What Metta Made Possible

The phone call came six months after we wrote the check. We had lost our investment.

My husband Lyn previously worked in the medical field and occasionally came across promising biotech startups. Several years after I began my metta practice, he came home one evening with a prospectus—a document outlining a company’s business plan and financial projections—for a startup that offered us an investment opportunity. The enterprise was a medical coding company aimed at making billing easier and more accurate, addressing a serious problem we understood to be widespread in the healthcare industry. Medical coding is notoriously complex and error-prone, often leading to delayed or denied payments for providers and patients. A former colleague had connected us with the founder, who we believed had a solid background in the sector. With our own prior experience investing in startups, we decided to move forward. It seemed legitimate, and as such, we invested a modest sum.

Lyn and I met the founder for lunch to give her our check. She expressed confidence and excitement about the business’s future, and there was something compelling in her sense of purpose—an effort to address a system that often failed both providers and patients. Hearing that I was a painter, she asked about my art practice, prompting me to tell her about an exhibition where I was showing at the time in Nashville. People are almost always interested in your life when you’re handing them a check. Whether her interest was genuine or simply a result of the moment didn’t seem important. Just make the business a success, I thought, and let the rest take care of itself.

About six months later, Lyn received a call from his colleague. The business was underfunded, far from profitability, and had collapsed. That was fast. I felt like a fool. I had some experience investing in early-stage companies, enough to know the usual cautions and to believe I could recognize warning signs. And yet we hadn’t. Underneath that was a steady refrain: we should have known better.

Lyn’s colleague wrote to the founder, urging her to repay her investors, but she didn’t respond. I consulted a lawyer to see if we had any recourse but was told that pursuing legal action across state lines would be prohibitively expensive. A formal letter was sent, but she never accepted it. In the end, we were advised to accept the loss and move on.

I knew the lawyer was right. But what to do? I felt wronged, and the loss was real—not just financially, but in what it represented for us: a measure of trust, of shared planning, and of the future we had been imagining. Acceptance seemed impossible. I was too angry. The story replayed easily—what she had done, what we had missed, how it shouldn’t have happened. But what about metta? Could the practice soften my heart enough for me to let go?

In Buddhist practice, metta, often translated as lovingkindness, is not something we wait to feel. It’s something we deliberately cultivate, often through the quiet repetition of simple phrases of goodwill: may you be safe, may you be happy, may you be free from suffering. Over time, these phrases begin to work on the heart, softening the places that have become tight or defended.

I discovered the power of metta earlier in my practice, in my thirties, when I was struggling with a difficult friendship. Over the course of our eight-year friendship, I had begun to notice a pattern. She would make assumptions about me that weren’t accurate and make decisions about shared plans and commitments without my input.

One example was our lunches together. I began to notice that she kept showing up later and later. After waiting twice in a row for twenty minutes, I finally worked up the courage to tell her that I couldn’t afford to wait that long regularly. I explained that I was busy too, and that our visits mattered to me, but the lateness meant we had less time together. Rather than hearing my concern, she told me that it was my problem, that I was being inflexible, and that she could not be responsible for my rigidity.

I tried to brush it aside, but I felt increasingly hurt. What was painful was not simply the lateness; it was the recognition that this exchange reflected a larger pattern. I realized that the friendship could only continue on her terms, which did not allow for honest communication or mutual understanding.

I felt a deep loss in stepping away from this long friendship, one I had invested years of my heart and time in, believing it would remain a steady part of my life for many years to come. The lingering disappointment chipped away at my emotions over many months. I couldn’t find peace, but I also knew there was no ground for reconciliation at that time. Metta—lovingkindness—was something I was cultivating with my Zen teacher, and it came to mind as something that might ease my heart. I asked myself if I could bring this practice to the experience—not to change anything about it, but to release the lingering resentment and to open the field of goodwill.

When I began directing metta toward my friend, I noticed a gradual shift. At first, the phrases felt slightly mechanical, even strained, as if I were offering something I wasn’t entirely ready to give. But I trusted the practice and stayed with it. “May you be at peace, may you be free from suffering” naturally began to include me as well. The sense of hurt I had been carrying wasn’t separate from the goodwill I was cultivating; it was part of it. There was a softening, not in the situation itself, but in how I held it.

This wasn’t an idea so much as a shift in perspective. The sense of distance I had been holding—of her over there, and me over here—began to lose its solidity. In its place was something more shared. I began to sense the particular ways she was limited, and to recognize that none of us are untouched by confusion, fear, or grasping under certain conditions. 

As that shift deepened, the resentment had less ground to stand on. This practice also revealed to me, at the deepest place, that nothing and no one exists separately, but only in relation to everything else.

There was a quiet tenderness in seeing this. What she had done still wasn’t acceptable to me, repeatedly dismissing my concerns and insisting nothing was wrong. But I could more clearly feel the human conditions beneath it—limitations, blind spots, and the ways we turn away from what is difficult. In recognizing this, the separation I had been feeling softened, and what remained was a more inclusive understanding of us both.

I didn’t know whether this kind of practice could touch something as charged as the financial deception, but I had nothing to lose, so I decided to give it a try. As I directed metta toward the woman who had taken our money, it didn’t seem to reach the hurt. The phrases felt disconnected from what had been lost. I noticed flashes of thought—how could she have done this? How did I not see it? But I continued, even with the doubt, returning again and again to the intention.

As I paid closer attention, I began to notice small, almost imperceptible currents of resentment moving through the body: tightness in the chest, a subtle clenching in the jaw, a kind of quiet bracing I hadn’t fully registered before. These sensations would arise and pass, sometimes intensifying when the story returned, sometimes softening when I stayed with the direct experience of them. I began to see how much of the suffering was not in what had happened, but in how the body was holding it, moment by moment.

I began to see how much of the suffering was not in what had happened, but in how the body was holding it, moment by moment.

Rather than following the narrative of what she had done, I stayed with these shifting sensations, letting them be known without trying to resolve them. Over time, they began to loosen and dissipate into the wider field of attention I was cultivating. Alongside that, there was also a softening toward myself. The sense of having been foolish, of having missed something I should have seen, began to ease.

Over the following days and early mornings, I continued the practice.

In those early morning hours, as dawn slowly cast its light through the window and the candle flickered over her name written on the paper I had placed on my altar, I gradually began to feel my heart opening toward this woman who had betrayed Lyn and I’s trust.

Metta didn’t make what had happened feel acceptable, nor did it need to. But as the days passed, the resentment began to ease; it was no longer mine to hold onto, and I saw very clearly that she and I weren’t separate. The image I had constructed of her—as the one who had wronged us—started to soften, and in its place was a more complex recognition: that she, like me, was a human being shaped by needs, desires, blind spots, and the particular ways she was limited.

I knew then that it served no one to continue holding it. This insight, arising from a heart softened by metta, allowed me to let go. It wasn’t only a shift in how I held her, but in how I related to the whole situation, including my own part in it. I didn’t approach the practice expecting her to change or hoping for repayment; I simply wanted to free myself from clinging to something that was already gone. What I found, in repeating those phrases day after day, was not personal affection but a more unconditional form of care—the kind of boundless goodwill the Buddha points to, offered without exception. 

Within a month or so, I felt free of the anger and resentment. The situation no longer occupied my mind, and before long I had largely forgotten about the investment. In time, the experience revealed itself as a quiet teaching in letting go. Money, like everything else in this life, is subject to change and loss. The suffering came not only from what happened, but from how tightly I had been holding it.

About three months later, I received a message. It was from the founder. She had reached out to apologize and said she intended to pay us back entirely. I had already written the money off, so the message came as a genuine surprise. Not long after, a check arrived for the full amount, and it cleared.

But that wasn’t all. She also asked to purchase four of my large paintings for her new home and later invited me to visit. After months of offering metta, I found that I could receive her without hesitation. I accepted the invitation and spent a weekend there. I saw my paintings hanging in her home—an unexpected grace. We didn’t have much in common and eventually lost touch, but the entire sequence of events was far beyond anything I could have imagined.

Did my metta practice bring this about? The Thai forest ajaans teach that when metta is steady and sustained, the person on the receiving end will feel it, and I do believe there is truth in that. But I also know that holding expectations blocks the power of metta. I didn’t offer metta to change her or to get anything back. I practiced because I didn’t want to remain stuck in a loop of resentment. To what extent that practice may have influenced what unfolded is something I can’t know. What I do know is that it changed me. Metta softened the way I held her, and by the time she reached out, I was able to meet her from a place that allowed something entirely different to occur. 

Practicing Metta with Difficult People 

If you’d like to explore this practice, it can help to start with someone who brings up mild to moderate difficulty—not the most charged relationship in your life.

Begin by noticing what arises in the body when you think of this person. There may be tightness, resistance, or a sense of contraction. There is no need to change anything at first; simply recognize what is present.

Then begin with yourself; offering lovingkindness inward can help establish some steadiness:

May I be safe. May I be at ease. May I be free from resentment.

When you feel ready, bring the other person to mind. You might start simply by saying their name. If offering phrases feels difficult, it can help to begin more gradually:

Just like me, this person wants to be happy. Just like me, this person struggles.

From there, you can work with traditional metta phrases:

May you be free from suffering. May you be at peace.

Feel free to use any of your own phrases that feel applicable. If resistance arises, that is part of the practice. Metta is not about forcing forgiveness or approving of what has happened. It is a way of loosening the grip of how we are holding the experience. If it ever feels like too much, it’s fine to step back and return when you’re ready.

Even a few minutes of practice can begin to soften the way someone is held in the mind and heart. And sometimes, that softening is enough.