Compassion Meditation

To awaken our natural capacity for compassion, we start by simply arriving in the body and in the stream of life at this moment. Then, we connect with a place in the body that feels good, a wish to be well, or a memory of joy or love. How does this place feel? From this "cushion," we can connect with the caring heart--and return to the cushion any time we need to. What does it feel like when your heart is moved? Enjoy the tender goodness of permission to care without anxiety.

Transcript

Please settle in,

Give yourself a comfortable setup.

We'll be practicing compassion meditation today together.

And so as you're letting your body tenderly settle into the ground,

Tenderly be comfortable if possible.

Maybe also getting a sense of the world,

The living world.

And feeling how our bodies can sense that the world is alive.

Our hearts can sense that the world is alive.

And just letting the living body and mind sense the living world as you also let yourself settle in.

Feeling the weight of the body supported,

Resting into the ground,

Kind of melting into the ground.

Noticing how support is received today.

Sometimes it's hard to really feel that there is support,

Even though we know that there is support.

And that's just to notice how is it today.

Does the body happily relax into the ground?

Let the earth carry your body?

Or is there some other feeling of maybe trying to hold itself without meaning to?

And then already room for compassion.

Sometimes,

Some days it's like that,

We can't even feel the support of the ground.

Letting that call for love,

Letting that call for a softening of the heart.

To be moved by our own situation.

Our own vulnerability.

And the vulnerability of all that is living.

So here we are with a chance to settle in.

And even though I'll be giving guidance,

Please feel your own heart's way and sway.

And we can play with the possibility of how often less is more.

So there might be a lot of guidance,

But the actual meditating itself,

Less is more.

Many times.

So when you notice yourself getting caught up in doing or thinking that you can't do,

Nice out-breath,

Feeling the ground if possible.

We can kind of chuckle,

We can kind of lightly laugh.

Oh,

There I go again.

Or there it goes again.

Trying to do more is really helpful.

With such good intentions,

But then getting into a dead end.

Okay,

Starting from the beginning,

The living being,

Body,

Mind,

Heart,

Spirit,

Whatever we are,

This living mystery in the living world.

So let's play with less is more,

Feeling how much more we could relax into the ground and still feel the body.

How much more could we relax into the ground and still feel that we're here,

Still feel presence.

How much less effort,

How much less thinking can go on and still we are here.

And even when thinking is going on and we can't make there be less thinking.

But we could tune into thinking less and tune into here more.

Perhaps literally tuning into it lower down in the body if the head feels very full or active.

As part of tuning into being part of the living world already.

Do we need to effort to make ourselves be part of the living world.

Can we discover by doing less,

Can we discover more that,

Oh,

Already I am in the living world.

So again and again welcome,

Welcoming yourself already participating in the living world.

Already bubbling up from within with aliveness,

Already maybe willing or ready to be willing to rest into the living world for a while.

And we could begin by feeling is there somewhere in the body that feels good,

That could be a good home for a little while.

Maybe not the normal place that you connect if you regularly meditate or maybe yes.

What kind of home or what kind of place would you feel like living in for a while right now today.

And just simply feeling what you feel there for a few breaths,

If you wish.

And if your body is hard to feel.

Are there some sounds that you could spaciously relax back and allow the sounds to flow over you like a breeze over the surface of a lake.

Or letting your eyes open and find somewhere that feels good to rest with seeing for a little while.

Not forgetting the miracle of seeing the miracle of hearing the miracle of feelings being felt.

How not are doing how much that happens by itself.

So if we can be less into trying to see or hear or feel more discovering that feeling happens hearing happens seeing happens.

And it's okay that the mind will quickly fall off in to distraction.

Our training is to be distracted.

That's what we've practiced a lot.

And so we can take it as a game that we're not very good at.

And that that can be part of the fun.

Part of the fun is that even when I am distracted.

And I'm distracted because that's my practice my training my habit,

My education.

There,

There's that distracted mind again,

Getting distracted.

And when I'm distracted,

Some other faculty in the human being can notice,

Oh,

Look,

I was distracted.

And then coming back home for a little while.

So there's coming back home to a place in the body that feels good or to hearing or seeing or whatever way you feel good to be in connection with life for a while.

So there's a coming back.

And then letting go and discovering this is happening by itself.

Someone puts us back on the bicycle or we pick the bicycle back up and then we can let the bicycle roll along again.

So coming back with some warmth and humor and also the mysteriousness of coming back,

Opening our attention and our mind to what was already here all along.

And then having come back.

Letting our experience be slippery.

Loosening the grip.

Playing with finding ways of staying even though our experience is slippery and ungraspable.

So we're not enforcing experience,

We're receiving experience.

Let it surprise you moment by moment.

Let it sneak up upon you moment by moment.

And then to have some help to discover what compassion might be to discover compassion as another human faculty already in us.

Before we really turn to compassion,

Let's begin with a kind of cushion.

So remembering a moment of goodness or gratefulness,

Sweetness.

It could be a moment from today or a moment from any time in your experience from earliest childhood till now.

Something with some goodness that you can feel a little bit or that's real to you in some way.

Just being quiet,

Seeing a mushroom or a deer or a cloud or hand.

Feeling loved or a joy that came bubbling up.

Or even just a place in the body that feels good just now.

And just breathing that in as if it were a perfume or a music.

Or some kind of silky atmosphere.

Getting to know the touch of it,

If possible.

That time that you felt free and it felt like a breeze or you felt some kindness that came out of nowhere.

Like velvet or silk.

Or a kitten.

Or you felt grounded,

Solid as a mountain.

Sometimes the mind will be tricky and you might be feeling that you've never had a good moment in all your life.

And I know that that's not true.

So it could just be something in your experience now that's good,

A color you can see,

A place in the body that feels OK.

Or bringing to mind something that you appreciate.

Whether you wish for peace or happiness and what peace or happiness feels like.

Your willingness and wish for that.

And the texture of that.

So it's permission to feel the goodness in your own way.

Sometimes it's easy and sometimes it's hard and all of it is good practice.

All of it is practice going against the stream of our usual habits and conditioning.

And as if we can feed each of ourselves with this goodness.

We could be streaming with it in our being.

Like an animal who may go into a lake and come out dripping.

To be dripping with the texture of goodness.

Or OK-ness or a wish.

And within this goodness allowing to come to mind something that moves you.

Something that feels tender.

And it's really important that if something comes to mind that would be overwhelming that you change the channels.

And if something comes to mind that you can feel but is not overwhelming,

Then we could play with this for a while.

So if something overwhelming comes to mind,

An overwhelming difficulty,

A difficulty that floods you.

It can be helpful to open your eyes.

To kind of wish for goodness or peace in that situation as you shift your attention,

Change the channels.

But preferably just inviting a kind of small difficulty,

Something that you can feel.

It brings about a sense of tenderness,

Care.

And you would love to bring some goodness to that situation.

And so if we can let a person or situation,

A difficulty that you had today where you felt frustrated or sad or worried.

Something not extreme but feelable.

So it's like we're riding a bicycle with training wheels to start with.

So we could really get in more intimately into the human being that we are.

And discover where compassion lives.

Rather than just overwhelming our capacity.

So maybe less is more.

Sipping maybe just a little bit of feeling some real difficulty of your own or of someone else's or of any creatures anywhere on the planet.

Something you can feel without being overwhelmed.

Maybe less is more.

So feeling a little bit.

Enough that it could come naturally that I really wish for peace.

I really wish for healing.

I really wish for some kind of upliftment or lightness or ground here.

And you're very welcome.

If you like to find words to elucidate to clarify to kind of give more body to your movement of your heart.

So maybe it's in your own insecurity.

This morning,

Or in your sisters or your nephews or your grandparents,

Neighbors,

Or in those people and other creatures who are in a way,

Sisters or nephews or grandparents in the living world that we're part of.

We can feel our relation to them.

We can feel that we matter to each other that and that we care.

And we can feel an inner permission that we're allowed to care.

Even if it sometimes could be scary.

We want to hold back just noticing resistance as resistance.

So just noticing where your mind has been attracted or interested.

What is the basic theme or subject that has moved you?

That seems to call for your care.

Your care feels a calling.

Your care awakens.

And feeling almost a protection of allowing the care,

Being allowed to care,

And pouring all of our energy into the care rather than thinking about worrying about trying to fix or solve just for now,

Pouring your energy into the care.

And whether that's towards myself,

May I be at ease?

Or towards another,

May you be at ease?

Adapting it to the situation,

May they be at ease?

May we be at ease?

Your own words,

Of course.

If you find words helpful.

Allowing the words to feel as if you have all the time in the world.

No hurry,

No holding back.

So it's like pouring your heart willingly.

So that even though it's tenderly pouring,

Tenderly stretching our heart.

It's also calling on a true nature of the heart to be moved.

May you be well.

May you be happy.

And maybe we can even enjoy finding this true movement,

What feels true to you,

What feels real to you.

Not taking on responsibility that is in someone else's care and not blocking the care in you.

If images are helpful for you,

Allowing images to be of help to you.

Whenever necessary or whenever helpful or delicious to come back to your own cushion or home for a while.

Maybe nine breaths could be a good stretch to just hang out with your own home or your own feeling of goodness.

The goodness cushion,

Memory of gratefulness or feeling that feels good in the body or okayness in the body.

And then noticing what has drawn your attention,

Whether it's in yourself or another.

Could this be a theme that we could bring to ourselves and to others?

So if you felt for your own wish for ease when there's insecurity.

Or frustration.

Or shame,

For example.

Could we practice that towards ourselves and then start to bring that out to others,

Or if you felt attracted to a situation of conflict and you wish for peace.

And you can really genuinely feel that wish for peace.

In a place of conflict within someone else or between people.

Between values or whatever it may be.

Could we bring that to ourselves,

Wherever there may be conflict in myself and in my life.

May there be peace.

May there be ease.

May there be love.

Maybe you could use your cushion from time to time,

Even if you feel like you don't need it.

It's probably worthwhile to visit the cushion again and again.

And perhaps even the qualities of the cushion that you chose at the beginning.

A good moment today or anytime in your life.

Feeling in the body or something that feels good to look at.

Color and texture that feels good to see.

And how that feels.

We could almost play with that as if it's a substance that we could fill with and overflow with.

The texture of your own cushion or the texture of whatever you would wish for what moves your heart.

And we'll start again just with ourselves.

Wherever there is conflict in myself and in my relationships.

I wish for peace.

And really allowing the feeling,

The silkiness,

The honey of peace.

Allowing that to be sweet to yourselves.

Using your own examples and your own textures.

Your own support of words and image.

And your own theme if you were attracted to a situation of rage or addiction or illness in someone else or somewhere else.

So now applying that to yourself wherever there might be need for healing in myself.

May I be well.

Wherever there may be injury in myself,

May there be healing.

And feeling perhaps the coolness or the warmth of healing or wellness or whatever quality you're playing with.

Like a child might play with textures and substances.

Playing,

You could think of it as energy or qualities.

Experience.

So feeling the quality and texture of peace,

For example,

Or healing,

Happiness.

So you feel called to wish for.

And also feeling how good it feels to let the heart care,

To let that flow flow.

To let the heart respond.

And if possible,

If it feels okay to you staying a little bit longer with yourself.

Applying from whatever external situation may have first called you,

If so.

Applying that to yourself.

Wherever in myself,

There seems to be an impossible dead end or an impossible task.

I wish for lightness of heart.

I wish for ease.

I wish for grace.

And just enjoying feeling the texture of wishing and the texture of what you wish,

The texture of peace or grace.

And also the feeling,

The texture,

Even the substance of being allowed to care and wish.

To tune in even to the possibilities in a situation as a human power.

Power of the heart.

Even though it seems impossible.

May there be peace.

So just for a while,

We're not entertaining the impossibility we're entertaining the possibility and allowing that stream to flow through the heart.

And being allowed to enjoy that stream flowing.

From life through the heart to life.

In this case yourself as part of the living world,

Life through the human heart to life in the form of yourself.

Why not just another form of life.

No,

No one is more deserving than you.

Of this care of life through the human heart being moved.

Maybe well.

Maybe free.

May you know who you are.

As if and when you feel to start to spread to include more of the living world,

Including yourself and someone else or and just what's just around you.

You're like a pool filled with a spring from below and spreading.

So a pool of the wish for peace.

For example,

Feeling that coolness filling and spreading or feeling that warmth cooling filling and spreading.

Or however you feel it.

Filling and spreading.

Wherever there is injury,

May there be healing.

Even here,

May there be love.

Also here,

May there be freedom.

So we're tuning to a deeper sense of ourselves and the other.

Maybe someone has come to mind,

Or what is near you.

Creatures,

Including people around you,

Or just the whole landscape that you're in.

May there be peace.

May there be freedom.

Also here,

Tuning into a deeper resonance of possibilities that might seem hidden by the difficulty,

But also tuning to the deeper possibilities that the difficulty might help bring out.

I'm feeling a little bit of a pain because of feeling insecure this morning,

And letting my heart respond to that,

Letting myself be moved by that,

Letting that be a calling for love,

Calling for friendship connection support nourishment peace,

Freedom,

And letting us be able to equally call,

Can equally call out and call forth our best possibilities.

Just as something that inspires us,

Something that is difficult can equally call forth our possibilities.

Distracted by the difficulty,

But letting the difficulty call us through that to how we're moved.

May there be love,

May there be freedom also here.

And feeling the daring in that,

Feeling the courage in that,

The gumption,

The depth.

The way the difficulty makes us dig deeper into the pockets.

And just as if you may have been called to a simple difficulty of your own that you're now expanding out with.

Understanding that just as I felt ashamed or frustrated or afraid and I wished for myself to be at ease,

So others have also felt the same.

May they also be at ease.

And so we're also uncovering our accompaniment,

The way that we are kin,

We are company for each other.

We share the most intimate experiences are common to us.

And this most intimate depth of care and being moved is also common to us.

So we can join the spring that comes through our heart to the sea of the whole living world,

The care of all.

So if you're using words,

It could be that just as I wish for myself to be at ease,

May you also be at ease.

Or just may we be at ease or made there be ease also here.

And playfully letting the care and the heart movement go where it wants to go.

Where it wants to go playfully,

Not where you think it should go.

Perhaps just simply spreading wider and wider.

Or perhaps someone comes to mind,

A creature,

Could be a person or another kind of creature or place or situation.

And if it's not going to be overwhelming,

We can just let it come with curiosity,

With openness.

Remembering less is more.

It could be a small situation that helps us allow the flow of the heart in a way that's important right now beyond our knowing or imagining.

So resting back and letting love and life and belonging to the living world already be allowed to function,

Be allowed to be called forth.

Just as I wish for healing,

Peace,

Awakening in myself and feeling that.

So I also wish for all creatures in this landscape to feel and to be at peace in healing and in awakening.

Most of all,

Less is more to let yourself enjoy the movement of the heart.

It might feel less dramatic and smaller than when we're trying too hard.

But it might end up being powerful.

Playing with less and letting the tiny trickle of what's true,

What feels real to you,

Letting that be potent.

Letting that be an earthquake in a tiny trickle form.

Letting the thinking help you stay tuned to the practice,

But then not entertaining more thought.

Here I am and here is this landscape or here is this person who's come to mind and now another someone has come to mind.

Just as I wish for my own healing and awakening,

I wish for your healing and awakening.

And just for fun,

If you wish,

Spreading more widely,

As far,

As deep,

As high,

As wide as feels fun.

If that's the whole planet,

If that's just your chest,

Just the countryside where you are,

Whether in a city or a forest or a desert.

Feeling the living world with your living body-mind and letting life kind of pull that love through,

That care,

Care without worry,

Care without needing to fix for now.

Purely with wonder,

Wishing,

May you be free.

No matter what.

Keeping your cushion with you so that the heart doesn't close but that we can enjoy the flow through the heart of a genuine,

Sincerely wishing for ease,

For freedom,

For healing,

For awakening.

Also here,

Also here,

Also here.

Of course,

Also here.

And perhaps in closing,

If you wish,

A sense of the whole planet and all of the life on the planet.

On the surface,

Above the surface,

Below the surface,

Seen and unseen,

Known and unknown.

May all of this in this grand here of our planetary life,

Living world.

Also here,

May we live in peace,

In healing,

In awakening for the benefit of all.

Thank you for participating in the practice today.

Reviews

Helpful in bringing a compassionate attitude into your practice and life. Metta. 🙏

Reaching the places in need of healing and relaxation.

beautiful

These instructions were relaxing, helped me sleep, when I thought nothing could help... thank you Jaya, bless you. And insight timer 💓

Delicious and expansive