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Guided Meditation: Uncomplicated Compassion

Hello everyone, and welcome to our meditation on compassion.

In doing the actual meditation, karuṇā^[1] meditation, it's helpful to have this idea that during the meditation, we don't actually have to go out and help anyone or do anything. What we're tapping into is the simplicity of our human capacity for compassionate care, compassionate resonance with someone, where somehow we're touched, we care, we somehow feel attuned with something and someone else, some suffering.

There can be a very human and very simple response within that is there before any judgments, or shoulds, or conceits, or "I have to," "I'm supposed to." Before that, there is a very simple response of compassion that is not connected to fear or alarm, or any connection to stories and imagination of what could happen. It's very simple.

To learn how to rest in the simplicity of compassion, reserving action and more active consideration of what needs to be done and how to respond for another time. Maybe at a time when we know how to be with compassion in a more grounded and full way. For the meditation, it's meant to touch into something that's very healthy inside of ourselves, something that's simple in and of itself: a simple kind of sense of care and warmth.

Of course, we want to help, but now we want to just be able to rest and let this attunement to others' sufferings, the capacity to feel this simple, warm-hearted compassion, allow it to grow in us in an uncomplicated way. To allow ourselves to know what it's like to have it in an uncomplicated way.

Too often, I believe compassion is complicated by so many different factors that are not inherent in compassion but added into it. We need to take time to discover the simplicity of this very simple, maybe even considered ordinary, desire to support people, to want their suffering to go away, to care. Because in us there's a sweet goodness. There's a reservoir of a certain kind of kindness or care that is different than loving-kindness. It's a shared humanity, empathy, an activation of a warm-hearted wish for others to be well that brings a kind of satisfaction or joy that this comes out of us. This lives in us.

Sometimes it can live in us independent of the contact with someone who's suffering. Sometimes, as the mind gets quieter and quieter in meditation, what's left is this vibration or this resonance, this glow of a warm-hearted compassion that's just simple and there. It doesn't have to have an object. It's just a reservoir of goodness that is just there.

So for this meditation, we'll try to aim at the simplicity of uncomplicated compassion. We'll do this in coordination with breathing. I'm very fond of practicing breath meditation, teaching it as a foundation and as a support for so much, and hopefully this will work for you. At some point, I'll ask you to think about someone or something in the world for whom you can have an uncomplicated, simple compassion. It might be clear that this is not the time and place to fix the problem, to respond to it. This is meditation time. It's not the time to be involved in stories and imagination about what could happen. But just evoke that this person or this event or this thing, just enough—a simple place, a simple person, a friend, someone who's easy, who you would have compassion for if they were somehow suffering, or maybe they are in some light way, and they'll manage fine on their own, but you still care for them. Something light, that's all I'll ask at some point.

So to assume a meditation posture, gently close your eyes, and as much as you can from the inside out, feel your body breathing. Feel the movements of your chest, of your belly. And as you exhale, relax and soften in your body.

And as you breathe in, see if you can follow the expansion of your chest, your belly, your shoulders, your back rib cage in a way that broadens your attention, broadens your panoramic view. The body breathing in, the body breathing out.

As you exhale, letting the whole torso settle, quiet, soften.

Then doing the same now, breathing in and expanding this panoramic view to include the thinking mind. Not focusing on it directly, but as the attention expands with the inhale, part of it touches into the thinking mind. And as you exhale, quieting the thinking mind.

And as you're sitting here, is there any place in your body, in your chest, your heart, your belly, anywhere at all that you associate with compassion? The place where compassion arises from, or the place in the body that seems most activated, alive when there's compassion. It can be anywhere at all in the body, or the whole body.

And as you breathe in, as if the breath can fill that space, that place. Touch into the place where compassion begins, where it lives, where it's most present in your body.

A simple compassion that for now doesn't need to be concerned with doing anything or projecting into the future what might happen. Just this very simple, ordinary warmth, glow of compassion. Feeling that as you breathe in.

And as you exhale, let there be a softening, a relaxing, a settling into the center of compassion.

And if you want, you can bring to mind a person or an event that's simple and uncomplicated, where you have some deeper resonance of compassion, care for this person or people. We are fine for now not to have to act, make decisions, or have judgments. You're fine not thinking about it or thinking ahead. Very simple. Thinking of this person to see how it might bring alive an uncomplicated compassion.

And breathing in, feeling this compassion as simply as possible.

And as you exhale, relaxing this place of compassion, softening, settling into it.

Breathing in and feeling the reservoir of compassion. And if there is none, either imagine there is, or have the wish that there is. Both of them, not as wishful thinking, but a wholesome motivation. So you can feel the wholesomeness, the goodness of simple compassion, simply wanting it, imagining it.

Breathing in, feeling it. Breathing out, settling and relaxing into it.

If there's suffering in the world that you know of that's simple, maybe ordinary, doesn't require anything from you. Maybe it's a compassion for someone who can manage fine with their suffering, but you still feel an aliveness, a glow, a tenderness of compassion within. See how simple you can feel it within yourself.

And as you breathe in, letting it grow and expand through you in very small increments, faintly, quietly.

And as you exhale, settling, relaxing into that compassion, to the heart of it.

Breathing in, letting your compassion expand through your body, grow.

And as you exhale now, imagine that you're opening your body wide. So your compassion is a welcoming, receptive place to receive whatever suffering there is in the world. To receive it in an uncomplicated way, into a place of relaxed care, goodwill, tenderness and gentleness of sweet compassion.

And as we come to the end of this sitting, with your heart, your body, your compassion open to the suffering of the world. Staying still with an uncomplicated, simple compassion.

Bring to mind or bring to heart the idea of wishing the world were free of suffering, wishing for the end of suffering. Wherever it is, whatever form comes to you, it lands in your soft compassion.

May you be at ease being present for suffering, wishing the suffering to end.

May all distress unwind and disappear. May all anxiety be reassured and be settled and quieted.

May all hostilities that people live with or experience melt and dissolve into friendliness and goodwill.

May whatever suffering there is in the world be alleviated. By calling forth all the goodness that is found in this world, may all the collective goodness of all of us work together for the welfare and benefit of all beings. May all beings be free of suffering.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (51) Compassion Samadhi 2

Hello and welcome to this week's series on the samadhi^[2] of compassion, karuṇā samadhi.

It's quite a profound and wonderful tool and skill and ability to have a meditation practice with compassion and to allow the compassion that we have a natural capacity for to grow and expand so that it becomes the predominant orientation and mood of the mind and heart.

Samadhi means a unification, a gathering together usually around something. So everything is kind of gathered, looking at the same thing. And here all of who we are is concerned with compassion: the feeling of compassion, the sense of compassion, the aliveness of what we call compassion within us. For this to become a meditation practice that really helps us to get concentrated and still and unified, so that we feel deeply at ease and relaxed and can feel a lot of joy, the mind is quite settled.

It's best to consider that compassion has in its essence, in its simplest way, is uncomplicated. Sometimes people don't know about uncomplicated compassion. People have maybe a capacity for something like compassion. I think no two people probably have the same reference point for what compassion is. For some people, it's very physical, maybe in the heart it's something we sense. For some people, it feels more like an emotion. For some people, it's more cognitive, and it's the arising of a beautiful sense, and even the thought in the mind of wishing the end of suffering, recognizing suffering, acknowledging it. And so there's many ways, but the principle is to have it be uncomplicated by distress, by requirements, by needing to do something, by being involved in imagination and preoccupations about the future and what all this means. To be stuck in the scenarios and reviewing what happened or what's going on, so that we feel overwhelmed or feel contracted or feel alarmed or feel angry.

There's certainly a time for our compassion instinct to be involved in reflection and thinking and acting as well. But it's very helpful to find out how simple it can be, because as simple and uncomplicated as it can be, as that can grow and develop, it helps us understand how much we can fall back in the simplicity of it, and how little we need to be anxious, how little we need to be dismayed or distressed, how little we need to be caught up in needing to fix. We don't have to tie the compassion we have with our own unresolved suffering and our own pain that we carry with us. We can kind of just allow it to be there very simply as something that actually is very nourishing for us. Something that feels wonderfully buoyant and alive and sweet.

Exactly what adjective to use for it again depends a lot on the individual and how they experience compassion, so I don't want to assume that everyone will have it be sweet. So I offer all these different adjectives: gentle, tender, sweet, beautiful, warm, soft, kind, caring. As it grows, as it's there, as we learn about it and stay with it, the breathing can be a great help for this compassion meditation.

At least I find that breathing keeps me fluid. It keeps me from getting caught in thoughts, caught in attachments, caught in trying to do something. And it helps me to just stay fluid, stay with the flow, the current of the breathing, the flow of compassion, so that when I feel the compassion together with the breathing, I'm not going to be caught in anything. I'll just stay letting go in a sense, letting go of the ways that compassion gets more complicated.

So to breathe in and feel that compassion, and breathe out... rather than let go of it—certainly you can just breathe out and relax, but I find it helpful to exhale to almost settle into it, like into a soft bed or something, or into a wonderful pool of water that's so good to settle into, and then to breathe in and to feel it and settle. That combination with the breathing can help keep it simple, but also it becomes a gathering point. It becomes a gathering point for the unification, the gathering together.

I probably... the first time I had any notion of uncomplicated compassion was through my own meditation practice, where my mind got very, very quiet and still. The sense of hard boundaries between me and the world, the preoccupation with thoughts and ideas which I had lots of, they all got quiet. Things felt kind of empty, like a wonderful sense of emptiness in things, or quiet or spaciousness of things. In that space, in this vast emptiness or quiet, it was quite beautiful. And I was surprised that in that space, it seemed like compassion was just a natural presence. It didn't need to have any object. It didn't need to have any thoughts connected to it. It was just that I was left with this reservoir of kind of a warmhearted vibration that the only thing I could refer to was a kind of compassion that was sweet. There was not a rush to action. Action wasn't really part of it, but it was a preparation for action. It was what was alive that could act if there was something in front of me that needed action and care and support.

So to learn this uncomplicated form of compassion and to meditate with it, and let it grow and settle and be with it fully... and know that we're looking for a way of being at ease from a deep sense of ease. Now, all this is not easy what I'm saying. Of course, it could be that our compassion is not uncomplicated yet, but this is where just breathing with the way it is, with how it is complicated, and maybe this relaxing and settling too is a relaxing of the complications, of the reactivity, of how we're closed or resistant, or where we are alarmed or afraid, or where we feel guilt or anger, or where we get caught by the sense of responsibility and obligation that we have to do something now. We can't just sit here and meditate. There's all kinds of ways that we feel overwhelmed, it's too much the suffering of the world. So to be very compassionate, caring for these reactions, caring for these complications we add. Do that simply, breathe with it. Relax on the exhale and come back. Find the place inside, or the way it is for you, where it can be as simple as possible.

Sometimes it's helpful to bring to mind a scenario, a person where it evokes compassion for you, and maybe a friend who is having a hard time, but you know it's difficult. You know that they're a little bit suffering, but you're also confident they'll find their way. They are finding their way. You see that they're working well with it. So nothing's required from you. In fact, the friend might not even appreciate you coming to help them or fix them. But maybe the friend just wants to know that your friendship involves an uncomplicated compassion, that you care kindly and for their well-being, but they don't want you to do anything. So something is uncomplicated. Think of a scenario or something in your life that helps you find in that situation this uncomplicated compassion.

It could also be something that you imagine, you know, like yesterday, imagining a little animal that's afraid or injured and taking it to the vet. And you know, it's kind of uncomplicated maybe.

So to choose simple things. Now, of course, there's great suffering in the world, and the idea is to put off compassion meditation for the great sufferings of the world and opening your heart to all of it until you're prepared, until you're ready, until you really developed a strong connection inside to this easeful compassion, simple compassion, this current of goodness that you feel buoyed by, you feel happy with to have it. It brings you happiness to have it.

Compassion doesn't have to be an unhappy thing. In its essence, compassion brings happiness.

What I'd recommend if you want to follow up on this is through the day today, three or four times, once an hour or something, maybe set a timer so you're reminded, or find some way to be reminded in a busier life. Take two minutes. If you go off to the toilet and you're by yourself, or you have to go stand in line, or you're in the car and you've parked and you don't have to rush right away, find little blocks of two minutes to sit, if you can sit down or be quiet, and see if you can do this simple compassion meditation that we did today. Breathing in, breathing out, touching into where the compassion is. As you breathe in, let it grow and expand. As you exhale, let it relax and settle into it. Expand it, relax and settle. A wonderful massage, a wonderful rhythm, and see what it does for your day to touch into it... an uncomplicated compassion.

So, thank you very much, and may your compassion meditation benefit you greatly so that you can benefit the world.