Your Goal: Condition compassion as your natural tendency.
Compassion (Karuna) is an unconditional wish for the wellbeing and freedom from suffering of ourselves or others that rests on the ability to empathise with that suffering that comes from deeply understanding suffering within yourself.
To develop a tendency towards compassion within your mind, offer caring thoughts to yourself, then a loved one, then learn to pervade that caring feeling outwards towards all beings.
Once you can easily arouse this pleasant caring feeling, embed it within your mind by using it as a meditation object to establish access concentration & jhana until it becomes a natural tendency of your heart & mind.
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Meditation is practiced in a seated position.
Step 1: Offer caring thoughts to yourself.
Sit down comfortably, make a half smile on your face and bring an image of yourself to mind, picturing your arm resting around your shoulders.
Gently repeat:
Pausing between each phrase to allow the caring feeling space to grow.
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Step 2: Offer caring thoughts to a loved one.
Now bring to mind someone you love or respect, picturing your arm resting around their shoulders as you share their suffering.
Gently repeat:
Pausing between each phrase to allow the caring feeling space to grow.
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Step 3: Fill every cell of your body.
Fill every cell of your body with the caring feeling by using slow softening breaths out through your nose. Expand the feeling by opening awareness to your whole body and aligning it with the expansion and deflation of your body as it breathes.
Use this natural uncontrolled expansion and deflation as a pump to pervade karuna-vedana until your body and mind are filled by this caring feeling.
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Step 4: Expand to the whole room.
Expand the caring feeling into the room around you. Picture the caring feeling flowing into the room around you with each out-breath, completely filling it.
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Step 5: Expand to the world around you.
Picture the caring feeling flowing out the windows, over the suburb around you. North, south, east, west flowing outwards in all directions like a warm blanket that covers and protects the whole world.
Gently repeat:
Pausing between each phrase to allow the loving feeling space to grow.
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Step 6: Use the pleasant feeling for access concentration.
Once you are proficient on generating caring feeling you should now stabilise it so that it can be used as an object for developing access concentration & sukha-vedana jhana.
Use the instructions offered in Insight 19: Condition Loving Kindness for more detail.
As an insight meditator compassion is naturally cultivated through deeply accessing and moving beyond our own suffering. This ability to be with our own suffering develops empathy that naturally opens our heart to the suffering of other people, animals, plants, the world.
To develop a tendency towards compassion within your mind, offer caring thoughts to yourself, then a loved one, then learn to pervade that caring feeling outwards towards all beings.
Once you can easily arouse this pleasant caring feeling, embed it within your mind by using it as a meditation object to establish access concentration & jhana until it becomes a natural tendency of your heart & mind.
.............................................
.............................................
Meditation is practiced in a seated position.
Step 1: Offer caring thoughts to yourself.
Sit down comfortably, make a half smile on your face and bring an image of yourself to mind, picturing your arm resting around your shoulders.
Gently repeat:
Pausing between each phrase to allow the caring feeling space to grow.
..........
Step 2: Offer caring thoughts to a loved one.
Now bring to mind someone you love or respect, picturing your arm resting around their shoulders as you share their suffering.
Gently repeat:
Pausing between each phrase to allow the caring feeling space to grow.
..........
Step 3: Fill every cell of your body.
Fill every cell of your body with the caring feeling by using slow softening breaths out through your nose. Expand the feeling by opening awareness to your whole body and aligning it with the expansion and deflation of your body as it breathes.
Use this natural uncontrolled expansion and deflation as a pump to pervade karuna-vedana until your body and mind are filled by this caring feeling.
..........
Step 4: Expand to the whole room.
Expand the caring feeling into the room around you. Picture the caring feeling flowing into the room around you with each out-breath, completely filling it.
..........
Step 5: Expand to the world around you.
Picture the caring feeling flowing out the windows, over the suburb around you. North, south, east, west flowing outwards in all directions like a warm blanket that covers and protects the whole world.
Gently repeat:
Pausing between each phrase to allow the loving feeling space to grow.
..........
Step 6: Use the pleasant feeling for access concentration.
Once you are proficient on generating caring feeling you should now stabilise it so that it can be used as an object for developing access concentration & sukha-vedana jhana.
Use the instructions offered in Insight 19: Condition Loving Kindness for more detail.
You are ready to progress to Insight 21: Condition Joy for Others when:
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