Metta for Land waiting for its people

Is there something you feel safe, grounded and seen? What gives you deep ease and relaxation? Is there a place, pet or person that is associated with this feeling of relaxation? Perhaps this person, place, this tree or ecosystem makes you feel unconditionally loved. Perhaps they take care of you. Perhaps they understand your need even before you speak a word. I know many people who say their pet dog or cat has cuddled with them when they are feeling sad. You can also imagine a deity (like Buddhists’ Guanyin, Hawaiian Pele or Hindus’ Durga) that energetically holds, protects or soothes you. Even if this someone is non-living and invisible according to modern science, let us call them a being. Can you remember a time when you yearned for and waited to see thing being? Would you agree that some pets wait for their humans to come home just as humans wait to get a hug from their pet?  

Indigenous worldview reveres and upholds the sanctity of everything; it recognizes that all living and non-living entities are inherently imbued with intelligence, memory, agency, and sentience. Air, soil or land, river or fire are all alive. In Tibetan or tantric Buddhism, the elements (water, air, fire, and earth) are not just alive but they are actually powerful deities to be honored in daily life.

I often feel hauntingly inspired by a statement made by my dear friend and collaborator Bianca Acosta. She was leading a ceremony at Ecodharma center where she and I will co-lead a retreat in 2.5 weeks. She said, “People are waiting to come back to their lands. And Land waits for its people”.

Your garden waits for you just like your pet or child or beloved friend might wait for you to come home. Similarly land waits for its indigenous tribes. Who lived on them for centuries. People who knew their ecosystems like the back of their hands, who tended it and loved it. Who sang to it and danced for it, who paid their respect to it and knew how to cultivate the soil, derive medicine from its plants, tree barks, leaves and seeds at a specific time of the year under the light of full moon in a cauldron made of clay found only in that region of the world.

Metta Practice: I would like you to imagine a person, an animal (perhaps a pet), a place (a garden or trail), a mountain, a tree or a body of water that brought you ease and care. Can you wish others the ease you access with this being? Can you wish well to the lands that pray for their people to come back to them?

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