We had our Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss yesterday. We’ve been working with the four foundations of mindfulness: awareness of the body, feeling tone, thoughts, emotions and then all phenomena. We drew our practice inspiration from B. Alan Wallace’s Minding Closely: The Four Applications of Mindfulness. We included two practice periods and a walking meditation.
For the past weeks we’ve been focusing on the first application: mindfulness of the body. We’ve been practicing the ability to sustain “bare attention” focusing on the “tactile field” of the body. Yesterday we began to practice with the second application: mindfulness of feelings. We established a foundation of bare attention while settling our bodies, minds and speech. Then we engaged our faculties of imagination, memory and intelligence to cultivate loving kindness.
Alan’s guided meditation was a fascinating way of exploring our relationship with ourselves, each other and our world. In addition to extending goodwill, Alan posed some powerful questions for contemplation:
How do you envision your happiness & the fulfillment of your dreams? What kind of satisfaction, joy & meaning do you most deeply desire? How would you like to transform & evolve in order to realize the well-being that is your innermost desire? From what qualities of mind & behavior would you love to be freed? What qualities would you love to be endowed? What talents, abilities and aspirations would you most like to give those around you? What would ensure that your life is meaningful & fulfilled, giving you the deepest sense of satisfaction & no regrets?
I could spend a long time considering these questions. I appreciate that these queries lead me to realize that I have a limited time in which to touch the living beings and my natural environment: maybe I only have today. There is a phrase that is often chanted as part of the Buddhist liturgy: Time passes swiftly. Opportunity is lost. Awaken! Do not squander your life!
Kindness isn’t just the experience of empathy and loving feeling. In fact, it seems impossible to cultivate loving feelings toward everyone. Yet, when loving kindness also involves Alan’s deeper questions of reason, we can consider the lives of strangers including those who will come after we are gone. Meditation teacher and author, Bodhipaksa, is exploring the dynamics of loving kindness in his current 100 Days of Loving Kindness challenge. He writes that loving kindness or “metta” isn’t necessarily emotion. It is primarily driven by volition and action.
Both these teachers invite us to use our imaginations and talents to promote the well-being of every sentient and non-sentient being. We really don’t have time to lose.