was said by the Buddha, the Perfected One: that is what I heard.

“Mendicants, of all the grounds for making worldly merit, none are worth a sixteenth part of the heart’s release by love. Surpassing them, the heart’s release by love shines and glows and radiates. It’s like how the radiance of all the stars is not worth a sixteenth part of the moon’s radiance.

Surpassing them, the moon’s radiance shines and glows and radiates. In the same way, of all the grounds for making worldly merit, none are worth a sixteenth part of the heart’s release by love. Surpassing them, the heart’s release by love shines and glows and radiates.

It’s like the last month of the rainy season, in autumn, when the heavens are sunny and cloudless. And as the sun is rising to the firmament, having dispelled all the darkness of space, it shines and glows and radiates. In the same way, of all the grounds for making worldly merit, none are worth a sixteenth part of the heart’s release by love.

Surpassing them, the heart’s release by love shines and glows and radiates. It’s like how, at the crack of dawn, the Morning Star shines and glows and radiates. In the same way, of all the grounds for making worldly merit, none are worth a sixteenth part of the heart’s release by love.

Surpassing them, the heart’s release by love shines and glows and radiates.” The Buddha spoke this matter. On this it is said:

“A mindful one who developslimitless loveweakens the fetters,seeing the ending of attachments.Loving just one creature with a hateless heartmakes you a good person.Sympathetic for all creatures,a noble one creates abundant merit.The royal potentates conquered this landand traveled around sponsoring sacrifices—horse sacrifice, human sacrifice,the sacrifices of the ‘casting of the yoke-pin’, the ‘royal soma drinking’, and the ‘unimpeded’.These are not worth a sixteenth partof the mind developed with love,as starlight cannot rival the moon.Don’t kill or cause others to kill,don’t conquer or encourage others to conquer,with love for all living creatures—you’ll have no enmity for anyone.”

This too is a matter that was spoken by the Blessed One: that is what I heard.

Translation source: Interpreted by AILicense: EN CC0-1.0 (Bhikkhu Sujato) · VI: bản dịch AI, chờ đối chiếu

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