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Guided Meditation: Compassion Where It is Easy

Hello and welcome. I am happy to see the greetings and to be back here from being gone for two weeks. I was teaching a wonderful retreat at IRC, and I still feel kind of in the settledness and calm of that retreat. I feel quite happy to be here to continue the series on compassion as part of the larger series on love.

This week the topic is compassion samadhi^[1]. One of the important options and forms of meditation in our Buddhist tradition is meditation that is centered on compassion, on karuṇā^[2]. This very beautiful quality of compassion can be experienced in its essence, just by itself, without the stickiness that gets stuck to it or confused by it being distress, horror, anger, or more personal suffering. There's a way of entering into compassion so the tenderness, the warmth, and the flow of compassion becomes the entire field of awareness.

A metaphor for that is when the sun comes up and the dark night ends. If you can see the entire field of awareness walking around outside, it becomes filled with light. We seem to be able to get along just fine in daylight without too much thought about it. We can talk, take care of things, and do all kinds of things together with light. In the same way, compassion can fill the field of awareness almost as a kind of light, an atmosphere, a mood, or a state of our whole being. It's a remarkable state, and it's possible to go into deep samadhi with it.

In talking about karuṇā samadhi today, I do so in the context of spending almost four months on and off on the topic of love, and last year spending six months or so exploring the topic of samadhi. In a sense, this brings it all together around compassion.

An image that Buddhism sometimes presents for compassion is the beautiful statues of Avalokiteshvara^[3] or Kwan Yin. Maybe I'll try to have one here for YouTube tomorrow morning. Kwan Yin sits in a posture of repose. It's at ease, soft, fluid, gazing upon the suffering of the world, and caring about it. This figure is meant to be one of the beings that is most involved in supporting and helping people who are suffering. So it's not a passive ease, but an ease which allows the fullness of compassion to come forth.

To begin the meditation, see if you can find a posture that has just the right balance for you of being alert and being at ease. The ease is important. If you normally have deep, painful knees when you sit cross-legged, maybe this is a time to sit in a chair.

Assume a meditation posture and gently close your eyes. Take a few long, slow, full breaths without tiring yourself or getting winded. Just enough to invite your attention into your body as you breathe here in this body. Now this is the place where the gold mine of compassion can be found. As you exhale—a long exhale—relax and soften the body.

Then, letting your breathing return to normal. In whatever way is easiest for you, have a broad, raw sensing of your body, kind of panoramic. Within that broad awareness of the body, on the exhale, continue to soften your body. Relax the shoulders and the belly. Maybe it's possible to soften and relax the arms and hands. Maybe the face can soften. On the exhale, soften the thinking mind. Imagine the thinking mind can be like the surface of a choppy lake that settles and becomes quiet, spreading its flat, quiet surface out in all directions.

To begin compassion, bring to mind some person or animal for whom it's very easy for you to imagine having simple, clear compassion. Someone you would care for and feel a kind of warmth, love, and care that wants to support and help them in a time of difficulty—but the difficulty is not that great. It's maybe like a five-year-old child who has tripped on the sidewalk and is a little bit shocked, upset, and distressed, but nothing more than that. Nothing to be distressed with as a grown-up, but somebody to care for, someone to tend to.

Or an animal that maybe has been frightened by a loud sound. Maybe a pet has been frightened by a loud sound, and this animal is fine and safe but afraid. Your compassion is there to care, show that it's safe, and be with it. Or maybe there's a bird that has fallen from hitting a window and is stunned, and you hold it gently and softly to keep it safe. It begins to revive, and you know it's going to be okay. Your care and compassion is there without you being distressed or upset. Soft, clear, kind, holding the bird until it flies away.

Feel the naturally arising feeling of compassion in the body, in the heart, and in the mind. Notice how such compassion would live in you and arise in you. Compassion is more than just a logical thought to offer care. There's a softness, a tenderness, a warmth, and a motivation to act. Gentle, quiet, maybe slow.

Sitting here quietly, breathe through the place in your body where compassion is most at home. Breathe through it. Breathe with it. Imagine a person or an animal that you're caring for in this kind of simple compassion with every breath. Compassion. Maybe on every exhale, gently, softly, in the same tone of voice as the tenderness within, just quietly say the word compassion.

Letting go into the body's invitation, the body's possibility of tender, easeful, caring compassion. As you inhale, spreading compassion, the warmth, the care, the gentleness with ease, spreading it through your body. Letting go of any thoughts that are different, that are other than staying close to compassion.

In whatever way you experience compassion, or think of it, or can direct it to some person or being where it's easy—can you find within yourself the place where that intuition or impulse for compassion is calmest, quietest, maybe even silent within? Let the thinking mind and the heart settle into that quiet, into the calm corners or center of compassion. Breathing with it.

As we come to the end of this sitting, orient your calm care, your calm compassion, wherever it's found within you. May it be tender, gentle. Allow it to be the way that compassion can be in its corners or deep inside without any distress, where it can be sweet. Turn that compassion outward towards the world and be the Kwan Yin that sits in a posture of repose gazing upon the world with care, with compassion, with love.

For now, that's all that's needed. Nothing to do, nothing to respond to directly, but to be a person who for some minutes can gaze upon the world with compassion in a way that doesn't add more suffering to the world, but does the opposite. It reassures everyone that there is profound care available in this world.

Starting with yourself here: May all beings be free of their suffering. May all beings be free of tension and contraction. May all beings be free of fear and anxiety. May all beings be free of the incredible pain of hostility and hatred. May all beings be reassured in their loneliness that no one is alone, that our care and our love includes everyone. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. And may we contribute to that possibility.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (50) Compassion Samadhi

So hello and welcome. I started this sub-series on compassion, as part of the broader series on love, at the beginning of the month of April. And now two weeks later, I am doing another week, this week explicitly on compassion samadhi.

It's remarkable that it's possible to settle into a profound state of easeful, tender, gentle, warm, sweet compassion that becomes kind of like the field we abide in. Just like you would abide and rest in the sunlight that lightens up the day. Maybe we've been out in the dark and the cold, and the sun rises, and not only is it light, but it also starts to warm up. Maybe we just sit and enjoy the light and the warmth, or we just know that it's there as we go about doing all the things we do during the daytime, accompanied by light and warmth. We can be similarly accompanied by compassion.

It has a sweetness to it, a joy to it that is surprising. Many people associate compassion with feeling suffering themselves. They feel the suffering of the world or of others, and it pains them, and they think that pain is part and parcel of that compassion. But compassion is not a painful state. It's possible to be free of suffering for oneself, or in relationship to what's happening in the world, and have a profound state of care for the world that is actually nourishing. It's actually good. It feels tender, caring, and gentle.

Two weeks ago I talked about compassion, and I talked about the importance of knowing one's own pain well. Having it settled enough so that we don't project our own suffering onto others who are suffering. We want to ensure that our own pain, our own challenges, and our own unresolved places and issues within ourselves don't get triggered in the meeting and encounter with the suffering of others. We have to know ourselves well.

Part of knowing ourselves well is knowing the hindrances—the unfortunate ways in which we react to the suffering, distress, or challenges in the world or within ourselves. It is knowing how to work with them, and knowing that there is a possibility of a profound equanimity with compassion. Equanimity is a form of love, or a quality that supports the love of compassion, allowing us to be at ease and relaxed.

I brought up two weeks ago, and also just now, the image of Avalokiteshvara, the embodiment of compassion. There is a very famous depiction of Kwan Yin sitting on the edge of a cliff, resting with one leg up, leaning over, and gazing upon the world from that cliff. Seeing everybody and everything, and completely at ease and at peace. We might think that that's too passive, but Kwan Yin gets involved with all suffering and is there to help. In this mythology, Kwan Yin transforms into whatever being a person needs to be helped by and is always ready. There are images where Kwan Yin has a thousand arms and a thousand hands, each holding a different tool that's needed to help someone, but never without losing its ease, fluidity, and relaxation.

This idea of compassion is very closely related to what we spent longer on, which was metta^[4] or goodwill. Both of these states of love involve a deep attunement to others. We can't be attuned to others if there is static on our side. It's not necessarily easy to have this kind of clear, clean compassion, but it's one of the great treasures.

I believe I talked a few weeks ago about how in Tibetan Buddhism they have a chant: Om mani padme hum^[5]. Mani is jewel and padme means lotus. It translates to the jewel in the lotus. The lotus that opens up is the awakened mind, and a lotus is quite beautiful, but there's something even more beautiful at the heart of it, which is this gem that is compassion. It is heralded in Buddhism as one of the great capacities of a human being to cultivate and develop.

To do that, as with all the brahmavihārās^[6], the classic way is to begin by using your imagination, thoughts, and memories to consider some person, animal, or imagined situation where it's really easy for you to have compassion. It's really easy to have a compassion that is untroubled. There's no distress, and it doesn't trigger your own fear, anger, or distress. It's usually something that's very simple. It might be a child who is upset because they spilled their milk on the floor. There may be milk on their shirt, and you are just tenderly there to reassure them. You have a lot of care and compassion, but you're not distressed, upset, or angry. Accidents like that happen, and so you just want to show the kid who's upset and crying some gentle care and love. You have compassion for them because it's hard to be a child and have the world malfunction in this kind of way. You demonstrate calm clarity—everything's okay—and you wipe up the milk, get them another shirt, and maybe give them another glass of milk.

The idea is to find something where it's easy. I know some people find it easy to think of a cute animal—a dog, a cat, squirrels, a quail, or a rabbit. Something that elicits this warm-hearted suffusion of not only goodwill and love, but one that cares for their well-being, wishes them well, and sees them in some kind of challenging situation. We wish, "May you be well." Maybe it's a cat that's been chased up a tree and is afraid of the dog underneath. The dog leaves, and you go over and are just nearby, reassuring the cat that you care for it and everything's good.

Find some way to connect to this quality of compassion and care which is simple and easy within you. These examples might seem kind of silly, but compassion is not silly. Compassion is a very strong, very powerful way in which we can make a difference in the world. It's one of the most beautiful jewels and treasures for our social and interactive life. We learn to have it in a clean way, in a deeply respectful and attuned way with others. We are not there to have a vertical relationship where we're looking down upon them as the great healer and carer, but a horizontal relationship. We're there together with others as fellow sufferers and fellow challenged beings, in solidarity and attunement with them.

Because it feels so good to have this gentleness, tenderness, sweetness, and flow—this current of compassion—it's easy for others to receive it or to be around us. We're not pushy toward them; we're meeting as equals in a certain way, almost like we're equals in this suffering world.

That kind of state can be developed. Rather than having a fragmented, preoccupied mind caught up in the difficulties of life, it's possible in meditation to make compassion the sole object of attention. Just like you would slowly focus on the breathing, you can really enter into this world of compassion feeling. Let it grow, let it expand, and let it be the main focus of attention. I find it very useful to continue with meditation on the breathing, but the breathing now recedes a little bit into the background. The breathing is there to keep us connected. It's almost like the breathing is the vehicle or channel by which we're touching the places of compassion within, or like a gentle fanning of a flame so it gets larger. This gentle fanning of warmth allows it to spread and get bigger.

All the benefits of meditation can come along with this. The mind can get quite calm, concentrated, and still, and it can feel easier. Sometimes qualities of well-being, joy, and warmth can also fill one as we develop into samadhi, the samadhi of compassion.

So that's the topic for this week. I'll be here just for this week, and then I go away again. This next time I go away for almost a month; a big part of that is a vacation that I haven't had in a long time. We'll have wonderful people coming in, and at least one of the guests will continue the topic of compassion in his own way.

For today, maybe you can consider: What is your relationship to compassion, to karuṇā? What is your relationship to this profound way of caring for the suffering of others and having a warm-hearted, open relationship that wants that suffering to go away? If you have friends, you can talk to them about it. If you journal, you can journal about it. Go for a walk and make this topic of compassion a theme of your reflection today. What is your history with it? How would you write your autobiography if it was an autobiography in relationship to compassion?

Thank you very much, and I'll see you tomorrow.