meditation on compassion – Toby Ouvry Meditation

“If you want to develop your compassion and caring, one of the best places to begin is by improving the quality of your attention”

Dear Integral Meditators,This week’s article focuses on a simple, profound technique for developing compassion in a way that doesn’t require a lot of effort!
The Tuesday and Wednesday evening meditation classes will be on the subject of compassion, if you fancy coming along!

In the spirit of compassion,

Toby

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Lazy compassion (compassion & care through awareness)

I was doing mindfulness coaching with some executives recently. At one point in the session I asked them to complete the sentence ‘Compassion to me means…’ a number of the replies went something like this:

Listening more
Being more empathetic
Paying attention to the needs of others
Caring
Taking the time to understand

If you look at all the way in which they completed the sentence, you can see that all of them are simply ways of directing awareness to ourself or others:

Listening more begins by paying attention to others, or to ourself
Being empathetic to people’s needs follows from awareness
Caring and understanding comes quite naturally from focusing mindfully on a person or situation

From this we can see that if we want to develop our compassion and caring, all we need to do is practice being more mindfully aware, and increasing the quality of our attention. You can understand this from your own experience; if you recall the last time you really felt that someone was extending their compassion to you, you’ll see that much of that experience came from the feeling that they were paying you attention fully, in a way that made you feel understood and valued.
So ‘lazy compassion’ comes from simply recognizing that all you need to do to begin developing and increasing your compassion is to pay attention; to yourself, to others, to your environment. When you practice non-judgmental awareness of any of these things, the warmth of your own human compassion will begin to extend quite naturally to your objects of attention.

Sky and sun
Think of your awareness as being like the space of the sky, and your compassion like the rays of the sun. Just bring your sky-like awareness to people and things, and then let the sunlight rays of your natural compassion follow the direction of your attention. In the Buddhist teachings where I first learned meditation your natural compassion was called ‘Buddha nature’; whenever our minds become clear and unclouded our natural compassion begins to shine out.

Practicing
Bring your attention to your body, sustain gentle non-judgmental awareness upon the body for a short while. Recognize that all you need to do to extend compassion to your body is to bring your attention to it; caring and compassion will follow that awareness. Do the same with your mind and emotions. Then:

Extend it out to include significant others in your life, then perhaps to people you don’t know or even have a difficult relationship with.
Extend your awareness to aspects of your environment, to the non-human creatures that are there. Make the circle of your compassion as large as you like!

In your daily life, whomever you are paying (mindful) attention to, allow your compassion to connect with them through the simple act of awareness.

Article © Toby Ouvry 2019, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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Monday 6.30-7.20 & Wednesday 12.30-1.30 – Integral Meditation classes at Space2B on Stanley Street

Saturday mornings 9-10.15am – Qi Gong workout and meditation class

Tuesday 21st&22nd May – Wesak meditation on compassion

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Dear Integral Meditators,

I hope you are enjoying the run up to the Easter weekend, I’m currently in the process of planning the classes and workshops for the last couple of weeks in April, which will be about developing an integral perspective on meditation as a practice for physical, mental and spiritual healing, I should have the details ready by next week…

In the meantime this weeks article focuses on a simple method for developing compassion by deriving it directly from our own experience of suffering, I hope you enjoy it!

Yours in the spirit of the compassionate heart,

Toby

Building Your Compassion and Reducing Your Own Suffering, Everyday

There is a saying that I think comes from the Christian contemplative tradition that goes something like “suffering is the first grace”. One of the things meant by this is that oftentimes it is our suffering that compels us to look deeper into our life for answers. Our pain encourages us to get onto some kind of spiritual, creative or developmental path. If we had not had that pain, we would never get off our developmental ass and would simply remain living a predominantly unconscious life of habit and conformity.
The other opportunity that our suffering gives us is to develop empathy and compassion for those around us who have similar sufferings. Our own specific sufferings can thus act as windows of compassion and care for others if we use them in an appropriate way.

The usual pattern of suffering and pain
Usually our suffering and pain causes us to focus on ourself and shut others out. For example if we are feeling tired and overwhelmed, the instinct can be to cut ourself off from people, and dwell upon our own misery. This is understandable, but very often the very act of shutting ourselves into our own small world further magnifies the pain and makes it even more difficult to deal with and get out of, thus locking us in a cycle or pattern of suffering; suffering leads to a small world intensely focused on ourself, which in turn leads to more suffering and so forth…

Reversing this pattern
Whenever we are suffering for whatever reason, we can take at least a little time in our day to reflect on how our pain actually gives us a lot of common ground with others experiencing the same pain, and deliberately extend a mind of care and compassion toward these people. This expands our mind, makes us less self focused, and as a result of this bigger mind and less intense focus on self we in turn experience our own suffering less intensely. So, we create a win-win pattern.
For example; rather than causing our own broken heart to cause us to descend into a microcosm of self-oriented misery, instead we use our relational pain to develop empathy with and compassion for others in difficult relationship circumstances, thus reducing our own pain as well as cultivating a kinder heart/bigger mind within ourself.

Compassionate intention helps
Even regularly introducing a compassionate intention to your mind like this for short periods of time will start changing what you do and how you experience the world. As well as reducing your pain, you may find that your compassionate intention actually starts to change your actions in a tangible way for the better.

One Minute Mindfulness
For those that wise to work with this practice over the week:

Take a period of 1-3 minutes
Bring to mind an experience of suffering or pain that you personally are going through
Reflect on all the other people in the world (both those you know and those you don’t personally know) who are experiencing similar suffering right now. Allow yourself to empathize with them, and gently develop the thought or wish that they find answers and relief from their pain. Focus on this compassionate intention for a short while.
Allow this compassionate intention to inform the rest of your daily activities.

© Toby Ouvry 2013, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com