A Bodhisattva Meditation for Cultivating Loving Compassion for the Self
by LaSara Firefox, MPNLP, www.lasarafirefox.com
a
Gate gate, para gate, parasam gate, bodhi svaha.
The one responsibility of the bodhisattva is to not cause suffering.
The one commitment of the bodhisattva is to love all beings pervading space and time, regardless of any beings ability to return, or even receive, that love.
We've all been in situations where we have offered love to someone unwilling to return that love - for instance, we still love our child, even when in the a rage of differentiation she yells, "I hate you, mom!". We often call this unconditional love.
Those of you who have made a practice of cultivating compassion have probably intentionally cultivated love for someone who has withdrawn their love, or someone who doesn't agree with out beliefs or lifestyle, and therefore, at least on a hypothetical level, does not want your love. These maybe political or historical figures. Or they may be estranged family.
My largest break through in the depth and breadth of this commitment was when I realized that *I* was one of those beings pervading time and space, that deserved the love of my bodhisattva self, even when I was incapable of returning, or even receiving that love.
That it was the responsibility of my awakened self to address suffering, and the root of suffering, in my own life. It was my commitment, in my awakened heart, to cultivate loving compassion for my "imperfect" self - the one that was attaching to, and therefore being the cause of, my own suffering.
Sound tricky? Well, it is, and it isn't.
This is a great practice for days when your heart feels stuck or bruised, you're feeling a lack of self-love, or are feeling unable to forgive yourself for some past or present participation in the creation of suffering; that of yourself or another.
The ironic part of holding on to the guilt of being a cause of suffering, is that we continue to cause suffering through our attachment to the guilt!
It is not the negative emotion that causes the suffering. Nor is it the act that caused the suffering itself - whatever that act may be - that causes the suffering. The attachment to the suffering, in any form, is the root of the cause of suffering.
Truly, attachment to joy or pleasure, or any emotional state, is the root of the cause of suffering, but addressing that is a practice for another essay.
The way I've come to see it, the true work of the bodhisattva is to release ourselves from suffering, and the attachment to suffering. To engender the attitudes of enlightenment, and slowly, overtime, become proficient; and to do this work for the benefit of all beings.
Here's the practice, in three easy (or sometimes, not so easy) parts.
Part I: Two Ways of Generating Pure, Compassionate Love
1. Commit to the thought of not being the cause of suffering to yourself, or others. Release attachment to any suffering that has been caused in the past, by you or any being, or may be caused in the future. Release attachment to suffering itself.
a. Commit to pure, compassionate love for all beings pervading time and space. Start generating this love by feeling it in your body, if possible, and then growing that love with each breath.
b. Some times this approach may be out of reach, so instead, imagine some being you love easily - your child, your pet, your beloved, your best friend - enveloped in a soft, glowing bubble of your compassionate love for them. Breath by breath, grow this love until it fills your whole sense of time and space.
Part II: Recognize That You Are a Being That Deserves Your Love, Whether You Can Return, Or Even Accept, That Love.
1. Once you have filled all of time and space with your love, recognize that you are a being already released from suffering. That you are enveloped in your own pure, compassionate love. And in being filled and surrounded by your compassion, you are surrounded by the impartial, unconditional, compassionate love of all time and space.
There is no separation between You - the bodhisattva, that awakened being generating this love - and you, the self sitting and being held in it, regardless of your ability to return, or receive, that pure love. That love unattached to anything you think you have been, or think you may be. Anything you think you have done, or think you will do.
2. Allow that pure compassion, unattached to any outcome or past experience, to hold you securely in the awareness that you are already fully present. Fully perfect. Fully awake. Fully free from suffering, and the attachment to suffering.
Part III: Release Attachment to the Practise Itself
1. Stay in this state for as long as you are able, without clinging to it. Attachment to joy, pleasure, or comfort are also the root of suffering. Be present, not attached.
2. If you lose your way in the practice, return to the place in the practice where you became distracted. Perhaps there is some work there to move through. Or, perhaps you just got distracted. Or, perhaps there is a part of you that is unwilling to receive that love that is being generated.
Don't attach! Move fluidly to the points of the exercise that are within reach, and continue working towards compassionate love for all beings.
3. If tears come, let them come. And let them go. If laughter comes, let it come, and let it go. If euphoria comes, let is also go. If pain comes, let it arise, and release. Let yourself be exactly as you are, exactly where you are.
Cultivate compassion for every emotion that arises, and then release it.
4. Don't forget to breathe.
May this act, and all acts, be dedicated to the liberation and awakening of all beings. Bodhi svaha.
I consecrate these works, and all works, to the unfolding of self-awareness. May this act serve me as it serves all beings, through the revelation of awareness. May my increasing awakening to presence serve to bring awareness of presence to all beings throughout space and time. So it is.
About the Author:
LaSara Firefox, MPNLP, is a coach, author, educator, and game-designer. Her latest project, Gratitude Games, has been featured in international media. LaSara helps her clients find balance in their lives, and alignment with their personal and family-held values. She teaches and coaches internationally.
LaSara’s primary certification is in Neuro-Linguistic Programming/Patterning (NLP); a discipline that uses language and neurology - and the relationship between the two - to create resilience, healing, and positive, lasting change.
LaSara is mom to two amazing daughters, and wife to an outstanding man. She and her family live in California. To learn more, visit http://www.lasarafirefox.com.
Showing posts with label heart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label heart. Show all posts
Monday, May 18, 2009
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
An Ecstatic Presence Empowerment: Three Steps to Engaged Gratitude
by LaSara FireFox, www.lasarafirefox.com
Do you want to increase the peace in your life? Do you want more love, more joy, more presence? Do you want to take an active part in becoming the actual manifestation of "heaven on earth"?
The most revolutionary thing we can do to increase the peace is to LIVE IT. As Gandhi said, "there is no way to peace. Peace is the way." The more we practice peace, the more peace becomes our lives. We can live peace in every moment.
I'm not talking about some abstraction, or idea of peace. Nor am I speaking of the absence of conflict. Even in the midst of conflict, we can BE peace.
Engaged Gratitude practice, in three steps:
1: Invoke and Embody The Presence of Love
Make love real. Agapic love. The big, big love that lives at the center of all things. The flame that burns "in every heart of man, and in the core of every star." How to realize, or remember, this love, you may ask. The practices are many, the goal one. Gratitude practice, asking powerful questions, inducing positive states, prayer and meditation are all ways to invoke love.
Wherever we are, whatever we are doing, we can invoke and embody the presence of love. In my "playshop" called Being The Presence of Love, I offer not only many practices to make this practice accessible, but also offer the template of experiencing being present in love, so that you have a reliable, physiological anchor that will make it easy to access the power of Divine Love in any moment.
For now, an easy way to manifest the presence of love is to think of something that makes you feel a love beyond limits, unconditional, eternal. The perfect love. I find this love at the heart of deep prayer, in the arms of my beloved, sharing a smile with my child.
Think about it, and then feel it. Ahhhh. There it is. Now feel it even more. Let your heart, your whole being, glow with this love.
Of course, invoking the presence of love is only step one.
2: Grow Your Gratitude!
Gratitude heals the heart. This is true on multiple levels. Of course it makes sense on the metaphorical level - how could becoming grateful NOT heal a broken heart? When we experience loss, healing comes from realizing that the sum total of the impact of any experience was for the best. When we get this, it becomes easy to be grateful for the experiences we encounter.
In addition to the metaphorical, gratitude also heals the actual physiology of your heart. This is wonderful, and true! Gratitude practice is recommended as part of many heart-surgery and heart disease recovery programs. How does it work? Gratitude is the antidote for stress, anger, anxiety and many other ills. Stress, of course, is a huge contributor to both heart disease and heart attack.
Gratitude offers a rest to our physiological systems. For instance, say you're standing in line at the grocery store, and the people in front of you are taking forever. You may be late getting to where ever you're going, but is stressing out about it going to change the fact that you're stuck in line? Not a chance!
The one thing you CAN change is how you are experiencing the moment. So, instead of obsessing about your situation, take the time and cultivate gratitude. Even starting small will work. You can be grateful that you have the money to buy food. You can be grateful that you have a chance to read those amazing headlines on the trashy mag in the rack. I get really simple with it, and remember to be grateful to have a moment to be in stillness and silence. (Standing in line is a perfect opportunity for a moment of meditation.)
This choice is affecting you, and as a true believer in systems theory, I would say that is affects all that is. Your stress is not just your stress - it may very well affect the whole system in some subtle way. Your gratitude is the same way. As you choose to relax instead of stress, the ripples spread. Your interaction with the cashier is going to be different. His interaction with the next person in line may well be different, too.
On the personal level alone, though, the benefits are too many to mention. Gratitude is SO much nicer to hold in our cells than the alternative.
Another wonderful bonus is that because our minds sort for, and we notice, that which we expect, when we start practicing gratitude, we start noticing more and more to be grateful for. Gratitude practice, just like any other practice, becomes easier the more you do it!
3: Make Love a Verb; Gratitude in Action!
Love and gratitude become more powerful by far, when put into engaged action. Engagement is the final step of this process. Take your love and DO something with it. That something might be sitting in prayer, but think of how much more prayer you'd bring if you were to start hosting a weekly group prayer night at your home.
When you find gratitude for the food on your table, let it remind you that you can do your part to reduce suffering by offering food to those in need. Make a meal, box it up, and offer it to a local homeless person you have seen around.
While you're at it, have a conversation with this person.
At the Season for Nonviolence gathering a while back, Dr. Arun Gandhi pointed out that compassion is different from pity. I paraphrase the esteemed man here; pity offers the food and hopes the person will walk away with it. Compassion offers the food, asks the person how they ended up on the streets, witnesses the story, and does it's part to cause an end to the reasons that this person and others end up without.
Namaste. We are one. We are none. Consider yourself empowered!
Do you want to increase the peace in your life? Do you want more love, more joy, more presence? Do you want to take an active part in becoming the actual manifestation of "heaven on earth"?
The most revolutionary thing we can do to increase the peace is to LIVE IT. As Gandhi said, "there is no way to peace. Peace is the way." The more we practice peace, the more peace becomes our lives. We can live peace in every moment.
I'm not talking about some abstraction, or idea of peace. Nor am I speaking of the absence of conflict. Even in the midst of conflict, we can BE peace.
Engaged Gratitude practice, in three steps:
1: Invoke and Embody The Presence of Love
Make love real. Agapic love. The big, big love that lives at the center of all things. The flame that burns "in every heart of man, and in the core of every star." How to realize, or remember, this love, you may ask. The practices are many, the goal one. Gratitude practice, asking powerful questions, inducing positive states, prayer and meditation are all ways to invoke love.
Wherever we are, whatever we are doing, we can invoke and embody the presence of love. In my "playshop" called Being The Presence of Love, I offer not only many practices to make this practice accessible, but also offer the template of experiencing being present in love, so that you have a reliable, physiological anchor that will make it easy to access the power of Divine Love in any moment.
For now, an easy way to manifest the presence of love is to think of something that makes you feel a love beyond limits, unconditional, eternal. The perfect love. I find this love at the heart of deep prayer, in the arms of my beloved, sharing a smile with my child.
Think about it, and then feel it. Ahhhh. There it is. Now feel it even more. Let your heart, your whole being, glow with this love.
Of course, invoking the presence of love is only step one.
2: Grow Your Gratitude!
Gratitude heals the heart. This is true on multiple levels. Of course it makes sense on the metaphorical level - how could becoming grateful NOT heal a broken heart? When we experience loss, healing comes from realizing that the sum total of the impact of any experience was for the best. When we get this, it becomes easy to be grateful for the experiences we encounter.
In addition to the metaphorical, gratitude also heals the actual physiology of your heart. This is wonderful, and true! Gratitude practice is recommended as part of many heart-surgery and heart disease recovery programs. How does it work? Gratitude is the antidote for stress, anger, anxiety and many other ills. Stress, of course, is a huge contributor to both heart disease and heart attack.
Gratitude offers a rest to our physiological systems. For instance, say you're standing in line at the grocery store, and the people in front of you are taking forever. You may be late getting to where ever you're going, but is stressing out about it going to change the fact that you're stuck in line? Not a chance!
The one thing you CAN change is how you are experiencing the moment. So, instead of obsessing about your situation, take the time and cultivate gratitude. Even starting small will work. You can be grateful that you have the money to buy food. You can be grateful that you have a chance to read those amazing headlines on the trashy mag in the rack. I get really simple with it, and remember to be grateful to have a moment to be in stillness and silence. (Standing in line is a perfect opportunity for a moment of meditation.)
This choice is affecting you, and as a true believer in systems theory, I would say that is affects all that is. Your stress is not just your stress - it may very well affect the whole system in some subtle way. Your gratitude is the same way. As you choose to relax instead of stress, the ripples spread. Your interaction with the cashier is going to be different. His interaction with the next person in line may well be different, too.
On the personal level alone, though, the benefits are too many to mention. Gratitude is SO much nicer to hold in our cells than the alternative.
Another wonderful bonus is that because our minds sort for, and we notice, that which we expect, when we start practicing gratitude, we start noticing more and more to be grateful for. Gratitude practice, just like any other practice, becomes easier the more you do it!
3: Make Love a Verb; Gratitude in Action!
Love and gratitude become more powerful by far, when put into engaged action. Engagement is the final step of this process. Take your love and DO something with it. That something might be sitting in prayer, but think of how much more prayer you'd bring if you were to start hosting a weekly group prayer night at your home.
When you find gratitude for the food on your table, let it remind you that you can do your part to reduce suffering by offering food to those in need. Make a meal, box it up, and offer it to a local homeless person you have seen around.
While you're at it, have a conversation with this person.
At the Season for Nonviolence gathering a while back, Dr. Arun Gandhi pointed out that compassion is different from pity. I paraphrase the esteemed man here; pity offers the food and hopes the person will walk away with it. Compassion offers the food, asks the person how they ended up on the streets, witnesses the story, and does it's part to cause an end to the reasons that this person and others end up without.
Namaste. We are one. We are none. Consider yourself empowered!
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