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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