The Breath of Love
Author
Most Venerable Bhante Vimalaramsi Mahàthera
Radiating Love to a Spiritual Friend
After sending loving and kind thoughts to yourself for about ten
minutes, then begin sending loving and kind thoughts to your
“spiritual friend”. A “spiritual friend” is someone who, when you
think of them and their good qualities, it makes you happy.
This is a friend who is of the same sex, they are alive, and not a
member of your family. This is for right now. Later, you will be able
to send Loving-kindness to all of the members of your family. But
for this training period please choose a friend that you love and
respect.
Once you start sending Loving-kindness to your spiritual friend,
please don’t change to another person. Stay with the same spiritual
friend until you get to the third meditation stage (Jhàna). As you are
sending a sincere wish for your own happiness and then, mentally
you say, “As I wish this feeling of peace and calm (happiness, joy,
whatever) for myself, I wish this feeling for you, too. May you be
well, happy and peaceful.” Then start radiating this feeling of love
and peace to your friend. It is quite important for you to feel the
sincere wish and that you place that feeling in your heart.
Visualization
You also visualize your friend in your mind’s eye. For example, you
can visualize your friend as if they are in a photograph or you can see
them moving around as if in a movie. For some people visualizing
can be somewhat difficult because they don’t realize that one can
visualize with words as well as pictures in their mind. Saying your
friends name and using some words that help to see that person in
your mind’s eye is fine! The exact visualization doesn’t matter. But
when you see your friend, see him or her smiling and happy. This
can help to remind you to be smiling and happy too!
The visualization can be somewhat difficult. It can be cloudy, or
fuzzy, or a long distance away. It can be there for just a moment and
disappear. That’s all right. Don’t try too hard because it will give
you a headache. You want about 75% of your attention spent on
the feeling of Loving-kindness, 20% (more or less, depending on
what is happening) on making a sincere wish and feeling that wish
in your heart. This helps the feeling for your friend’s happiness to
grow. Only about 5% of your time should be spent on visualizing
your friend. As you can see, the Feeling of Loving-kindness is by far the
most important part of the meditation, and the visualization is the
least important part. But still put a little effort into the visualization.
Eventually, it will get better and easier.
Smiling
This is a smiling meditation. While you are sitting and radiating love to
your spiritual friend or to yourself, smile with your mind. Even though
your eyes are closed during the meditation, smile with your eyes. This
helps to let go of tension in your face. Put a little smile on your lips and
put a smile in your heart. Smiling is nice and most helpful to practice
all of the time, but especially when you are sitting in meditation. The
more we can learn to smile the happier mind becomes.
It may sound a little hokie, but scientists have discovered that
the corners of our mouth are very important. The position of the
lips corresponds to different mental states. When the corners of
your lips turn down, your thoughts tend to become heavy and
unwholesome. When the corners of your lips go up, mind becomes
more uplifted and clear so that joy can arise more often.
This is important to remember because a smile can help you to
change your perspective about all kinds of feelings and thoughts.
So try to remember to smile into everything that arises and
everything that you direct your mind’s attention to. In other words,
smile as much as you can into everything.
Dullness of Mind
The more sincere and enthusiastic you are in sending Loving-kindness
to yourself and your spiritual friend, the less you will experience
sleepiness or dullness of mind. When sleepiness or dullness occurs,
your body may begin to slump. This is the only time that you can
move your body to straighten up. But don’t do this too often, either.
If you see your mind starting to dull out, then take more interest
in your friend; see him or her doing things that you truly
appreciate. For example, you can visualize times that they were
helpful and generous, or times when they made you happy and
you laughed with them. This can help to increase your interest
and energy, and then the dullness will subside.
Please, once you begin this meditation, start by sitting for 30
minutes. The first ten minutes you send Loving-kindness to
yourself. The rest of the time, send love to your spiritual friend
(remember to use the same friend all of the time). When your
meditation becomes better and you feel more comfortable, you
can sit for a longer periods of time (whatever is appropriate for
you with your time constraints). But, don’t sit for less than 30
minutes a day in the beginning! Sit more if you have the time.
Active Meditation
This is not simply a passive meditation to be practiced only when
you are sitting in a chair or on a cushion. It’s a meditation to be
practiced all of the time, especially when you do your daily activities.
So many times we walk around in a mental haze of random nonsense
thoughts. Why not try practicing Loving-kindness Meditation
whenever we can possibly remember? When you are walking from
your house to your car, or your car to your job, what is your mind
doing? Ho-humming probably about more nonsense thoughts.
This is the time to notice what your mind is doing in the present
moment and to let go of these distracting thoughts. Relax the tightness
in your head/mind and wish someone happiness! It doesn’t matter
who you send loving thoughts and feelings to in your daily activities.
It can be to the person walking next to you, your spiritual friend,
yourself, or all beings. The key words here are to “send love”, smile,
and feel that sincere wish. Try to do this as much as possible during
the day. The more we focus on sending and radiating loving and kind
thoughts, the more we affect the world around us in a positive way.
As a result, your mind becomes uplifted and happy. Nice!
Benefits of Loving-kindness
There are many benefits to practicing Loving-kindness:
1. You sleep peacefully.
2. You wake up peacefully, easily, and mind is very alert.
3. Disturbing dreams do not occur.
4. People like you.
5. Animals like you.
6. You are protected by the Deva.
7. You are not affected by misfortune from, fire, poison, and
weapons.
8. Meditation progress is faster with this meditation than any
other meditation.
9. Your face becomes radiant and beautiful.
10. You die with a mind free from confusion.
11. If the stage of sainthood if not reached during this lifetime,
one will be born in a Brahmà world.
When you practice Loving-kindness, your mind goes deeper
in meditation and more quickly than with any other type of
meditation.
Actually, the Buddha mentioned Loving-kindness Meditation
well over 100 times and he taught the “Mindfulness of Breathing”
meditation only 8 times in the suttas. So, you can see just how
important he thought it was.
Loving-kindness and Nibbàna
The practice of Loving-kindness Insight Meditation can lead you
directly to the experience of Nibbàna if you follow all of the Brahmà
Vihàras precisely. The Brahmà Vihàras include the practice of Loving-
kindness, Compassion, Joy, and Equanimity. This is mentioned many
times in the suttas which are the original discourses of the Buddha.
Many times other teachers will say that this practice alone doesn’t
directly lead the meditator to the experience of Nibbàna. But, when
Loving-kindness Insight Meditation is practiced as part of the
Brahmà Vihàras (the heavenly abodes), it will take the meditator
“automatically”, without changing the meditation instructions, to
the material (Råpa Jhànas) and immaterial realms (Aråpa Jhànas) up
to the realm of nothingness. All of the Brahmà Vihàras actually arise
by themselves.
This opens the path for you to experience the realm of “neither
perception nor non-perception” and “the cessation of perception,
feeling, and consciousness” which happens right before you see
and truly understand how the impersonal links of Dependent
Origination and the Four Noble Truths occur. When this is seen
and fully understood it is such an eye-opening experience that
Nibbàna takes place.
There is a very special sutta called “The Simile of the Saw” (sutta
number 21, Majjhima Nikàya) which shows the usefulness of
practicing Loving-kindness in your daily life. In order to attain
Nibbàna you must decide to change old unwholesome habits of acting
and speaking into the wholesome habits of having equanimity and
Loving-kindness towards everyone you see or think about. This
sutta shows how to practice your meditation during your daily
activities and this simple instruction leads to true happiness all of
the time.
It says:
“There are these five courses of speech that others may use when
they address you: Their speech may be timely or untimely, true or
untrue, gentle or harsh, connected with good or with harm, spoken
with a mind of loving-kindness or with inner hate. When others
address you their speech may be timely or untimely; when others
address you their speech may be true or untrue; when others address
you their speech may be gentle or harsh; when others address you
their speech may be connected with good or with harm; when others
address you their speech may be connected with loving-kindness or
with inner hate.”
“You should train thus: “My mind will remain unaf fected, and I shall
utter no evil words; I shall abide compassionate for their welfare,
with a mind of loving-kindness, without inner hate. I shall abide
pervading that person with a mind imbued with loving-kindness;
and starting with them, I shall abide pervading loving-kindness to
the all-encompassing world with a mind that is abundant, exalted,
immeasurable, without hostility and without ill-will.”
“If you keep this practice in mind, do you see any course of
speech, trivial, or gross, that you could not endure? Therefore,
you should keep this advice in mind always and that
will lead to your welfare and happiness for a long time.”
This is a good reason to remember to smile all of the time. There are
many advantages to smiling and one of the main reasons is because
smiling will show you what true mindfulness is. Another reason
is when you smile a lot, joy arises very easily while you are doing
your daily activities. When joy arises, mind is exceptionally bright,
clear, alert, and agile. It is easy to see when mind starts to get pulled
down into unwholesome states and with that mindfulness present
it becomes very easy to 6R and come back to smiling.
I hope these instructions are helpful and that by practicing in this
way you will benefit greatly and lead a truly happy and healthy
life.
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