Overcoming Low Self Esteem: Life Challenges

Doorways of Support and Inspiration:
Learning Compassion

Meditation on Compassion The Dalai Lama

Let us meditate on compassion by visualizing a sentient being who is suffering from acute pain or is in a very unfortunate situation. Then try to relate that being to yourself and think that he or she has the same capacity as you do for experiencing pain, joy, happiness, and suffering. Then simply focus on the unfortunate state of that being's existence, on the intense suffering, and try to develop a natural feeling of compassion toward that sentient being. Let the natural compassion arise in you toward that sentient being.

As before, let us use the first three minutes of the meditation session in a more analytic fashion, thinking about the suffering, its unfortunate state, and so on. Then try to arrive at a conclusion, thinking, "How strongly I wish that sentient being to be free from that suffering," and, "I will help relieve that sentient being from that suffering." Then place your mind single-pointedly on that kind of resolution.

Generally speaking, when we talk about meditation there are two principal types. In one type, you take something as your object of meditation. For example in the case of meditation on impermanence, or meditation on emptiness, you are not generating your mind in the nature of that but rather taking impermanence and emptiness as an object and focusing your mind on that. The other principal type of meditation is one in which you generate your mind into a particular state. For instance, in a meditation on love and compassion you don't take compassion and love as an object of meditation, but rather you try to generate your mind in a loving state or in a compassionate state.

I think it is important to understand that when you develop compassion, by definition you are trying to share the suffering of other sentient beings. From that point of view, you are taking upon yourself additional pain or suffering. There is that element. Because of that, the immediate feeling or sensation within that experience may involve a certain degree of discomfort. However, underlying that, one must have a very high degree of alertness because you are voluntarily and deliberately, for a higher purpose, accepting and taking upon yourself another's suffering. This is very different from the situation in which you think about your own suffering and feel totally overwhelmed by it, where you are burdened by it to the point that your faculties have become numb and dull. The feeling of discomfort that one experiences when taking on others' suffering in generating compassion has an underlying alertness, a sense of deliberation. Therefore, the more suffering you take upon yourself from others, the greater the power of your alertness and determination. So this is a point one has to bear in mind.

One should not misunderstand stories such as that of the great Tibetan Kadampa master Langri Tangpa, who was a great meditator on compassion and love. He was said to be always weeping and in fact was nicknamed "the Weeping Lama." However, this should not be misunderstood, because the very purpose for which that great master found himself weeping all the time was for a state of happiness, total joy, both for others and himself. This state is called sugata, which literally means "going to the realm," "going beyond," and is a state of joy and total peace. So Langri Tangpa was not weeping because he wanted to go to a state of suffering, but rather because he wanted to go to, and lead others to, a state of happiness and joy.

Excerpts from Healing Anger: The Power of Patience from a Buddhist Perspective, by The Dalai Lama. Copyright (c) 1997. Reprinted by permission of Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, NY. For more information, go to www.snowlionpub.com.

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