Loving Kindness and Meditation
When we start to meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, we often think that somehow we’re going to improve, which is a subtle aggression against who we really are. It’s a bit like saying, “If I jog, I’ll be a much better person.” “If I had a nicer house, I’d be a better person.” “If I could meditate and calm down, I’d be a better person.” Or the scenario may be that we find fault with others. We might say, “If it weren’t for my husband, I’d have a perfect marriage.” “If it weren’t for the fact that my boss and I can’t get on, my job would be just great.” And, “If it weren’t for my mind, my meditation would be excellent.”
But loving-kindness—maitri—toward ourselves doesn’t mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy, we can still be angry. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is your or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That’s what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.
Curiosity involves being gentle, precise, and open – actually being able to let go and open. Gentleness is a sense of good-heartedness toward ourselves. Precision is being able to see clearly, not being afraid to see what’s really there. Openness is being able to let go and to open. When you come to have this kind of honesty, gentleness, and good-heartedness, combined with clarity about yourself, there’s no obstacle to feeling loving-kindness for others as well.
By Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty
Meditation Alone is Not Enough
“Across the vast spectrum of spiritual traditions, different methods and tools are offered as a means to reach inner awakening. But in all mature schools of enlightenment, the essence of an adept’s effort remains the practice of meditation. Meditation, in the broadest sense of the term, denotes the effort of consciousness to maintain a focus on the self. For our meditation to be real, this internal concentration of energy and consciousness must be based on self-knowledge and a certain degree of awakening, because in their absence, we cannot relate to the self and remain confined to the plane of forgetfulness. We need to sensitively practice self-enquiry in order to turn consciousness back to its source, just as we need to practice meditation to support our self-enquiry, so that our awakened experience deepens and becomes permanent.”
