The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.

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Thank you. So, hello everyone and welcome to this December 24th, 2024. And this week the themes is care, all the different forms of love, or the five primary forms of love in Buddhism,

in the kind of Taravad in Buddhism.

And so yesterday was care, which I see as the foundation for the other four.

And when we care for something, we value it, we tend to it, we nourish it, nurture it, that

one of the ways, one of the ways that's expressed is in friendliness. And the word metta is a cognate

to the word mita. So it's closely connected, friendliness and friendship and friend.

Sometimes it's translated as kindness, goodwill, loving kindness, well-wishing.

And sometimes, you know, it said that maybe the common English translation,

loving kindness, puts a high bar on it because the word love for some people is challenging

when we have people who are quite difficult in our lives.

But the idea of friendliness or goodwill

maybe kind of makes it easier, more accessible,

that even to someone we have trouble with,

that it might be some very basic friendliness

or goodwill that might work. But it's wonderful things to be friendly. It's a lower bar than

loving someone. Maybe it's easier than being compassionate for people at times. And also it's more universally applicable. To go through the day

being friendly is more appropriate than going through the world with compassion. Certainly the world

is full of suffering. But not everyone wants to receive our compassion. Not everyone is the time and place to be compassionate.

But every place is a time and place for simple friendliness.

I have been involved in, I've been seen,

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