ShantiMayi's
BODHISACHA SUNDAY MEDITATIONS
Here ShantiMayi outlines the very simple approach to metta meditation.
Metta meditation helps to open the heart with loving kindness.
When you meditate with metta, you cannot deny that you are a loving being
and that a sense of oneness is itself the solution to all conflicts and misunderstandings.
Metta Meditation
A Way Past Divisions and Into Love
A Healing Meditation for One’s self and One’s Challenges as well as the World
Metta meditation is a very old practice. ShantiMayi suggests that her disciples must practice metta meditation for spiritual health, as well as learning how to reach across to others when conflict arises. Metta means loving-kindness. Metta meditation means the meditation of loving-kindness. Buddhists use this meditation to cultivate open heartedness and therefore a centered-ness in all kinds of relationships.
In conflicts, it is the spiritually mature one of the two (or more) who will reach across the gap of misunderstanding. Reaching across to heal the affliction of separation. In or out of conflict, metta meditation
is a great medicine for awakening and healing one’s self, others and one’s world. This Trinity in Truth is One.
Metta meditation is an emanating meditation. Emanating through one’s own limitation dissolves divisions. This is a true bodhisattva sentiment and a wide-open dharma door. Go through, you will find what you are looking for within. It is very simple and can be very creative. It is also exciting to see the result of this meditation.
Start by simple breathing and centering your self and settle into a meditative mood.
Let everything in your day remain outside of your meditation and feel the deep innate peace within yourself.
Then visualize in your heart center a person who you love very much and also loves you deeply. Feel that love in your heart and fill your entire body with that loving energy. When one feels love within, one can also feel compassion within.
The contemplation
While you deepen this metta environment within you, filling your whole being as well as the entire room, then
bring into your visualization the person that you're having difficulty with. See them as an opportunity to transform diversity into favorable conditions. In other words now this person who you're having difficulty with is your spiritual adviser. This is a good fortune situation. This situation reveals without doubt, that what appears to be separate in fact is not.
While visualizing this person that you have difficulty with, come to realize how much you yourself want to be loved and understood. How in the worst situations you really wish that it could be turned around so that it never happened.
Now again feel the love in your heart for yourself and for the person you are having difficulty with, your adversary, your spiritual adviser.
Now visualize your heart radiant like the Sun.
Then visualize that Sun’s radiance as the love in your heart shining into the heart of the other. Send them goodwill, the goodwill that you would want if you were in their place.
Now speak inwardly to them telling them that you don't want separation between you because you're committed to the One within you both. (You need not use these particular words, better to use your own. Still communication is important, so communicate.) Make your meditation a blessing.
Now you can feel the compassion in your heart because you are compassionate. You can turn the blessing back into your self as well. Like the Sun shines for all so too does compassion.
You can continue until you feel a true healing between you.
Watch and see how free you feel. Free of the situation and how much deeper the peace within you is now.
How too, you have forgotten your own feelings of frustration while wishing well for another.
Metta meditation is a meditation of compassion and radiant healing power. Cultivating skill and an ability to surpass the limits of separation. It is very practical indeed. This meditation can be used for one’s self as well. Metta meditation transforms misunderstanding and intolerance into compassion and peaceful solution. It can be used for closing the gap between two people or a group of people.
It is a bodhisattva meditation for blessing the world to awaken in the same way that Gayatri Mantra is.
This compassionate radiance can be poured out from your heart into the world. The results are miraculous. For those who use it, it is a kind of refuge. You'll find out that your compassionate intention has a great healing power for yourself, for others and also for this world.
Genuine kindness is a great support in this world where people are easily alienated from each other.
Genuine kindness is spiritual maturity as well as natural solution to conflict.
To close your meditation
Give a deep bow. Bow down for the opportunity to meditate in this way for an opportunity to transform adversity into favorable conditions.
