This is a genuine quote from the Buddhist scriptures. It’s from the Karaniya Metta Sutta:
“Just as a mother would protect her only child with her life, even so let one cultivate a boundless love towards all beings.” Buddha
“Just as a mother would protect her only child with her life, even so let one cultivate a boundless love towards all beings.” Click To Tweet
I assume you’re familiar with Thanissaro’s argument that the image of mother and child applies to the practitioner’s cultivation of metta and not the expression of metta in the world.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/metta_means_goodwill.html about halfway down
Yes, I am. Other scholars have disagreed with him, and my grasp of Pali is too basic to know who, if anyone, is right!
So I wonder when the Buddha visited one of the sanghas and helped an uncared sick monk ignored by the other monks(but presumably full of goodwill for the sick man) and drenched in his own filth, was the Buddha doing it out of metta or out of Goodwill?
sadhu! sadhu!!sadhu!!!