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Guided Meditation: Mindfulness as the Door to Compassion

A warm hello. I'm quite happy to be sitting here in my meditation posture, and also to be here with all of you, to be able to share my meditation in a sense with you and do this together. So welcome, everyone.

The topic for this week's dharma talks is compassion. For those who meditate, the source of compassion, or the reference point for compassion, is maybe very different than for most people who don't meditate. I think when we do mindfulness meditation and discover how to really be present for oneself—so as not to be hindered by doubt, ill will, desires, and distractions—we really learn how to sit here present in the present moment with a sense of well-being, a sense of openness, and a kind of groundedness in the present. That groundedness in the presence, and the sense of well-being and ease that can come from that, is the same doorway for compassion.

In other words, from a Buddhist point of view, compassion isn't something separate. It's something that comes along with, or is built on, a deep sense of ease that one has with oneself and with one's life. This is an ease that comes from not being caught in hindrances^[1], attachments, and clinging. The very open presence that is the doorway for well-being for oneself is also the doorway for a compassionate concern or compassionate response to the suffering of the world.

In a sense, maybe that's one of the gifts of meditation practice: to provide compassion with a kind of simplicity. An absence of clinging, an absence of hindrances, an absence of the things that get mixed up with compassion to cause distressed compassion—stress compassion.

So we'll sit here with the idea, if you wish, that we're opening up to our potential for compassionate presence. But we do it indirectly. We're doing it by really being here, curious, interested, and valuing with deep respect what it's like to be really here and present, as if it's the doorway to compassion, the doorway to love. We do this without trying for it to be compassion, just stepping into this doorway of here and now.

Guided Meditation

So taking a meditation posture, gently closing your eyes, and taking a couple of moments here to see if you could establish an attitude of valuing your embodied experience now. Valuing being in the present moment, rather than being in a kind of virtual reality of ideas and thoughts that are about the future, the past, fantasy, or about places other than right here. Establish an attitude of willingness to be present here.

And then take a few long, slow, deep breaths, as if your deep breathing is inviting you, welcoming you here in this body at this time, inviting you into the present moment. The long exhale is a temporary releasing of your thoughts, concerns, and worries. Maybe imagine that you're putting those things up on a shelf, and you can pick them up again after the meditation. But for now, maybe you can accept the invitation, the welcoming to being here with this body at this time.

And then letting your breathing return to normal.

Taking a few moments to relax your body further. Allowing the tensions of your face to soften, allowing the face to melt as you exhale. Allowing the shoulders to soften and relax, allowing the tension that's there in the shoulders to dissolve. Softening the belly, giving some freedom to the belly. Freedom to relax, hang forward, hang down, to settle.

And then, as if you could take a loving hand and reach deep down inside of yourself to the deepest place that's there in you, gently touch the deepest place that you can find. As you exhale, relax the deepest places of tension. Relax around the deepest places that you know you can feel.

There can be a wonderful feeling that is only present in the present moment, which is a gentle tenderness or softness within. Perhaps you could now be tenderly aware of your body breathing. Or maybe the breath is tender, and you're being touched tenderly by breathing, being touched differently by the inhale than the exhale. Let the sensations of the body breathing be a welcome, an invitation for you to be present for those experiences.

Noticing if your thinking mind takes you away from the present moment, takes you away from a deeper connection to yourself. If you notice that it does so, and you can feel the difference between being connected to yourself and not connected, choose being connected. Don't allow the thinking and the distractions to choose for you. Choose to stay connected here and now to the body breathing.

As you exhale, relax the thinking muscle, the thinking mind. Softening the energy and the waves of thinking. As if thinking are waves on the sea, let the waves quiet, and listen.

The present moment can be a door to discovering well-being, a sense of ease within you. It is not always easy to discover, but maybe if you turn up the corners of your lips a little bit for a little half smile or quarter smile, it is perhaps a little bit easier to discover some feeling of well-being, however mild, with being here and now. Some pleasure.

And then breathe with that well-being. Let the well-being, however small it is, guide you into a fuller connection to your body breathing. Breathing with whatever sense of well-being or pleasure that might be here, in spite of whatever discomfort you might have. Notice what's comfortable or comforting here and now, and breathe with it. As you breathe, especially on the exhale, let go of your thoughts. Let the thinking mind become stiller, more open, and more attentive to here and now.

With the exhale, settling in further into your body, into your being. With the exhale, letting go into your physical existence right now. And on the inhale, feeling whatever goodness, rightness, or well-being might be within you. Letting go of striving and trying, and allowing yourself to feel and be present. Allowing your body and your breathing to come to you, and to simply let it be.

Might there be within you some place or location for compassion? Might there be some tenderness, some warmth, some love within you? However small, a small hint of something that feels a bit like the presence of compassion. A warmth, a kindness, a love. Something very simple that, if it had words, would wish you well and for you to be free of suffering. But it's so simple it has no words. It's just an attitude of feeling free of desires, free of clinging and need, free of fear and worry. Just a simple inner glow of compassionate warmth, wanting nothing.

And for these minutes, doing nothing. Just an attitude. Breathing with that attitude. Having this attitude of compassion guide you to a simple presence with the breathing.

As we come to the end of this meditation, feel perhaps your ability to be open, attentive, and aware of the world around you. The people in your lives, people of your neighborhood, in your wider community, and across the lands.

And then see if this tender, gentle attitude of warm compassion that needs nothing, is distressed by nothing—just a warmth, just care, an open tenderness—can radiate from you as if it could spread across the lands. See that your compassion can be inclusive of all beings. Breathing in and breathing out.

As we come now to the very end of the sitting, consider holding all beings in your wish for their well-being. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe and healthy. May all beings be free.

And may it be that on this day, you share your compassion with someone else. Very simple compassion. Maybe not with any words, but with your presence, your attention, your interest in them, your kindness, your well-wishing. May all beings everywhere be happy.