Is World Day of Metta on March 20 or March 22?

March 22. The first observance, in 2013, fell on March 20, and the organisers moved it to March 22 from 2014 onward.

Is World Day of Metta part of Metta Round the World?

No. Metta Round the World is a separate project, launched on 1 January 2012 and inspired by Venerable Mahinda, and its own site makes no mention of a World Day of Metta or of March 22.

Who created World Day of Metta?

The record points to Boise, Idaho, where the campaign ran the website worlddayofmetta.com and held its first events. Its own pages never named a person or an organisation behind it.

World Day of Metta

Next celebratedMonday, March 22, 2027

For the two hours after noon on March 22, people say a short list of wishes aloud and mean them for every living being, a practice drawn from Buddhist loving-kindness meditation.

See how to celebrate

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Last updated September 3, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEMarch 22

OBSERVED INUnited States

CATEGORYReligion

SUBCATEGORYBuddhist

ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY

Not documented

FIRST OBSERVED

2013

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

It began with a walk to the Idaho Capitol.

World Day of Metta was run from the website worlddayofmetta.com by organisers in Boise, Idaho, who asked people everywhere to recite a short set of wishes called The Metta. The first observance, in 2013, was a walk to the Idaho State Capitol, and no individual founder is named in the surviving record.

See the 2013 launch pagevia web.archive.org

INTRO

A day that outlived the people who started it

By 2018 the web address that had run World Day of Metta was publishing articles about memory foam mattresses. Its organisers had stopped posting years earlier. The day carried on without them.

It also carries a date its own first observance did not use. The first World Day of Metta was held on March 20, 2013, and only moved to March 22 the following year, where it stayed.

The instruction has not changed: recite The Metta, the short text the campaign published, and leave nothing alive out of it.

ORIGINS

World Day of Metta history

INTRODUCTION

The word at the centre of this day is older than the day. Metta belongs to an early Buddhist discourse, the Karaniya Metta Sutta, which tells the listener to guard all living things the way a mother guards her only child.

The text wants that attitude held in every posture: standing, walking, sitting or lying down, for as long as one is alert.

CHAPTER 01

Five hundred monks and a forest that fought back

The commentary written by Acariya Buddhaghosa explains where that discourse came from. Five hundred monks took the four-month rains retreat in the foothills of the Himalayas, settling under trees already inhabited by deities.

The deities drove them out with terrifying visions, dreadful noises and a sickening stench, and the monks left. The Buddha found no better place for them and sent them straight back. He gave them the Karaniya Metta Sutta to carry, as a subject for meditation and as a formula for protection.

CHAPTER 02

Seven wishes and a quartz crystal

The campaign published a text of its own and called it The Metta. The wishes are ordinary and specific: clean water to drink, food, a home, someone to share love with, a true purpose, wellbeing, and an end to suffering. It closes on a line that turns each wish into an obligation: Today, I shall do what I can to make this so.

The organisers also asked travellers to bury quartz. Each crystal was packed with recitations of The Metta and planted abroad, with the stated goal of reaching every country.

CHAPTER 03

The cast at the Capitol

The first observance was a walk to the Idaho State Capitol in Boise. The speakers were Rabbi Dan Fink, Cindy Tiferet, Jayne Sorrels of Interfaith Sanctuary and Duane Quintana, with kirtan from The Angel Fire Band and music by composer Jim Cockey.

The organisers listed ten more gatherings that afternoon, from Ecuador and Mozambique to New York City and Hagerman, Idaho.

CHAPTER 04

The wishes grew a line

A year later the text was longer. The version the site carried from 2014 opens on a wish the first did not hold: may all beings have fresh air to breathe.

Nothing on the surviving pages explains the addition. The campaign kept announcing the day into 2015, and then it stopped.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why World Day of Metta Matters

EVIDENCE

23 trials: better than passive controls, no better than active ones.

A 2024 systematic review in Clinical Psychology Review pooled 23 randomised controlled studies of loving-kindness interventions, and found they improved mindfulness, compassion and mood against passive control groups. That advantage was not significant against active controls or other established treatments.

LANGUAGE

Metta is built on the word for a friend

The Pali Text Society's dictionary derives metta from mitta, and glosses it as love, amity, sympathy, friendliness and active interest in others. The gloss ends on interest in other people, not on a feeling.

TRADITION

Eleven things the tradition promises the practitioner

An early Buddhist discourse, AN 11.16, lists eleven benefits for anyone who develops good will, from sleeping easily to dying unconfused. The list is oddly practical, taking in bad dreams, complexion, and being dear to non-human beings.

BY THE NUMBERS

World Day of Metta by the Numbers

7 billion+: Recitations the campaign aimed for
18,754,827: Recitations reported, organisers' own tally
51: Places listed with a buried Metta Crystal
16: Languages The Metta was published in

TIMELINE

Timeline

The campaign goes online

By early January the website worlddayofmetta.com was live, calling for a worldwide recitation on March 20.

The first World Day of Metta

Participants walked to the Idaho State Capitol in Boise, and groups in ten other places marked the day the same afternoon.

The date moves to March 22

The organisers announced the new date in February and held that year's gathering at the Boise Universalist Fellowship.

The last announced observance

The site announced a 2015 observance, and no later campaign activity survives.

Fresh coverage, no founder named

ETV Bharat published a World Metta Day health feature on March 22 that credited no creator.

In my Jewish tradition, God is known as HaRachaman, the Compassionate One, and we, God's children, are commanded to imitate our Creator by showing abundant compassion to one another, and to all of Creation. As a rabbi and a Jew, I whole-heartedly support the Metta as a profound and purposeful path toward this end of compassionate and harmonious living.

Dan FinkRabbi

GET INVOLVED

How to Observe World Day of Metta

Block out the middle of the day

The original instruction was to recite The Metta between noon and 2 pm in your own local time. Put the two hours somewhere you will actually keep them.

READ

Read the discourse the practice comes from

The Karaniya Metta Sutta is short, and it is the canonical text behind loving-kindness practice. Thanissaro Bhikkhu's translation is free to read online.

CHOOSE

Choose the form that suits you

The organisers' 2014 announcement invited people to sing, dance, meditate, recite or pray the Metta. None of those was offered as more correct than the others.

SAY

Say the wishes in another language

The campaign published translations of The Metta, including Thai, Tajik, Farsi and Korean versions. Reading it in a language you are learning slows the words down.

KEEP

Keep your own count

The organisers ran a running tally built entirely from numbers participants sent in themselves. Keep a note of how many times you say The Metta and you are doing exactly what they asked.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know World Day of Metta?

1 / 7

On what date was the first World Day of Metta held?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance with no documented legal standing, so March 22 is a normal working day.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

17sources

14primary records

15independently dated

Primary records

World Day of Metta2013

World Day of Metta: A New Day Shall Dawn, March 20, 2013

The campaign's own launch page, with the full text of The Metta and its goal.