“Radiating Kindness Over the Entire World” (Mettā Sutta)
Most of our love has an edge to it — this person, my family, my people. The Mettā Sutta describes love with no edge at all: kindness radiated in every direction at once — up to the skies, down to the depths, outwards without limit. Here is the line, its meaning, and its source.
“Radiating kindness over the entire world: spreading upwards to the skies, and downwards to the depths, outwards and unbounded.” — The Buddha, Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta (Snp 1.8), trans. The Amaravati Sangha
What it means
The verse takes loving-kindness (mettā) to its full extent. Ordinary goodwill is real but fenced; this is goodwill with the fences down — “the entire world,” and in every direction: upwards, downwards, outwards, unbounded. No being is excluded, and no region of experience; the heart simply radiates, the way the sun does not choose where to shine.
The directions are not just poetry. They press against our instinct to ration kindness — to give it to those who deserve it, who are near, who are like us. The sutta refuses every such boundary, and a few lines on it names the spirit in which this is done: “free from hatred and ill-will.” This is not sentimental niceness but a vast, steady, unsentimental wishing-well that even the difficult and the distant are included in.
It is worth being honest that such a heart is cultivated, not assumed. The same discourse is the classic instruction for growing it, stage by stage.
Where it comes from
The line is from the Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta (“The Discourse on Loving-Kindness,” Snp 1.8), in the Sutta Nipāta of the Pali Canon — among the most cherished and most chanted texts in the Buddhist world. The translation is the Amaravati Sangha’s.
How to practise it
This boundless radiating is exactly what loving-kindness (mettā) meditation trains: you begin where warmth comes easily and widen the circle, step by step, until it can reach “the entire world.” It is the cosmic counterpart of the sutta’s other famous image — a mother’s love for her only child, here stretched to the size of the sky.
Browse more sourced lines in our Buddhist quotes collection.
Frequently asked questions
What does this line from the Mettā Sutta mean?
It describes loving-kindness (mettā) at full stretch — not aimed at a few chosen people but radiated in every direction at once: up, down, and all around, 'outwards and unbounded.' The image is of goodwill with no edge to it, leaving no being and no direction out. The sutta adds that it is held 'free from hatred and ill-will.'
Is it really possible to love the 'entire world'?
It is something trained, not switched on. Loving-kindness meditation grows goodwill in stages — toward yourself, a loved one, a neutral person, a difficult person, and finally all beings — until the wish 'may all beings be happy' can be extended in every direction. The verse describes the far end of that training: a heart that has, in a sense, taken down its fences.
Where is it from?
The Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta ('The Discourse on Loving-Kindness,' Snp 1.8), in the Sutta Nipāta of the Pali Canon — one of the most chanted texts in Buddhism. The translation is the Amaravati Sangha's.
Sources
- Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta (Snp 1.8), Access to Insight (trans. The Amaravati Sangha) — https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.1.08.amar.html