Get ready for “100 Days of Lovingkindness”

Yesterday we finished up our 100 Day Meditation Challenge, which was an opportunity to build up a habit of meditating daily over a period of 100 days. Many people managed to sit every day, and many others made substantial progress in sitting daily. That makes today Day 101 of our 100 Day Challenge.

So what’s next?

Tomorrow we’re starting 100 Days of Lovingkindness. I’m not calling this a “challenge” since I’m not too fond of that word. You can take it as a challenge to sit daily if you want. I’m framing it as an opportunity to focus on the cultivation of lovingkindness (metta).

It’s not just about meditation either — it’s about taking lovingkindness practice into daily life. I think it would be beautiful to have a bunch of people working undercover, infiltrating samsara and making the world a kinder place.

We’ll have 25 days of cultivating lovingkindness, 25 days of cultivating compassion, 25 days of cultivating appreciation, and 25 days of cultivating love with insight (also known as equanimity). These four practices are collectively known as the “Brahmavihāras” (Divine Abodes), or the Immeasurables (appamaññā). Lovingkindness is the basis of the other three, which are simply love encountering (in turn) suffering, joy and goodness, and an awareness of reality.

How do you participate?

There will be regular blog posts, starting tomorrow, with teachings and links to resources. So keeping up with the blog, one way or another, is a good start. The very best way to keep up and to get support from others is to join our Google Plus Community [Google+ is now defunct], which is an amazingly friendly and supportive place.

You can follow us on Facebook, although Facebook will probably hide most of our posts from you, so it’s not the best way to keep in touch.

And all our posts are published on Twitter, where you can also follow us.

Lastly, you can follow our RSS feed if you use some kind of feed reader.

But the Google+ Community is where the main action will happen. If you don’t want to feel like you’re on your own, sign up there.