Ruth 3:10 Meaning He Said

Mettā: Loving-kindness Mettā is the wish for another's welfare, held without conditions. Ruth's kindness is the daily labor of that wish: gleaning behind the reapers in the heat, carrying barley home to an old woman with no sons left to feed her. Boaz names it rightly, since care that keeps showing up at dawn is what mettā looks like when it walks around in a body.

Bhāvanā: Cultivation Bhāvanā is a quality developed by repetition until it grows large. Kindness greater at the latter end than at the beginning is exactly that: the first kindness was leaving Moab at Naomi's side, and this one has grown out of it the way a field comes up after a season of tending. Nothing arrived finished; she practiced it, and it thickened with use.

Nekkhamma: Renunciation Nekkhamma is the setting down of something one could rightly enjoy. Young men were within reach, and no one in Bethlehem would have blinked at a young widow following them. Turning instead toward an older kinsman who could redeem Naomi's land cost her a good thing she was free to take, and trading a good thing for a better one is the whole shape of renunciation.

Alobha: Non-greed Alobha is the mind with nothing clenched in it, one of the three roots of wholesome action. Poor or rich made no difference to her; she did not sort the young men by their purse, so wealth had no vote in what she chose. An open hand can hold a coin or let it go without any change in its grip.

Anumodanā: Gladness at another's goodness Anumodanā is the delight that welcomes someone else's merit and says so out loud. Boaz, startled awake at midnight with a woman lying at his feet, could have reached for suspicion; he blesses her and calls her daughter. Naming plainly what is good in another person, in the moment, is a practice of its own, and it costs the speaker nothing but attention.