To practice the dharma is to cultivate wisdom and compassion. We cultivate wisdom via moment-to-moment awareness. Insight meditation (vipassana) cultivates wisdom. In this blog I will share some ways to cultivate compassion.
The awakening of the mind and heart is sometimes referred to in Sanskrit as bodhicitta. Bodhi means awakened; citta means mind, but in Pali the term mind includes the heart as well.
To cultivate compassion we cultivate the heart. The following are five practices that cultivate the heart.
· Forgiveness
The first step to forgiveness is to recognize when I feel resentment—or any form of non-forgiveness. It is helpful to periodically take a personal “forgiveness inventory” to see if you are holding resentment toward anyone or anything.
Then see if you want to forgive. Forgiveness must be a clear choice—not an obligation. And it is okay if you are not ready to forgive. If you do choose forgiveness then see if you can drop the mind’s story about what happened and then feel the resentment in your body. Attachment to our story diverts our attention away from the direct experience of the body.
Be patient; be persistent; it take as long as it takes. The resentment that we feel often has roots in the past-- in our personal history---and it may take time for all of the “tendrils” to be uprooted and dissolved.
· Kindness
One way to cultivate kindness is to remember that the word kindness has its origin in the word kin- which means family. If we see everyone as our brother or sister then it’s natural to be kind.
We cultivate kindness by meeting every person or situation with the question, “How can I help?” This is not about rescuing or fixing; and it’s not about seeking some return favor—it’s simply living in kindness as a spiritual practice.
A practice of loving-kindness, known as metta, is a common Buddhist practice. Here, we envision a series of persons standing before us--ranging from our best friend to our worst enemy, and several in between these two extremes. In our minds-eye we bless each person with phrases such as, “May you be well and happy.” (Be sure to include yourself.) We conclude each phrase with this same wish for all beings.
· Gratitude
Gratitude, as a spiritual practice, begins by simply appreciating all that is in your life. Appreciating friends, family, freedom, health etc. Gratitude opens the heart and values the preciousness of human life—and of all life.
One form of practice is to periodically list ten things for which you feel grateful. Keep each list and see if you can continue the practice without repeating anything from the prior list. You will then live each moment in a growing awareness of gratitude.
Generosity
In Pali, the word dana means generosity, which is a foundational Buddhist practice. There are no limits to the number of ways to practice generosity. We can give of our time and our talents, as well as of our money or possessions. The practice is to meet each person and each situation in your life with the silent question “What can I give?” Once gain, the giving must be with no thought of return.
· Compassion
Compassion literally means “to suffer with.” It means to fully open your heart to the suffering of others—as well as to your own. True compassion is not pity and it has no story--no victim story and no resentment and no demand that things be other than as they are.
A Buddhist practice that embodies this is the practice of Tong-Len. This involves sitting with the awareness of some situation of suffering—individual or collective; and then breathing this suffering into your heart.
In this practice, the heart is seen as a cauldron or vessel where all suffering is transmuted into peace, love and the energy of healing. Some envision the suffering as a dark smoke which enters the heart with the in-breath and emerges as light and positive energy with each out-breath.
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I’ll close with a brief story about Maha Ghosananda, who was considered the Gandhi of Cambodia.
The setting is a UN refugee camp on the border of Cambodia in the later years of the Khmer Rouge genocide: the infamous “killing fields” where nearly two million people died at the hands of the dictator Pol Pot. This particular camp had 50,000 people crammed together on a horrible, hot, dry rice plain, surrounded by barbed wire-- and it was the camp that had the most underground Khmer Rouge in it.
Ghosananda asked if he could build a Buddhist temple in the central square--just a simple bamboo room and a platform. The UN said OK. So he and some helpers got materials together, built this temple, and then invited everyone to come. The Khmer Rouge underground said, ‘If anyone goes to this temple, when we get back in Cambodia “you will be shot.”
So he didn’t know if anyone would come. He went around the camp and rang a bell that morning, just as you would ring a temple bell ….and 25,000 people gathered and filled the square. Maha Ghosananda got up on this little platform— and looked out at this sea of people. They hadn’t seen a monk in 10 years. (95 percent of the monks in the country were executed, all intellectuals were killed and 19 of the 20 people in Ghosananda’s own family were killed) The faces of trauma and shock and loss were everywhere—what could he say?
He said nothing for a long time. The he began to chant a simple chant that is one of the first verses of the Buddhist teachings. It goes, “Hatred never ceases by hatred, but by love alone is healed.” He chanted it over and over again: Hatred never ceases by hatred, but by love alone is healed. Slowly the voices began to pick up and chant with him….and pretty soon 25,000 people were singing this and weeping… because it had been 10 years since they had heard the Dharma, the Truth, and the Way.
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