KInd Peacful Heart. OPEN EYE Meditation Group. Karaniya Metta Sutta: Good Will Pali Canon -The Buddha s Words

Transcription

1 July OPEN EYE Meditation Group See for Yourself KInd Peacful Heart Karaniya Metta Sutta: Good Will Pali Canon -The Buddha s Words This is to be done by one skilled in aims who wants to break through to the state of peace: Be capable, upright, & straightforward, sincere, gentle, & not conceited, content & easy to support, with few duties, living lightly, with peaceful faculties, masterful, modest, & no greed for supporters. Do not do the slightest thing that the wise would later censure. Think: Happy, at rest, may all beings be happy at heart. Whatever beings there may be, weak or strong, without exception, long, large, middling, short, subtle, blatant, seen & unseen, near & far, born & seeking birth: May all beings be happy at heart. Let no one deceive another or despise anyone anywhere, or through anger or irritation wish for another to suffer. As a mother would risk her life to protect her child, her only child, even so should one cultivate a limitless heart with regard to all beings. With good will for the entire cosmos, cultivate a limitless heart: Above, below, & all around, unobstructed, without enmity or hate. Whether standing, walking, sitting, or lying down, as long as one is alert, one should be resolved on this mindfulness. This is called a sublime abiding here & now. Not taken with views, but virtuous & consummate in vision, having controlled sense appetites, one never again will lie in the womb An Overview of Loving-kindness Meditation - Ven. Pannyavaro (Theravadan tradition) Loving-kindness meditation can be brought in to support the practice of bare attention to help keep the mind open and sweet. It provides the essential balance to support your insight meditation practice. It is a fact of life that many people are troubled by difficult emotional states in the pressured societies we live in, but do little in terms of developing skills to deal with them. Yet even when the mind goes sour it is within most people s capacity to arouse positive feelings to sweeten it. Loving-kindness is a meditation practice taught by the Buddha to develop the mental habit of selfless or altruistic love. In the Dhammapada can be found the saying: Hatred cannot coexist with loving-kindness, and dissipates if supplanted with thoughts based on loving-kindness. Loving-kindness is a meditation practice, which brings about positive attitudinal changes as it systematically develops the quality of lovingacceptance. It acts, as it were, as a form of selfpsychotherapy, a way of healing the troubled mind to free it from its pain and confusion. Of all Buddhist meditations, loving-kindness has the immediate benefit of sweetening and changing old habituated negative patterns of mind. To put it into its context, Loving-kindness is the first of a series of meditations that produce four qualities of love: Friendliness (metta), Compassion

2 (karuna), Appreciative Joy (mudita) and Equanimity (upekkha). The quality of friendliness is expressed as warmth that reaches out and embraces others. When loving-kindness practice matures it naturally overflows into compassion, as one empathises with other people s difficulties; on the other hand one needs to be wary of pity, as its near enemy, as it merely mimics the quality of concern without empathy. The positive expression of empathy is an appreciation of other people s good qualities or good fortune, or appreciative joy, rather than feelings of jealousy towards them. This series of meditations comes to maturity as on-looking equanimity. This engaged equanimity must be cultivated within the context of this series of meditations, or there is a risk of it manifesting as its near enemy, indifference or aloofness. So, ultimately you remain kindly disposed and caring toward everybody with an equal spread of loving feelings and acceptance in all situations and relationships. How to do it... The practice always begins with developing a loving acceptance of yourself. If resistance is experienced then it indicates that feelings of unworthiness are present. No matter, this means there is work to be done, as the practice itself is designed to overcome any feelings of self-doubt or negativity. Then you are ready to systematically develop lovingkindness towards others. Four Types of Persons to develop loving-kindness towards: a respected, inspriational person, role model a dearly beloved - which could be a close family member or friend or animal a neutral person - somebody you know, but have no special feelings towards, e.g.: a person who serves you in a shop; a hostile person - someone you are currently having difficulty with. Starting with yourself, then systematically sending loving-kindness to each person in the above order will have the effect of breaking down the barriers between the four types of people and yourself. This will have the effect of breaking down the divisions within your own heart/mind, the source of much of the conflict we experience. Just a word of caution if you are practicing intensively. It is best if you choose a person you are not sexually atracted to. Try different people to practice on, as some people do not easily fit into the above categories, but do try to keep to the prescribed order. When the positive feeling arises, let that grow and become pervasive, as it is the feeling that is the primary focus. Keep the heart/mind wrapped in the cultivation of the feeling. The second stage is Directional Pervasion where you systematically project the aroused feeling of loving-kindness to all points of the compass: north, south, east and west, up and down, and all around. This directional pervasion will be enhanced by bringing to mind loving friends and like-minded communities you know in the cities, towns and countries around the world, earth and the cosmos. Non-specific Pervasion tends to spontaneously happen as the practice matures. It is not discriminating. It has no specific object and involves just naturally radiating feelings of universal love. When it arises the practice has then come to maturity in that it has changed particular, preferential love, which is an attached love, to an all-embracing unconditional love! Loving-kindness is a heart meditation and should not to be seen as just a formal sitting practice removed from everyday life. So take your good vibes outside into the streets, at home, at work and into your relationships. Applying the practice to daily life is a matter of directing a friendly attitude and having openness toward everybody you relate to, without discrimination. Awareness Begins in the Heart, Not the Brain - Whether religion, literature, or love lyrics, the heart has a long history of being popularly associated with passion, feeling, consciousness, and awareness. But studies within the new field

3 of neurocardiology are beginning to explain the heart s intimate connection to the brain and the critical role the organ plays in our wellbeing. Research in the past two decades has shown that the heart is an information processing center that can learn, remember, and act independently of the cranial brain and actually connect and send signals to key brain areas such as the amygdala, thalamus, and hypothalamus, which regulate our perceptions and emotions. It seems we have a second brain in our chest. [Source 1] As a result, the brain-heart connection is steadily being paid more attention throughout academia. In the journal Nature Neuroscience, for example, scientists conducted experiments using functional imaging and a heartbeat detection task to track the psychosomatic link between certain neural systems and the viscera, or internal organs, particularly the heart. The authors conclude that this interoceptive awareness contributes yet another layer to the total yet composite experience we call consciousness. [Source 2] There s also evidence that this heart brain can receive and respond to stimuli before the cranial brain processes it, like a split-second body premonition. Researchers published a study in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine that correlated the heart-rate variability of participants with a pre-stimulus. In other words, the study subjects heartbeats were intuitively sensing an oncoming change. Essentially, their hearts felt the future before it happened. And even though the brain and body as a whole are involved in processing that stimulus, it appears the heart gets there first. [Source 3] But perhaps the most intriguing research in neurocardiology today is the relation between and reaction of the sensing heart of one individual on another. Studies at the HeartMath Research Center have detected in individuals up to five feet apart that the heart s electromagnetism the largest in the body can affect and even synchronize with another participant s brain waves. In short, the brain seems to be innately sensitive and receptive to the heart energy of others. [Source 4] Such electromagnetic communication, as strange as it seems, makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, with natural selection selecting for deeper mutual understanding, nonverbal or otherwise, within a group over generations. For two million years (not counting millions of years in primate evolution), humanity was defined by smallgroup living with day-to-day interactions among some people on average. Empathy would have been paramount in fact, it still is. And who could deny that the actual subjective experience of emotions isn t centered in the heart, electric, and contagious? [Source 5] What we think of as mind increasingly appears to be a whole-body, embodied phenomena, with our heart at the center. It s something we ve known intuitively about ourselves for millennia but can now articulate via science. Dharmapada - Buddha s Words from the Pali Canon Phenomena are preceded by the heart, ruled by the heart, made of the heart. If you speak or act with a corrupted heart, then suffering follows you as the wheel of the cart, the track of the ox that pulls it. Phenomena are preceded by the heart, ruled by the heart, made of the heart. If you speak or act with a calm, bright heart, then happiness follows you, like a shadow that never leaves. He insulted me, hit me,

4 beat me, robbed me for those who brood on this, hostility isn t stilled. He insulted me, hit me, beat me, robbed me for those who don t brood on this, hostility is stilled. Hostilities aren t stilled through hostility, regardless. Hostilities are stilled through non-hostility: this, an unending truth. Unlike those who don t realize that we re here on the verge of perishing, those who do: their quarrels are stilled. Let Your Heart Talk to Your Brain -Deborah Rozman, Ph.D. heartmath.org When I was a practicing psychologist, sometimes when I d be working with a client who was confused about an issue or decision, I d ask, What would your heart say? I often adapted a gestalt technique using two chairs. When the client was sitting in one chair, I asked them to speak from their heart and talk to their mind sitting over there in the other chair. Then I d have them switch chairs and speak from their head, talking to their heart, telling their heart the mind s views and concerns. It was like two different people talking. The heart spoke from genuine feeling and authenticity, in the present. The mind spoke from opinions, fears, shoulds and shouldn ts. I had them switch chairs several times, until they had an epiphany. Very often the client would realize their heart s voice was their true self, a voice that offered both more intuition and common sense intelligence. This is no coincidence. What s really fascinating is that the heart contains a little brain in its own right. Yes, the human heart, in addition to its other functions, actually possesses a heartbrain composed of about 40,000 neurons that can sense, feel, learn and remember. The heart brain sends messages to the head brain about how the body feels and more. When I first heard about this scientific research, it intuitively made sense. I had felt for a long time that the heart has its own mysterious way of knowing. Until the 1990s, scientists assumed and most of us were taught that it was only the brain that sent information and issued commands to the heart, but now we know that it works both ways. In fact, the heart s complex intrinsic nervous system, the heart brain, is an intricate network of several types of neurons, neurotransmitters, proteins and support cells, like those found in the brain proper. Research has shown that the heart communicates to the brain in several major ways and acts independently of the cranial brain. One important way the heart can speak to and influence the brain is when the heart is coherent - generating a stable, sine-wavelike pattern in its rhythms. When the heart rhythm is coherent, the body, including the brain, begins to experience all sorts of benefits, among them greater mental clarity and intuitive ability, including better decision-making. Although the heart and brain are in constant communication, we can intentionally direct our heart to communicate to our brain and body in beneficial ways. When we experience sincere positive emotions, such as caring, compassion or appreciation, the heart processes these emotions, and the heart s rhythm becomes more coherent and harmonious. This information is sent to the brain and the entire body neurologically, biochemically, biophysically and energetically. You can shift into this coherent state to bring your mind and heart into harmonious alignment and have more access to intuition often in less than a minute. It can take a little practice to do this on demand, but it gets easier and quicker the more you do it.

5 Here is a heart based decision-making technique: 1. When there is an issue causing you stress, write down what you ve been thinking and feeling about it. 2. Shift into the meditative feeling of the heart 3. In that state, ask yourself what would be a more effective response to this situation, one that will minimize future stress. 4. Listen for what your heart has to say. Notice the first feelings and sensations that come to you. Perhaps it s offering a new insight you need, or is saying let go or be patient? 5. Write down what your heart says, even if it seems too simplistic. 6. Now compare what you wrote in #1 with what your heart said. Which feels better to you? Which has more ease, flow or common sense? What often blows people s minds is the head saying what seems to be rational arguments that keep the emotions churning, but the heart s wisdom is so clear and releasing and simply feels right. In comparing what they wrote in #1 and #5, people often find the heart more intelligent; the mind more emotional, irrational. I have made letting my heart talk to my brain a way of life because it s much more effective, and offers flow, ease and clarity for me. Whenever I need to, I shift my focus to the heart and ask its guidance. Recently, my mind was wanting to rush ahead and call somebody about an issue there was a deadline for. I got into heart coherence to grasp a deeper connection to the issue. My heart intuition was clear don t call now, or I will be reacting out of fear. So glad I waited until I was neutral and calm. The results I get from decisions I make in a heartcoherent state keep confirming the effectiveness of Freeze-Framing for me. Lately, I hear more and more people across different disciplines and walks of life talking about the heart. People seem to be waking up to the wisdom of letting their hearts guide them, finding it leads them to more joy and fulfillment. This is news that does my heart good. emotions such as appreciation, joy, care, and love; our heart rhythm pattern becomes highly ordered, looking like a smooth, harmonious wave (an example is shown in the figure below). This is called a coherent heart rhythm pattern. When we are generating a coherent heart rhythm, the activity in the two branches of the ANS is synchronized and the body s systems operate with increased efficiency and harmony. It s no wonder that positive emotions feel so good they actually help our body s systems synchronize and work better. Heart rhythm patterns during different emotional states. These graphs show examples of realtime heart rate variability patterns (heart rhythms) recorded from individuals experiencing different emotions. The incoherentheart rhythm pattern shown in the top graph, characterized by its irregular, jagged waveform, is typical of stress and negative emotions such as anger, frustration, and anxiety. The bottom graph shows an example of the coherent heart rhythm pattern that is typically observed when an individual is experiencing a sustained positive emotion, such as appreciation, compassion, or love. The coherent pattern is characterized by its regular, sine-wave-like waveform. It is interesting to note that the overall amount of heart rate variability is actually the same in the two recordings shown above; however, the patterns of the HRV waveforms are clearly different.... You hold in your hand an invitation: to remember the transforming power of forgiveness and loving kindness. To remember that no matter where you are and what you face, within your heart peace is possible. Jack Kornfield Positive emotions send a very different signal throughout our body. When we experience uplifting