Compassion Meditation – An Introduction

Image by Fr Lawrence Lew, O.P., courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

This is the second post in a series featuring helpful meditation techniques. The first post focused on introducing mantras.

In previous blog posts about meditation I have discussed the benefits I have experienced by committing to a regular meditation practice and an introduction to mantras. Another technique that can be used while meditating is to focus on compassion. In this article I will introduce the concept of compassion meditation and explore some simple ways to incorporate it into your own meditation practice.

What is Compassion Meditation?

The practice of cultivating compassion during meditation is extremely beneficial. Unlike some other types of meditation, compassion meditation always involves an object of focus, rather than simply a general feeling of loving-kindness or goodwill. Without this focus on an object—which could be another person or the meditator—the compassion would seem shallow and the meditator would not reach the same potential as they are able to when directing their feelings of compassion toward a specific object. The concept of compassion reflects the wisdom that all things are interconnected with one another, and it quite naturally leads toward feeling connected with the rest of the universe.

How Does Compassion Meditation Help?

Developing a sense of compassion can help us connect more deeply and easily with others and ourselves, consider whether our day-to-day actions are all that wise after all, and understand and care for others instead of disliking or judging them. Compassion meditation can help you learn to stay present with the suffering that you face each day without getting overwhelmed.

This sense of compassion can be extended into concrete actions like giving money to disaster relief efforts, donating time and effort at a local food bank or homeless shelter, or lending an ear for listening or a shoulder to cry on to someone who is going through a difficult time. As you can see, there are myriad benefits to developing compassion. This type of meditation can help even the least empathetic person learn how to appreciate how others feel, which will go a long way toward healing the world.

Five Compassion Meditations

The following meditations are listed in order of difficulty, and can be helpful to become familiar with the easier meditations before tackling the more difficult ones. As you develop experience with each meditation, you can then assess whether you feel ready to move on to the next one. The typical advice for other types of meditation applies with compassion meditation, such as finding a quiet and peaceful location and sitting in a comfortable position. 

Developing compassion takes time for the majority of people, so do not get discouraged if you are not getting it right away. The important thing to focus on is making sure that you are sincere, lest you develop a sense of false compassion instead of true compassion. With that said, if you find it more difficult to develop compassion for yourself or a loved one than it would be to develop compassion for a neutral person, then it may be more beneficial for your to change the order in which you practice these meditations. Many people have great difficulty showing compassion to themselves, so if you are one of them please do not think that you are alone—just change this order to fit your needs.

Compassion for Oneself

• It can be very difficult for some people to develop compassion for themselves. If you feel that this meditation will be more difficult for you than one of the following meditations, feel free to begin with one of them instead.

• When you are ready to begin a self-compassion meditation, it can help to start by identifying qualities you possess that you are grateful for, like your warm generosity or your beautiful smile. Another helpful thing to focus on is any act that you have performed recently that fill you with the feeling of love. It can take time to begin to feel any forgiveness or appreciation for yourself—for some people this may take weeks, months, or even years—so be patient with yourself.

• After you have generated a feeling of loving-kindness for yourself, you can then begin to think of a time that you have suffered, such as a difficult breakup or when you were struggling in a strained relationship. Pay attention to how you feel while you are reflecting. And after a short time, redirect your energy to the wish that your suffering will soon end.

• You can even recite a positive mantra that helps you to stay focused, such as "May I be free from this suffering," or "May I have joy and happiness." Following your meditation, dedicate your session to the benefit of all sentient beings.

Compassion for a Loved One

• Picture someone who is close to you, someone toward whom you have a great deal of love. Pay attention to how that love feels in your heart. You may feel a sensation of warmth, openness, or tenderness. Continue breathing easily and focus on these feelings as you visualize your loved one. You may choose to envision a golden light flowing from your heart to this person with each exhalation, bringing them peace and happiness.

• Now reflect on a time when this person was suffering, perhaps from an illness or injury. Notice how you feel when thinking of their suffering. You may continue to feel the positive emotions that you previously experienced, however you may begin to feel something negative like aching or sadness. Try to imagine with all your heart that you wish them freedom from suffering.

• You may recite a wish or prayer to take away their suffering, like "May you be content," or "May you live with ease." Following your meditation, dedicate your session to the benefit of all sentient beings.

Compassion for a Neutral Person

• The focus of this meditation can be anyone that you do not feel any strong feelings toward, such as a classmate or grocery store clerk. The person that you choose to focus on should be someone that you see regularly, but not someone who you greatly like or dislike. Even though you do not have a personal connection with them, you can still develop compassion for them.

• You can begin by thinking about how this person may suffer in their own life. They may be struggling with addiction or suffering from bullying, for example. Imagine a situation that would cause this person to suffer and begin to visualize it in your mind's eye. Sit with the feeling that this causes for a moment, and then put all of your energy into wishing them joy and happiness and an end to their suffering.

• You may wish to silently offer phrases of compassion to them, saying things like "May you be free of pain and sorrow," or "May you be healthy and happy." You are free to alter the sayings so that they fit your own way of speaking or use any that have any personal significance. Following your meditation, dedicate your session to the benefit of all sentient beings.

Compassion for an Enemy

• Now you can progress to developing compassion for someone that you have difficulty with in your life. This could be a parent or child that you have been arguing with lately, a boss who you do not get along with, or a roommate that is not doing their fair share of chores.

• Even though you have negative feelings toward this person, begin thinking of how this person has suffered in their own life. You may have firsthand knowledge of their suffering—perhaps they lost someone they love or have recently been laid off. Visualize this person experiencing their suffering, and note how it makes you feel to witness it. Sit with that feeling for a moment, and then begin to cultivate compassion toward them. See if you can grow this feeling to be as strong as when you developed compassion for your loved one. If you are struggling to feel compassion toward this person, think of any positive interactions that you have had with them in the past that would help you wish them joy and happiness, such as times when you got along or laughed together.

• You may wish to send them some positive vibes, thinking things like "May your health improve soon," or "May you have success at school." Following your meditation, dedicate your session to the benefit of all sentient beings.

Compassion for All Sentient Beings

• This is the noblest form of compassion meditation; it is also the most difficult. In the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism, the concept of bodhicitta is extremely important. Bodhicitta is essentially the wish for all sentient beings to be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. Mayahana practitioners set the cultivation of bodhicitta as a primary goal for their practice—everything in life is done in order to seek enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings.

• Expanding on the above meditations, the compassion meditation for all sentient beings includes the task of developing compassion for every single sentient being in the universe. This will be much easier to do after you have progressed through the previous meditations. Simply hold the concept of suffering in your mind and generate the feeling of goodwill toward all sentient beings. Then, send it outward to as far as you can possibly imagine. Really focus on putting as much positive energy into this act as possible, while remaining relaxed and mindful. And remember: this meditation will be most powerful when it is performed with true sincerity.

• You can generate good karma by living your life with the honest intention of attaining enlightenment for the purpose of helping others. One way of doing that is finish your meditation by reciting prayers such as, "May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering", or "May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness." Following your meditation, dedicate your session to the benefit of all sentient beings.

Conclusion

It can be helpful to practice compassion meditation intuitively. The practice will likely be difficult at times for most people—even painful for some. This practice is not intended to make the practitioner feel that they are responsible for solving all of the world's problems, but rather to greet each moment with a compassionate heart. Relax as much as possible, be gentle with yourself, and breathe naturally. With each time that you practice compassion meditation, you are healing the world in a small way. Go easy on yourself and others, and good luck.

Namaste.

Book Review - The Art of Happiness

Having been a student of Mahayana Buddhism for the past couple years, I had been meaning to read a book by the fourteenth Dalai Lama, and was overjoyed to purchase this one after being alerted that the Kindle edition had gone on sale by the excellent ebook deal-alerting service Bookbub. Since it was the first book by the current Dalai Lama that I ever read, I wasn't sure what to expect but I did expect it to be of high quality—especially since it is his most well-known book. Fortunately, it did not disappoint me in the slightest!

The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living was co-authored by psychiatrist Howard Cutler, who posed questions to the Dalai Lama over the series of many interviews. Cutler provides the setting and context for their meetings and also incorporates his own reflections on the issues raised in their discussions. In addition, transcriptions from several of the Dalai Lama's teachings are scattered throughout the book. It was first published in 1998, and I read the ten-year anniversary edition that was published in 2008 which includes a new preface and introduction.

The book delves into the concept of using various techniques to train the mind in order to achieve true happiness. In the preface, His Holiness the Dalai Lama states, "If you want others to be happy practice compassion; and if you want yourself to be happy practice compassion." This focus on developing compassion is consistent throughout the book and is a main focus in many of the answers that the Dalai Lama gives to Cutler's questions. It seems that this is a sort of prerequisite for cultivating happiness, a foundation upon which all of the other advice is based upon.

Another point that is made time and time again is that happiness comes down to one's state of mind more than by external events. There are a plethora of examples provided in the book, such as how lottery winners do not sustain their initial delight over a longterm period and instead return to the level of moment-to-moment happiness they were accustomed to prior to winning the lottery. Or how studies have shown that people who are struck by tragic events like cancer and blindness typically recover to their normal level of happiness after a reasonable adjustment period. Psychologists label this process "adaptation", which simply refers to the tendency of one's overall level of happiness to migrate back to a certain baseline.

From a Buddhist perspective, the root causes of all suffering are ignorance, craving, and hatred. The book fleshes out this idea and suggests methods for one to overcome them. For example, the Dalai Lama advises, "We cannot overcome anger and hatred simply by suppressing them. We need to actively cultivate the antidotes to hatred: patience and tolerance."

Overall, I was very impressed by this book. When I first started reading it I wished that the Dalai Lama had been the sole author, however I eventually grew to appreciate Cutler's additions. That's mainly because I did not realize that the book was co-authored until after I started reading it, so I had unknowingly and unintentionally set an improper expectation for myself. However, by the end of the book I had overlooked the co-authoring aspect entirely and focused more on the book's content, which is excellent. I would advise this book to anyone who is interested in the Dalai Lama, Buddhism, mindfulness, or becoming truly happy.

Namaste.

5/5 stars. 348 pages.

Book Review - The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

Although I'd first heard of Alan Watts' The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are several years ago, it wasn't until I watched Dakota Wint's YouTube video Top 5 Books Every New Spiritual Seeker Needs that I was motivated enough to actually check it out. First things first—I know that I will benefit a lot from re-reading this book several times. It's extremely dense and packed with a lot of valuable information, a lot of which I likely didn't absorb during my first reading of the book.

The basic premise of the book is that we have been told that we are isolated beings, "unconnected to the rest of the universe", which has led to our viewing the "outside" world with hostility and "has fueled our misuse of technology and our violent and hostile subjugation of the natural world". However, Watts asserts that this belief is mistaken and that we are in fact directly connected to everything else there is. In the beginning of the book, Watts discusses the concept of cultural taboos—things like making direct eye contact with another person or performing an act that is against one's religion. This leads him to make the following point:

"The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego."

The concept of "I" is extremely powerful and commonplace in most societies on Earth, and it is so fundamental to our modes of speech and thought, as well as our laws and social institutions. Watts spends many words of this book arguing against the concept of personal selfhood in favor of a more universal concept of identity—one that includes the rest of reality in addition to the components that we would normally judge as "ourselves".

One of the other things I found interesting was Watts' definition of "attention" as "narrowed perception"—because when we attend to one thing, we ignore everything else. In Watts' own words: "conscious attention is at the same time ignore-ance (i.e., ignorance) despite the fact that it gives us a vividly clear picture of whatever we choose to notice."

These are just some of the concepts that Watts describes in The Book. If either of these ideas sound interesting to you, I would definitely give this a read. I wish that this review was able to more fully show how wonderful this book is, but since this is only my first read-through, I feel like I was only able to skim the surface of its ideas and therefore will likely have more to say about it upon successive readings. I definitely give this one two thumbs up though!

5/5 stars. 178 pages.

Book Review - kindfulness

I first heard of Ajahn Brahm and his book kindfulness at my local Buddhist center, the Kadampa Center, during one of the Buddhist classes that I was taking last year. I wrote down the name of the book because it was given a very strong recommendation by a few people, and decided to give it a read this week.

Ajahn Brahm is a British Buddhist monk in the Theravada tradition who serves as the Abbot of the Bodhinyana Monastery in Australia. He also holds many other positions in various places around the world and has accomplished many hard-earned achievements. He is quite qualified to write a book on the topic of kindfulness, which seems to be a term that he created which focuses on generating relaxation in order to bring ease to the body, mind, and world and facilitate healing.

The first half of the book focuses on five simple stages to begin or deepen one's meditation practice. The first stage focuses on giving up the baggage of the past and future by showing no interest in your past or future experiences at all.

"Some people think that if they contemplate the past, they can somehow learn from it and solve their problems. But when we gaze at the past we invariably look through a distorted lens. Whatever we think it was like, in truth it was not quite like that at all! This is why people argue about what happened even a few moments ago."

"As for the future – the anticipations, fears, plans, and expectations – let that go too. The Buddha once said, 'Whatever you think the future will be, it will always be something different.' This future is known by the wise as uncertain, unknown, and unpredictable. It is often useless to anticipate the future, and in meditation it is always a great waste of time. You cannot know the future. It can be so strange, so weird, so completely beyond what you would expect."

The second stage involves developing present-moment awareness, which requires an ability to conjure silent awareness in the present moment. Brahm suggests that instead of being silently aware of every thought or feeling that arises, we should choose silent present-moment awareness of just one thing. He, along with many other teachers I have studied, advises starting with a silent present-moment awareness of the breath.

"When you are noting or making a comment about an experience that has just passed, you are not paying attention to the experience that has just arrived. You are dealing with old visitors and neglecting the new arrivals."

The above concept is contrary to meditation instructions that I have received from the Headspace meditation app, which advises practicing a technique called "noting" each thought and emotion that arises before letting it fade away. (As a side note, I actually no longer use Headspace—I found silent meditation [with a focus on silent present-moment awareness, of course!] to be much more productive for me than the guided meditation style. However, I would advise brand-new meditators to give Headspace a try, since it is more geared toward absolute beginners than intermediate and advanced meditators.)

The third stage of this meditation practice is a sustained attention on the breath. One common problem that comes up at this stage is a tendency for one to control the breathing, which makes the breathing uncomfortable. Brahm suggests taking a step back and imagine that the practitioner is just a passenger in a car looking through the window at their breath—they are not the driver, nor a backseat driver.

The fourth stage occurs when the practitioner's attention expands to take in every single moment of the breath. This degree of stillness can only emerge when one lets go of everything in the entire universe except for the experience of breathing silently.

The fifth stage is called "full sustained attention on the beautiful breath", and it often flows naturally and seamlessly from the previous stage. It is simply a matter of the mind recognizing the beautiful breath and rejoicing in it. This facilitates a deepening of contentment.

The second half of the book describes practices to develop kindful loving and letting be and working with obstacles to kindfulness. The first set of practices involves a type of compassion meditation that is sparked by generating kindfulness for a helpless, suffering being—Brahm uses the example of a struggling kitten—and then expanding that feeling to other beings until it is extended to all sentient beings. The passage on working with obstacles covers topics like restlessness, being kind to oneself, anger, and negative mind states. The following quote helped me understand my own proclivity to attach to anger in certain situations:

"There is an addictive and powerful pleasure associated with the expression of anger. And we don't want to let go of what we enjoy. However, there is also a danger in anger, a consequence that outweighs any pleasure. If we would keep in mind the danger, then we would be willing to let anger go."

The book closes with a summary of the previous chapters' advice and encouragement to continue practicing kindfulness for the benefit oneself and of all sentient beings.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I wasn't sure what to expect before reading it, but I found it to be one of the better dharma books that I have read in the past few years. The advice is easy to understand because of Brahm's clear, concise writing style. I would definitely recommend this book to others, regardless of their previous experience with meditation or the concept of mindfulness.

4/5 stars. 184 pages.