Psalms 36:7 Meaning How Precious Is Your Loving Kindness

Mettā: Loving kindness Mettā is the plain wish that another be well. It works like a hen spreading her wings over her chicks: nothing is asked of the chicks first, and the covering goes up before they know to want it. Set against the cold self-regard of the one lying awake plotting mischief a few lines earlier, warmth given on no terms at all is the one thing worth weighing as treasure.

Brahmavihāra: Divine abiding Brahmavihāra is loving kindness grown boundless, wide enough to live inside. Wings held out make a roof, and a roof is somewhere you live, day after ordinary day. Kindness kept that steady becomes an address, and the span of the wings is simply how many can fit under it, which here is everyone born: all the children of men.

Saddhā: Trusting confidence Saddhā is the trust that puts weight on something. You sit down in a chair without testing the legs, and that easy shift of weight is the whole of it. Stepping in under a shadow asks the same, since a shadow shows no edges and no thickness, so what the children of men are going on is whose wings they are.

Saraṇa: Going for refuge Saraṇa is the shelter a person deliberately goes to. Taking refuge is a move of the feet: the rain starts, you get up, you stand under the eaves. The ones who come are children of men, unsorted, like a village doorway filling in a downpour where even the last to arrive is still under cover.

Khema: Safety Khema is the condition of one with nothing left to fear. Rain drums on the roof and thunder rolls over it, and the safety is that none of it reaches you. Precious is the exact word for kindness that does this, since shelter is what everyone under those wings was looking for and no one could build alone.