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Compassion for Ourselves & Others Part 2

So so far we've seen you know that if we do love somebody we're wishing them maybe clarity and strength, the right kind of companionship for them health well being. So over the years of doing this particular practice, there are four main sort of wishes that got codified. However you can modify these to suit this would be like, you know the sort of general generic ones that are used and so to start with you can you can work with these. Um and the first one is safe, may you be safe? And these are expressed as direct wishes in the first case to the person that we love, may you be safe. So you know when somebody you love is in health jeopardy or or taking a trip or something like that, I was simply wishing that they'd be safe. Um The second quality is healthy. That's a kind of a um very ancient wish for mothers to their Children, you know and grandmothers especially are very good at this particular wish. Um so maybe healthy And that's sort of the physical level. The 3rd 1 is may you be hap...

py? Which is interesting that we think happy is this big cosmic event of some kind. But actually just like the little things that you said like your your dad finding a partner or somebody else might say, you know, um my mom might be happier if I called her once a week. You know it's sort of kind of almost like a joke but that would actually make her happy. So we're not looking at this sort of big scale ultimate happiness. But you can you can say you know you said come my mom being present with whatever is happening with that sort of bigger man. But maybe just happy with some relative situation could be as simple as getting somebody a cup of coffee. We stay very regional with this. You know, this is how our life is made up of small moments. And happiness is comes from small moments. So it's very grounded approach may be happy. And the 4th 1 is of the classic wishes is may you be at ease. And I think in context of what we've been talking about, I would characterize that is free from stress and anxiety. That's what he's really is. You're not tortured by stress and anxiety. And that's that's a wish we could have for ourselves and for others. So those wishes in this practice are very simply kind of focused on and we focus on uh huh several different recipients of this wish And the first one, because it's sort of the easiest one girls in tight is Thinking of a loved one. So, um the second person that we work with is interestingly enough ourselves. And this was for me a revelation in this practice because I didn't, I thought compassion was for other people basically. You know, like it was some kind of heroic uh thing that you mustered up so that you could be a great compassionate person. But the idea of being compassionate for ourselves is built into this practice. And sometimes that's hard for people that can be sometimes the trickiest area for a lot of people. So you wish those things for yourself, Like actually may I be safe? May I be healthy? May I be happy? May I be at ease? So then, uh, we move into the third group of of category, which is people we're not really sure about sort of what we call the in different category. Um, this is based on a sort of simple theory about how we respond to others and it's pretty basic when we have a sense of somebody else, it comes up fairly quickly. I like them. I don't like them or I don't care. That's called passion, aggression and ignorance and the traditional teachings. It's amazing how fast it comes up. And if you know you're in a yoga studio, I use that example, a lot of where somebody puts their mat in a yoga studio and if you like somebody right, um she's kind of nice or he is kind of nice. You know, you want them to put them there matt right next to you, that's called passion or you know, attraction. And those are the category of people we like. Um, so as I mentioned, this practice is just a way of reconditioning our state of mind. It's called a relative practice. We know we have attitudes, we have things going on our mind and we're just working to optimize that kind of conditioning, um and make it as positive as possible. There's a couple of things that we recognize in doing that that are helpful in terms of the view of understanding why this is a good practice, why it works, how it works. And one is understanding impermanence properly, impermanence is a very, very powerful current throughout the buddhist teachings. And really any kind of perception of reality that that doesn't take it into account is kind of um might want to reconsider because none of those feelings that we have are actually permanent, even though they feel like they're when we hate somebody, we could like, you know, we'd like to get them out, but I've seen many times, you know, somebody start by hating somebody and it ends up in their in love with them. I've heard this from couples a lot, you know, they met the person that kind of irritated them at first, I don't know if any of you have had that experience. Um and then and then somehow that shifted or sometimes we start with a kind of neutral attitude towards somebody and then we hate them and or neutral attitude and now we love them or sometimes we love somebody a lot and now we feel kind of neutral towards them or we kind of hate them. Um That's called D I V O R C. Yeah, yeah, that's the acronym for that one, you know, so I used that as an example of understanding and permanence of these seemingly, you know, kind of very powerful energies of passion, aggression, ignorance. We start with that creative live and we see somebody in the marketing department there and we kind of know what they work here. This kind of interesting. I never really noticed them before. And then all of a sudden we're at the cafeteria and we said I think I'll just sit down next to this person, have a little meal together and you start to spark up and then it's like you have tremendous interest beginning to grow. Every relationship is like this actually and then you know to fast forward on it, you're you're now you're getting very close with that person and now you're kind of deciding. The only way I can really fulfill this feeling isn't it is to move into a house together. People do either with the full on blessings of the state and the government or just on their own I. E. Getting married or just living together. And now this person is like you've sort of gotten as close to him as you possibly can and now it's starting to feel it's now five years later, let's just fast forward on this, You know, they're kind of a little bit annoying, this person, you know, start to irritate you, maybe, maybe they've taken up too much uh energy for you, too much space. Um and you're starting to resent them. Has that ever happened to any of you? In terms of relationships where you start to resent the person that you formerly loved and formerly before, that were indifferent to them, and then you feel like the aggression rising and rising and rising, getting strong and strong, show now you really need to get rid of them, they need to get rid of you and now you become divorced or separated, And now it's 10 years later and you're walking down the street and you see them and go, Oh hi, how are you? What? I really have no idea what's been going on with them. So, even in our own lifetime, you can see the impermanence of these things that we sort of get so serious serious about were so serious about our little melodramas. But if we take the overall view, we see that these things just simply change and shift. So recognizing permanence means we're not stuck with any of these feelings. That's why you can practice compassion for the enemy, for the difficult person because they're not always going to be that. So, um, another quality we recognize is that our mind has this interesting quality to it, which I call the sponge like quality of the mind and heart, we absorb impressions uh what we cultivate is going to ripple through the rest of our lives. So the first thing that we do in the in the loving kindness practice as we start by taking our meditation seat as we have in the past. And we start if you remember I talked about the mindfulness awareness practice being like a sorbet, just take a few breaths and sort of center yourself and uh allow yourself to feel present in this space at this time. Mhm. Maybe we could just say take three mindful breaths and usually we ring the bell, wants to start the practice and as you listen to the sound of the bell you can just come into a state of present awareness. Then we start by you can close your eyes because this practice we're gonna use our imagination, you can just relax your mind and body for a moment and we start by bringing to mind just imagine that they're sort of sitting right in front of you, somebody who you love, our mentor teacher if you like, but somebody for whom you have kind of open feelings towards him, positive feelings towards and they've been very kind to you in the past and if they're alive or not, it doesn't really matter. It could be some of you don't even know personally, but you just feel that kind of quality coming from and it doesn't have to be a human being, could be a pet, but the feeling is that your heart is opening easily kind of softness. And also then if you like, you can just put your hand gently on your heart area and kind of like feel that this is where I'm gonna be practicing for the next 20 minutes, this area here. Okay, So from the heart, we look at that person, and the first thing we say is may you be safe? This is again the notion of wishing them to be free from harm's way out of harm's way free from danger. And the two ways you can practice is either saying repeating, may you be safe for a period of time? You can just almost use it like a mantra, like just repeat that over and over. Or contemplate as we've learned to do direct your mind and energy towards that wish for that person. And even you could think about, well what could you do to help contribute towards their safety? Any even very practical small things. So I'm gonna say it once and then if you can repeat it, may you be safe? Yes, everybody repeat out loud, May you be safe? And then now either practices repeating that phrase with that person in mind or actually think it through, contemplate their safety and whatever comes up is okay, so we're gonna leave in a lot of room for what comes up. And if your mind drifts away from the exercise, then just bring it back, that's your discipline here. To stay focused on this topic as much as you can and whatever arises, you can take note of it's not you don't need to always be manipulating what comes up for you. May you be safe, be safe, and just try to feel the feelings that come up about that, may you be healthy, may be healthy. And again, with that person in mind, you can keep bringing your mind back to person that you love, who's been kind to you, you're wishing good health for them and all the things associated with that, all kinds of feelings come up. So don't suppress any of them. Again. You can either be repeating may you be healthy or you can be thinking about it, contemplating it. Third slogan, May you be happy? Hey, so again, this is relating to the present state of mind. How are they feeling about their life? What would make them happier? What obstacles are there? Is there anything you can do to help again? If you get too heady about the whole thing, drop your energy back into your, down into your heart. And then finally the 4th slogan, May you be at ease? Made me at ease again, sort of wishing that they're free from too much tension, stress, anxiety, expectation, disappointment and have ease and contentment. Now you can just let that person go and it's like the image of them dissolves into open space. And again you come back to just a simple feeling of being present, nowhere we take a couple of mindful breaths. Then we conjure up the next category of person which is ourselves, me, I. All those things that you referred to yourself as your name and with oneself in mind may I be safe? Yes and again, contemplating or repeating the phrase, Think about your own safety. May I be healthy? Yeah. Yeah. May I be healthy? Mm. Yeah. Think about that. What challenges do you have in that area? How could you overcome those? Get to a point of radiant health? Physical, well being, wishing that for yourself. May I be happy? May I be happy again? See what comes up for you and don't try to judge or qualify any of it just include whatever arises but gently direct your mind back to the contemplation practice we're doing. If it wanders off into other other thoughts, just bring it back. May I be at ears? Yeah. Yes, yes. Just imagine what you would feel like without being loaded down with stress and anxiety. And right now I'm burning my to do list in my mind. I'm watching this flames and the smoke up into the air and to a blue sky is your imagination, whatever form it takes. And then having stepped through those four wishes for oneself again, we let that attention and focus dissolve. Come back to being present for a moment. You can return to the mindfulness of the breathing or just sit quietly for a moment. Now we move to the neutral person category, the category of indifference. So this can be a little tricky. You just have to think of somebody you don't really know that well, maybe it's somebody who works here at Creative live that you've seen in the background, but you don't have a strong feeling about this person, don't know much about them, but try to conjure them and bring them um into your mind. Could be somebody from the supermarket or from school or from work playground. Just let them pick one and they come into your mind and try to focus on them. And with that person in mind may you be safe? Yeah. And again, repeating the phrase, may you be safe over and over again in your mind if you like. Just gently let it ripple through or you can contemplate think about the meaning of that. Yes, you're wishing that person is free from harm, free from danger and safe. And secondly, may you be healthy? You healthy, May you be happy? May be happy again, this is the neutral person. The person you don't know that? Well still you're generating a strong wish for them to be happy. Could be somebody who saw in the news program. Yeah. Living in china or India England new york, may you be at ease? Maybe he's now we're letting that person go. It just dissolved back into the open space. Mind is freed up for a moment. Just rest in the feeling that's happening. And the last category we go to is what we call the sometimes called the enemy. But I like to call the irritating person annoying person. The tea boy that we talked about yesterday. You can just pick somebody doesn't have to be the, you know, the super villain of all time. Maybe just somebody in your life right now who's annoying you and arousing your aggression somebody. It doesn't it could even be somebody that you basically love. But they're just uh in the penalty box for the moment. Mhm. The feeling is what matters and watch what comes up for you here. Just take note of it and do your best. May you be safe? Maybe amazing. Don't judge yourself or another person. Just try to work with the feelings. See if you can send this wish to them, may be healthy. Help may you be happy? Yeah, May you be at ease the indians either repeating the phrase or contemplating it. Just see what comes up for you and include everything. Be open to it and then let that person go, let's let it go solve again. You're back in the open space and now going back into your heart center. Feeling that space again, going back to the person you loved in the beginning and remembering that feeling of complete openness. Open heartedness. Yeah. Think of it as a golden sun of energy in your heart. It begins to radiate out and it's a feeling of genuinely wishing happiness for others and for oneself, starting with oneself then radiating out and just touches the people around you in the workshop here or in your house, wherever you are, in virtual land, Just let that feeling radiate out through your house or apartment, and then further and further out, Just extended out towards all beings everywhere, like as if your heart is the sun radiate out energy, love and kindness to all beings everywhere. To see how far you can project that out, and then gradually, as you like, just begin to come back in, kind of have a sense of coming back to your body and this place, drawing it in, coming in and letting the whole exercise dissolve. Practice dissolves into you and just rest in the feeling of being here with those feelings that you've gone through.