Loving-Kindness

Learning to be kind to yourself, others & all experience

Guided Practice

Practice Visual

Drawing

Overview

What

The Intention and Wish for Benefit

Benefits

  • Learning to be kind to yourself and others

  • Social Harmony

  • Pleasant

  • Clarity about Good-intent & Ill-intent

Instructions

  1. Optional: Choose a Subject i.e., a recipient of Kindness

  2. Activate

  3. Notice

  4. Soften into

  5. Enjoy

  6. Fade & Repeat

Daily Life

Kindness to yourself or others is available anytime.

Recognizing the shared desire to be happy facilitates wishing well.

Potential Situations

  • Greetings and Farewells

    • 'Good Day', 'Good Bye'

  • Reunions and Chats

  • Supermarket Queue, Traffic

  • Whenever there is Anger, Guilt, etc.

Consider

Gentle

  • Throughout practice, particular Kindness, one may experience reactive responses such as sadness or anger. That is natural and okay.

  • You may bring softness and kindness towards those parts.

  • You may balance yourself via softening and diaphragmatic breathing until you feel ready again

Observe the Felt-Sense > Activation Method

  • Activating Kindness via e.g., imagination and phrases is mostly used as an instrumental tool to then experience the kindness.

  • Feel free to let go of the activation and experience kindness itself

    • The intend of wishing well

    • The manifestation of kindness within body and mind such as warmth, lightness, etc.

Activation Method

  • Experiencing kindness is significant. How we activate it, is not so important.

  • Feel free to be pragmatic i.e., play and explore what works for you

    • Visuals via imagination, audio via phrases or music, physical via self-hug, hugging a teddy bear, etc..

Simmering > Impatience

  • You cannot force the activation or deactivation of habits

  • You can create conducive conditions to increase the likelihood of activation or deactivation

  • Create the conducive conditions and allow it to simmer

  • Analogy: Like a Plant you cannot force it to grow

  • e.g., Kindness towards a Friend

    • Imagine the friend in front of you

    • Gently Smiling at them

    • Wishing them well

    • Allowing it to simmer

    • Kindness may or may not arise

Accelerate via Enchantment & Disenchantment

  • By perceiving the benefit i.e., enjoying the pleasure you are accelerating the habit change as the mind understands its benefit

Hindrance of Non-Forgiveness

  • One might experience difficulty bringing kindness to self or other as there is non-forgiveness e.g., grudge, anger

  • Some approaches are to bring softness or kindness towards these parts as well and/or practice forgiveness

Good-Intent is not Good Action

  • Good-Intent indeed increases the likelihood of taking action up on it. And this is one benefit of this practice. The same way ill-intent increases the likelihood of taking action upon it.

  • Good-Intent to a stranger, to all beings, to a difficult person does not mean that we have to take kind action towards them. Our priorities remain while we wish well for everyone and everything.

Progress

Method

  • Ease of Activating, Noticing, Softening into and Enjoying

Conditioning

  • Intensity and Frequency

  • Ability to wish well to anyone and everyone

Elaboration

Introduction

In this practice you will train to generate good-will towards yourself, others and all experience.

We are going to practice with a simple process:

  1. Imagining the subject, to which we want to send loving-kindness to

  2. Activate it, while genuinely meaning it

    • For this practice, I will use the phrase 'I wish you peace' while smiling

    • Generally, whatever method of activation is fine, as long as it's working for you

  3. Immersing yourself in, experiencing, the loving-kindness. If you notice the loving-kindness subsiding, activate it again.

Practice

Transition in

  • Posture

    • Settle into your practice posture

  • Relax

    • Find pleasure in releasing, relaxing unnecessary tension within your body & mind

    • Letting go, become loose, soft

  • Smile ☺️

    • Use a half-smile with your lips & an inner smile with your eyes to facilitate the generation of good-will

Cultivate Loving-Kindness

Towards myself

  • 'I wish myself peace' :)

Towards someone you like

  • 'I wish 'Name' peace' :)

Towards someone neutral

  • 'I wish 'Name' peace' :)

Towards someone you dislike

  • 'I wish 'Name' peace' :)

Towards Everyone

  • 'I wish the whole world peace' :)

Towards all experience

  • 'I wish you peace' :)

Be loving-kindness

  • 'wishing peace' :)

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