How to generate bodhichitta,
The totally open heart.
You visualize in front of you,
Your mother on your left,
Father on your right,
Friends and family sitting behind you in the same direction as you.
And then in front of you sitting towards you,
The difficult people,
Irritating people,
All sitting peacefully,
Quietly,
Just like you.
And this first meditation is recognizing all sentient beings as being your mother.
If you have problems with your mother,
You can think father,
Grandmother,
Grandfather,
But having a close connection,
A caring connection with somebody who nurtured you in your life.
And in this life,
You had a mother,
You had a father.
When you were born,
You had mother who gave birth to you.
If there are past lives,
Then that means in each life you must have also had a mother or you were born from an egg.
Sometimes we are human,
Sometimes we are animals.
We move from realm to realm.
Each realm is within cyclic existence,
Samsara.
So each realm produces a form,
A body,
From karma and delusion.
So if you keep going back,
Back,
Back,
Back,
Back,
You find countless rebirths,
Therefore countless mothers.
If you use that type of reasoning,
You feel connected to every living being.
Not just the mother of this life,
But caring about all the mothers of every life.
So the purpose of this first meditation is to try to get a very strong feeling of connection with every living being.
If it's difficult to think every being has been my mother,
You can think mother,
Father,
Brother,
Sister,
Grandfather,
Grandmother.
A strong sense of connection.
They are all in the same place.
So in the visualization you have your mother on the left,
Your father on your right.
If you have a good connection with them,
Have strong positive feelings for them,
When you think about them,
Those strong feelings arise,
You want them to be happy.
When you think about the friends and family behind you,
You have a similar feeling,
You want to liberate them from their suffering,
You want them to be happy.
Maybe not quite as intense as with your parents,
But still there's a strong feeling.
So you allow those strong feelings to arise,
To come into your heart,
So your heart feels open with love and compassion,
You have a strong connection to your parents,
Your friends,
Your family.
But then what happens when you look at the person in front of you,
The irritating person,
The difficult person?
Do you still feel that person has been connected to you,
Has been your mother,
Do you still feel open,
Or do you feel that your heart closes?
The way we stay open to even the most difficult people is this very foundation of thinking,
This has been my mother,
My father,
My brother,
My sister,
We've had strong connection in the past,
But right now I can't recognize that connection,
Emotionally it's not there.
So you have to create the connection through logic,
By thinking I'm connected to every living being.
Then just allow your mind to go out and out and out,
All around the world,
Instead of thinking my country,
My city,
Just think about the connection with every living being around the world,
How we're not alone,
Separate,
We're all connected.
So for the last few minutes,
The purpose of the meditation is to get that strong feeling of connection with all living beings,
As if they are your mother,
Or your father,
Or grandmother,
Grandfather,
Just have that strong feeling of connection.
The difficult person in your life has been your mother,
In a previous life,
The boss at work who is so difficult has been your mother,
The neighbour who irritates you playing loud music,
Doing something you don't like has been your mother,
All the beings in the world that you don't know have been your mother.
So the idea is to get this feeling of being a global family,
That we're all connected,
We're all related.
So for the last few minutes,
The purpose of the meditation is to get that strong feeling of connection with all living beings,
As if they are your mother,
Or your father,
Or grandmother,
And slowly bringing your awareness back to the room we're sitting in,
The cushion you're sitting on,
The meditation we've just been doing.
