μ΄λ»κ² solmone Members inaid Hello again.
You've probably heard of compassion.
Compassion is a close relative of goodwill.
While goodwill means you wish yourself or someone else to be well,
Compassion comes when we see pain,
Discomfort,
Or unhappiness and our goodwill makes us want it to stop.
It's similar to when you have a cold or a stomach ache and you wish that it would go away.
But when we make it into a practice,
Something that we try to grow,
It can become a very powerful tool to help ourselves and other people during difficult times.
Let's start by settling into our bodies and our breath.
Settle into your comfortable sitting up or lying down position.
Observe your body as if you're looking at it from the outside.
You can see the whole thing very settled in this space.
Now slowly move into your body and find your breath.
Any place you can feel your breath has a feeling in your body,
Just be with that feeling.
In a relaxed and careful way,
Follow your breath in and out,
Noticing if it's long or short,
Deep,
Heavy,
Soft,
Anything at all.
Notice that the breath is refreshing.
It feels good to bring new air into the body and then let air out.
Take any amount of good feeling you have and imagine spreading it around like you're filling your body with light or mist,
And that light or mist is very refreshing and feels good.
Keep following your breath and being fully in your body.
Sometimes having a body,
Feelings,
And thoughts means that one of those things will seem unpleasant.
We could have a pain in the body,
We could be sad or angry,
We could have worries or other thoughts that upset us.
This is the same for everyone,
And you could say that even these difficult things have a purpose,
A job to do.
Like sending a message.
Once we can see that something unpleasant is happening,
We can try to decide if there's some way to help.
Sometimes,
All we can do is wish someone well,
Which is a good thing to do.
Other times,
We can help ease the pain.
The exercise we will do for compassion is a lot like the one for goodwill,
It's just a little harder because we will feel or think something that's a little uncomfortable and look right at it so we can give it a chance to do its job and then move on.
Return now to the breath,
And through the breath,
Feel the feeling of refreshment of breathing,
And try to feel your whole body in as peaceful and easy a way as you can.
Just carefully staying right here with the breath and the body.
Now let's try looking into your body and mind and finding something a little unpleasant.
It could be that you have a stuffy nose or a sore knee,
Or it could be a memory of something sad or something that makes you worried or mad.
Give yourself a moment to find that unpleasant thing and make sure to only choose one for now.
Let that thing be right there in the center,
Right in the spotlight of your mind.
While this unpleasant thing is taking shape,
Do a quick check on how you're doing with the following breath,
Feeling that it's refreshing and feeling your whole body.
This exercise is a little more difficult than the one on goodwill,
Sort of in the way that juggling is a little harder than throwing one ball up in the air and catching it,
But it can definitely be done.
While observing your difficult thing,
You're also aware that you keep on breathing.
You are aware of your body in this space and you can feel good and refreshing feelings that you can spread around just by thinking about it.
Can you see both things?
The difficult thing and your body full of breath and awareness?
Okay,
I think we've been thinking about the difficult thing long enough for now.
We might need to think of it again later,
But for now,
Let's help it move on.
In the same way that we fill our body with the refreshing breath,
Let's fill up the difficult thing with that breath.
Imagine the breath and the light of your awareness just moving right through it like sunshine through a window.
You could think of it as see-through like that,
Or just getting smaller and smaller compared to the bigness of your refreshing breath and calm body.
Just letting the breath guide you back to being with your whole refreshed body.
By focusing on what's good,
Balanced,
And refreshing,
We can look at difficult things and not let them carry us away.
Compassion doesn't always completely get rid of difficult things,
But we can give ourselves the power to handle them.
The goodness and goodwill we have is like the power source for our compassion.
As long as we are wishing ourselves and others to be well and acting on that wish,
We are more likely to find the right way to help.
Now let's do this as an exercise that we can do pretty much anywhere in a short amount of time.
We're going to do six breaths.
The first breath is going to be for just noticing the breath in the body.
The second breath is for making the breath feel good.
The third breath is to spread the breath and goodness around the whole body.
The fourth breath is to see a difficult thing.
The fifth breath is filling the difficult thing with the breath.
The sixth breath is letting the difficult thing go for now and being fully in the body.
Okay,
Let's give it a try.
One,
Just noticing the breath.
Two,
Making the breath feel good.
Three,
Filling the entire body with the breath.
Four,
Seeing a difficult thing.
Five,
Filling the difficult thing with the breath.
Six,
Letting it go.
Very good.
Now let's do the exercise one more time.
This time I'm just going to say the numbers.
You don't have to remember the steps exactly,
And you can even go back and write them down to remember them for later.
Once I'm done counting,
I'm going to leave a little space for you to just sit and feel nice and refreshed,
And then the bell will ring for the end of the meditation.
May you have peace,
Ease,
And happiness.
Okay,
Ready?
One,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Five,
Six,
Seven,
Eight,
Nine,
Ten.
Six.
One,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Five,
Six,
Seven,
Eight,
Nine,
Ten.
One,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Five,
Six,
Seven,
Eight,
Nine,
Ten.
