Learning To Treat Yourself With Compassion

Alison McGeown, a counsellor and psychotherapist based in Galway, and generally wonderful and metta-filled person, talks in the Galway Advertiser about the power of cultivating self compassion.

Larry Lehman, Mother and Child

The Buddha Said

Karaniya Metta Sutta (The Discourse on Loving Kindness)

This is to be done by one skilled in aims

who wants to break through to the state of peace:

Be capable, upright, & straightforward,

easy to instruct, gentle, & not conceited,

content & easy to support,

with few duties, living lightly,

with peaceful faculties, masterful,

modest, & no greed for supporters.

Do not do the slightest thing

that the wise would later censure.

Think: Happy, at rest,

may all beings be happy at heart.

Whatever beings there may be,

weak or strong, without exception,

long, large,

middling, short,

subtle, blatant,

seen & unseen,

near & far,

born & seeking birth:

May all beings be happy at heart.

Let no one deceive another

or despise anyone anywhere,

or through anger or irritation

wish for another to suffer.

As a mother would risk her life

to protect her child, her only child,

even so should one cultivate a limitless heart

with regard to all beings.

With good will for the entire cosmos,

cultivate a limitless heart:

Above, below, & all around,

unobstructed, without enmity or hate.

Whether standing, walking,

sitting, or lying down,

as long as one is alert,

one should be resolved on this mindfulness.

This is called a sublime abiding

here & now.

Not taken with views,

but virtuous & consummate in vision,

having subdued desire for sensual pleasures,

one never again

will lie in the womb.

Translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu 

Listen to a reading of the Metta Sutta here

Beginning a Metta Meditation Practice

Begin by bringing attention to yourself. By helping ourselves, by loving ourselves, by having compassion for ourselves, we learn how to give to others with knowledge and strength. 

This practice is from Sharon Salzberg's book Loving-Kindness, with minor alterations and additions.

Be creative and change it to suit you.

Sit, keep warm, drink tea, be comfortable.

Close your eyes 

Rest

Think for a while about your wish to be happy, reflect on it. Think about the good intention in your wish to be happy.

If you realise your attention has drifted to other thoughts, gently bring your attention back to reflecting on your wish to be happy. Just as you drifted off gently, allow yourself to gently return. There is no reason to scold yourself for getting distracted. Whether you drift off every minute or every 30 minutes makes no difference. This is the practice, accepting with kindness the constant flux of your experience. You can start again and again, over and over again. 

If feelings of happiness arise, allow it to. If self criticisms or self doubts arise, allow it to. Observe the conditions which limit your capacity to love yourself. Breath gently and accept whatever emotions arise. 

When you feel like it, this may be in the same sitting or you might want to wait until a later sitting, reflect upon a quality you like about yourself for a while. Again, observe whatever arises and return from distractions with kindness.

For another while, in the same sitting or later, call to mind something you have done or said that you feel was a good or kind action. As with above, observe and return gently from distractions.


So the three parts of this meditation practice are:
1. Reflect on your wish to be happy
2. Reflect upon a quality that you like about yourself
3. Reflect upon something you have done or said that you feel was a kind action

DO METTA!

The Buddha Said

The Pali Canon claims these are the benefits of practicing metta meditation:

1. You will sleep easily

2. You will wake easily

3. You will have pleasant dreams

4. People will love you

5. Devas [divinities] and animals will love you

6. Devas will protect you

7. External dangers will not harm you

8. Your face will be radiant 

9. Your mind will be serene

10. You will die unconfused

11. You will be reborn in happy realms

Love After Love

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott

Start Here

This blog is about METTA. For me, metta is curiosity; it is openness, it is honesty, creativity, compassion, it is refusing to possess or be possessed, it is transformation and acceptance both at once, it is knowledge; it is the constant arising and passing away of heat, pain, passion, shivering cold, the future, numbness, anger, fizziness, care, loss, gas, fear, fuming rage, boredom, muscles tremoring, memory, strength, nausea, tingling, sleep, happiness and sadness, lust; it is the ebb and the flow, it is union, it is equality, action, it is sitting still, integrity, remorse, it is connection, joy and empathy. JOY! It is what love would be if only we knew how to love.