Wednesday, May 2, 2012

The Breath of Love - Forgiveness & Walking Meditation

The Breath of Love
Author
Most Venerable Bhante Vimalaramsi Mahàthera


3
Forgiveness Meditation
A great tool for life’s little toolbox!


Forgiveness Meditation can be a useful tool. It is a part of Loving-
kindness Meditation. It can help open the heart and mind if there
seems to be any blockage in the beginning of your practice.
Forgiveness  Meditation  can  be  used  when  someone  dies  and
there  seems  to  be  a  great  overwhelming  grief.  It  helps  relieve
depression  very  much  and  can  rebalance  a  person.  Any
accompanying  suffering  that  might  follow  any  catastrophic
event can be helped by forgiveness work
One thing about Loving-kindness Meditation is that you cannot
give what you do not have. We spend more time with ourselves
then anyone else while we are alive and sometimes we need to
forgive and love ourselves before we can give anything to others.
Forgiveness can help with many other memories from the past
that  you  might  be  attached  and  which  can  be  blocking  your
progress in the Loving-kindness Meditation.
Therefore, the Forgiveness Meditation is a way of opening yourself
up to the possibilities of true healing so that you can send love to
yourself and to others. This is a soft gentle way of learning how to
lovingly-accept whatever arises and to leave it be, without trying to
control it with thoughts.
Sometimes  in  our  lives  there  can  be  a  feeling  of  letting  someone
down  by  not  doing  enough  to  help  them.  Of  course,  this  is  just
mind  saying  “I  should’ve  been  better;  I  could’ve  done  better;  I
would’ve done better; I failed and I am not worthy and because of
that I should suffer even more”.
Forgiveness Meditation is not ever to be used as a club to beat away
a feeling of sadness, anger, frustration, or any other kind of feeling.
Once  again,  the  Forgiveness  Meditation  is  a  soft  gentle  way  of
learning how to lovingly-accept whatever arises and to leave it be,


without trying to control it with your thoughts.
Of course, these unwholesome blaming kinds of thoughts and feelings
don’t have anything to do with reality. We don’t need to blame ourselves
for our friends or a family member’s decision to take their own life, to
die, or to dive into depression, anxiety, or anger. It is always a difficult
situation to have to cope with such circumstances and there are a few
things that you can do for yourself and others around you in the case of
a death or suicide. This can help the deceased person as well.
Forgiveness Meditation Instructions
This meditation is done by sitting down and beginning the process
of forgiveness by forgiving yourself for:
1] not understanding,
2] for making mistakes,
3] for causing pain to myself or anyone else,
4] for not acting the way I should have acted.
The way you do this practice is by first forgiving yourself. This is
done by taking each of these four statements, one at a time, such
as “I forgive myself for not understanding” and saying it over and
over again.
You then place that feeling of forgiveness in your heart and radiate
that feeling of soft acceptance to yourself.
The  thing  is,  mind  is  tricky  and  you  will  sometimes  have  huge
resistance  to  forgiving  yourself.  You  will  come  up  with  all  kinds
of thoughts to distract or blame yourself. But when you see mind
taking off and thinking unwholesome things, then gently 6R those
thoughts and feelings, while gently redirecting your attention back
to forgiving yourself again.


Sit with that feeling of loving-acceptance for as long as it lasts.
Then,  make  the  statement  again  to  help  the  loving-acceptance
last even longer.
Mind will naturally have a lot of “yes, but... yes, but... yes, but…”
interruptions and try to distract you and condemn you and make
you feel guilty or sad or angry or whatever it wants to do.
This  is  where  patience  needs  to  be  cultivated.  Softly  allow  those
distracting  (hindrances)  to  be  there  and  then  gently  bring  your
attention  back  to  forgiving  yourself.  Do  this  softly  with  the  6R’s
practice cycle.
Of course your mind will naturally go to the person who died or
committed  suicide.  When  that  happens  then  softly,  gently,  start
forgiving  them  for  1]  not  understanding,  or  2]  making  mistakes,
or 3] for causing pain and suffering to themselves and to you, or 4]
for not acting in the way they should have acted. Forgive them for
everything.
See them in your mind’s eye and look into their eyes and forgive
them. Keep repeating one of these statements (whichever one that
seems most appropriate at the time), or you can make up your own
statement of forgiveness if it seems right.
It is best not to get involved with a story with that person in your
own mind. It is best to forgive them by using the same statement
over and over again. “I forgive you for _______.”
Then, place that forgiveness into your heart with the person who died
and stay with that feeling or forgiveness for as long as it lasts. At first
this may not be for very long, to be sure, so, whenever mind becomes
distracted, softly, gently, 6R that distraction and start over again.


After  a  period  of  time  (during  that  sitting),  then  change  things
around and hear that person forgiving you for _______. Still look
into  their  eyes  and  hear  them  say  “I  forgive  you  too.  I  really  do
forgive you”.
Completing the Circle
This Forgiveness Meditation starts by forgiving yourself, forgiving
another person, and then, you hear them forgive you too. This is a
complete circle.
This practice will eventually make things change in your mind so
there will not be any guilt, frustration, sadness, anger, or making
excuses for making mistakes and then feeling hard about yourself.
Making  excuses  about  anything  means  that  one  doesn’t  take
responsibility for their own actions and this is a subtle attachment
to be forgiven and let go of also.
There will develop a loving-acceptance and a true feeling of love
toward  that  person  who  caused  so  much  pain.  The  pain  will
diminish until there is only a memory of that person without any
experience of grief.
Now,  this  is  the  sitting  meditation,  but,  there  is  still  more  to  the
meditation and that is to forgive everything and everybody, all of
the time.
Expanding Forgiveness into Your Life
You can use forgiveness as your only object of meditation along with
smiling. Forgive yourself for bumping into something or, if cooking,
for cutting yourself or burning yourself or making mistakes. 
Put forgiveness into everything all of the time!


Forgive thoughts for distracting you. Forgive others for distracting
you.  In  short  forgive  everything  all  of  the  time.  When  walking
from  one  place  to  another,  forgive  yourself  and/or  others.  Any
tiny  distraction,  forgive  it.  Forgive  yourself  for  not  remembering.
Forgive yourself for making mistakes. Forgive every thought, every
memory. Forgive every pain that arises. 6R and forgive ALL OF THE
TIME!!! If you forget to forgive something, then forgive yourself for
forgetting! Then, start again.
Do  you  see  what  I  mean?  It  may  take  some  time  before  mind
begins  to  let  go  of  this  attachment,  but,  patience  leads  to Nibbàna
(eventually)!
  I  have  helped  people  in  this  type  of  situation  and  for  some  of
them it has taken as long as one year of doing nothing else but the
Forgiveness  Meditation  before  they  finally  let  go  of  the  suffering
and pain. This doesn’t mean that they still didn’t have the memories
of what happened. They did. But they could reflect and remember
without having any pain or suffering arise anymore. Therein lies
the true healing!
So please, if you want to do this type of meditation for yourself, it
would be best to get in touch with me, and stay in touch at least for
a little while so I can help you to stay on the path and get it firmly
going.
Grief  is  very  strange  stuff  because  it  will  come  up  for  periods  of
time, even six months or a year after the event took place, and strong
sadness, frustration, anger etc can arise for no apparent reason. This
is why it is necessary to keep this practice going for quite some time
so the attachments will eventually let go.


4
Walking Meditation
To accompany Breath, Loving-kindness,
or Forgiveness practices.


Walking Meditation Instructions
First of all, when you practice the TWIM approach to meditation,
Walking Meditation is specifically used for exercise and it is to
be done in between your sitting meditation sessions to keep your
blood flowing so you have good energy for your investigation.
The first thing is that it’s very important to remember:
SMILE all the time while you walk!
Stay with your object of meditation the entire time!
Do not put your attention on your feet!
Remember you are doing this for exercise
and walk at a normal pace.
Don’t look around; keep your eyes in front of you.
Stay with your object of meditation the entire time you are walking.
Keep your eyes down to the ground about 6 feet in front of you
while  you  walk.  Do  not  look  around  you  with  any  particular
interest or take a nature hike and forget your meditation.
Now,  one  thing  that  happens  during  retreats,  and  it’s  very
frustrating to me, but I can’t get people to stop doing it, is that
you’ll  be  sitting  on  the  floor  and  you’ll  say  to  yourself,  “Well,
I’m uncomfortable.” It may have been 45 minutes or an hour or
something like that and then, you suddenly get up off the floor,
and sit in a chair.
 If you get up from the floor and just go to a chair and sit, what
happens is that your mind starts to dull out because you haven’t
got  your  circulation  going  so  well.  So,  don’t  do  that!  Instead,
please get up and begin walking.
The Walking Meditation is every bit as important as your sitting


meditation. You don’t have to do the Walking Meditation super
slowly,  you  can  walk  at  a  normal  pace.  Just  remember  to  stay
with  your  object  of  meditation  AND  relaxing  all  the  time.
Consider  this  as  practice  for  continuing  the  meditation  as  you
move around in your daily life.
Now,  at  first  the  Walking  Meditation  is  going  to  be  somewhat
difficult  because  you’re  not  used  to  it.  In  life  you  are  used  to
walking around or going from here over to there. You’re used to
thinking this and thinking that and ho-humming around.
This Walking Meditation is a very important aspect to training
that  helps  to  break  old  habits  of  thinking  instead  of  radiating
Loving-kindness  while  you’re  moving  in  life.  With  this  kind
of  walking  you  want  to  keep  your  meditation  going  on  your
spiritual friend from the time of your sitting, as you are getting
up, and going outside to walk or, if you are using another object
of meditation, you want to keep this going.
Walk no less than 15 minutes after 30 minutes of sitting meditation.
When  your  walking  is  good,  walk  longer.  You  can  walk  up  to
45 minutes. That is the maximum time. I don’t think any longer
than that is really useful because you get tired after that.
After you do your walking with your spiritual friend or on the
breath, as the case may be, come in, sit down again and continue
to do more sitting meditation.
Please understand that it is best that you sit no less, and this is
sitting, not just sitting and walking—just sitting—no less than 6
hours a day during retreat times. Sit for no less than 30 minutes
each time you sit and sit longer if you have a good sitting.

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