Metta is wonderful! I love sitting and practising Metta and even my wife notices the difference in me when it really takes off. With Metta practice we are taught to have Metta towards ourselves, teachers, friends, neutral people, enemies and then all beings. And there is no doubt that this works...even if I have always struggled to find someone I'm neutral about. Generally unless you are meditating in a sports stadium our places of meditation tend to be pretty small, almost womb like.
Walking and practising Metta is a great way to "kill two birds with the one stone", so to speak. An unfortunate metaphor, but English is an unfortunate language. When we go for a walk the objects of Metta multiply immensely. We can have Metta for individual dogs or all dogs, a child or all children, pigeons, a cyclist or all cyclists,...you get my drift. So we can combine the hour a day of vigorous exercise with our hour a day of vigorous Metta. I've found that walking also combines wonderfully with Karuna and Mudita meditations.
I guess I should include a "health risk" warning: You May End Up Grinning Like The Village Idiot As a Result of this Practice"...but the world needs more grinners and less "winners".
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