By Stephanie Bucklin
There are moments on the healing path when you realize it wasn’t one practice that saved you — it was the relationship between practices.
For me, mindfulness and metta were not separate techniques. They became companions. Allies. Two wings that finally taught my nervous system, my heart, and my soul how to fly again.
I came to Buddhism not as a philosophy, but as a refuge. Trauma had fractured my sense of safety, and I needed something steady — something that didn’t ask me to bypass my pain, but invited me to sit with it honestly. Mindfulness was the doorway.
Through mindfulness, I learned how to be with my breath, my body, my thoughts, and my emotions without immediately trying to fix or escape them. I began to see the landscape of my inner world clearly — sometimes painfully so — but with clarity came agency. I wasn’t lost inside myself anymore.
As Rebecca D’Onofrio so beautifully writes in her Dharma Moon article Mindfulness and Metta: So Happy Together: “You can think of mindfulness and metta as the two wings of a bird: you need both in order to fly.”
That metaphor landed in my body as truth.
Mindfulness: Learning to Stay
Mindfulness gave me stability. It taught me how to stay present with discomfort without being consumed by it. It strengthened my capacity to observe rather than identify — to notice fear without becoming fear, to feel pain without collapsing into it.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, a pioneer of mindfulness in the West, defines mindfulness as: “Paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.”
That “nonjudgmentally” part changed everything. I had lived so much of my life in self-criticism, believing my pain meant I was broken. Mindfulness gently dismantled that story.
But mindfulness alone, I discovered, was not enough.
Metta: Learning to Soften
Metta — loving-kindness — entered my life when I was ready to feel again.
If mindfulness stabilized my mind, metta thawed my heart.
Metta practice asks us to extend kindhearted wishes — first to ourselves, then outward — without condition. And that’s where things get real. Because when we try to offer unconditional love, we inevitably meet the places inside us that still feel unlovable.
Rebecca D’Onofrio names this with clarity: “In the effort to share unconditional love, we will come in contact with our personal edges, obstacles, and vulnerabilities that keep our heart closed off and guarded.”
Without mindfulness, those edges can feel overwhelming. But with mindfulness as a foundation, metta becomes not a demand, but an invitation.
Thich Nhat Hanh taught: “Understanding is love’s other name.”
Through metta, I began to understand myself — not intellectually, but compassionately. I saw my defenses not as failures, but as survival strategies. I learned to meet my pain the way I would meet a frightened child: with patience, gentleness, and presence.
Where They Meet: Healing the Illusion of Separation
When mindfulness and metta are practiced together, something profound happens. The illusion of separateness starts to dissolve. Mindfulness reveals the truth of our inner experience. Metta teaches us how to relate to that truth with love. Together, they soften the ego’s need to protect, compare, and divide.
Sharon Salzberg, a beloved teacher of loving-kindness, writes: “Metta practice reminds us that we can always return to a sense of warmth and care — even in difficult times.”
As my practice deepened, I began to feel this truth somatically: my healing was not separate from the healing of others. My compassion for myself expanded my compassion for the world. My awareness of suffering sharpened my commitment to kindness.
This is where Buddhism stopped being something I practiced and became something I lived.
A Path of Integrated Wholeness
Mindfulness helped me see clearly. Metta helped me love what I saw. Together, they gave me the courage to stay present with my life — not the life I imagined, but the life I was actually living. They taught me that healing is not about erasing pain, but about meeting it with wisdom and compassion.
Or as the Buddha himself taught: “Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.”
May we continue to cultivate both wings.
May our minds be clear and our hearts be kind.
And may our healing ripple outward, touching all beings.
Namaste,
~S
Leave a Reply