The Metta Sutta or Metta prayer, petition, recitation or wish-granting aspiration, is a traditional Buddhist prayer originating in Theravada practice as the Karaniya Metta Sutta but popular in Mahayana practice as well in its association with the bodhisattva. More elaborate versions exist but here is a short, specific version:
May all beings be peaceful.
May all beings be happy.
May all beings be safe.
May all beings awaken to the light of their true nature.
May all beings be free.
The prayer has an external philosophical meaning, an epistemological premise about the nature of things. Our wish or desire is a sentiment or aspiration (“may this, may that …” ), but with an understanding that no one can change intrinsic reality. We may throw up our hands at wishful thinking.
But internally the prayer transforms the reciter towards a motivation for enlightenment. All beings ought to be at peace in this universe. They ought to be happy. They ought to be safe. So while humans might claim this desirable state for themselves because we theoretically are capable of it, we now affirm the desirability on behalf of all creatures, something that not all religions incorporate in their aspirations.
May all beings be peaceful.
May all beings be happy.
May all beings be safe.
And we affirm it for ourselves and all creatures not as a Kantian imperative from elsewhere — beings are not capable of it — but in the universal empathetic sense of responding to the question of why there is suffering. It ought not to be such, we say to ourselves on behalf of other creatures. And from that moment, we no longer think of ourselves but enter into communion with nature and all beings.
How is it possible to make a state of being for all beings that is peaceful, happy, and safe? Just as the bodhisattva vows to work indefinitely for this goal in an active way, the reciter of the Metta Sutta does so more modestly but positively nevertheless. It is done by changing personal actions, behaviors, and habits that promote this set of conditions in the self and indirectly promote these states for all beings. An ethical agenda emerges from an aspiration that now transforms self. How one lives, consumes, spends, eats, drinks, acts, speaks, lives — everything takes on an ethical dimension. What best promotes the well-being of plants, animals, people, even inanimate beings, promotes our own well-being.
Yet this progress of thought, which has the potential for progress towards enlightenment, is brought to one’s consciousness from outside of ourselves but emerges from deep thought about the nature of things. Thus it is not found outside the self ultimately, not coerced or compelled at this stage but grown by oneself, within oneself, often against society, social conventions and habits, and societal consciousness.
May all beings awaken to the light of their true nature.
Finally comes the essential part tying in with Buddhist metaphysics. The true nature of all beings is interdependence, prescribing a necessary empathy or consciousness, confirming the previous affirmations. But also true of the awakening to true nature is the reality of impermanence, of transience, which all beings seem to harbor. This reality gives even more urgency to the delicate interdependence and the first three aspirations. To realize impermanence, to awake to this truth, is to awaken to true nature, unalterably reality.
May all beings be free.
Paradoxically, then, the Buddhist (and Hindu) notion of rebirth, springing from a more primordial, less philosophical religious tradition, seems to contradict impermanence, transience. Like rebirth, or fear of rebirth, the awareness of impermanence is a profound source of suffering. The poignancy of transience, of “mono no aware,” ought to frustrate the goal of aspiration. So in either case, we want, and all creatures want, to be free — free from suffering, free from rebirth, even free from transience. And this is nirvana.