Compassion Meditation
Compassion practice is adapted from a Tibetan Buddhist meditation known as tonglen. The practice is to be mindful of suffering while breathing in and to be mindful of love and compassion while breathing out. In one form of the traditional practice, you imagine sending out white light as you breathe out. We’ve dispensed with that. As to whose suffering to think about, that’s up to you. Typically, tonglen meditation involves empathy for the suffering of others. There is a lot of suffering in the world, so don’t try to take on everyone who suffers; pick one person or a few people. If you feel too overwhelmed by your own issues to contemplate the suffering of others, then you might start with yourself. Another time, when you’re more together, you can practice this meditation with others in mind. The words compassion and empathy are sometimes mixed up, so much so that even Tania Singer, a scientist who studies the neural signatures of these feelings in the brain, reports miscommunication with her study subjects. Empathy means feeling what another person is feeling, so if another person is anger and you empathize with that person, you become angry. When you empathize with the suffering of others, you yourself suffer. Compassion, in this practice, is a positive emotion. The feeling you cultivate on the out-breath is similar in feeling to the metta we practiced earlier. According to the way Buddhists use the terms, one feels compassion toward a being that is suffering. Metta is a feeling of kindness that can be directed toward anyone, including people who are not suffering at all. But there may not be much difference inn what you feel during these two practices. You are likely to experience the same basic feeling of warmth and connection whether you are extending metta or compassion. This practice is about cultivating feelings. It’s not an intellectual exercise aimed at identifying the problem or injustice that is causing the suffering. It’s not about fixing that problem. It’s about connecting emotionally with people who suffer and comforting them. Thinking about how to solve problems is obviously valuable, but it’s not part of this meditative practice.
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