Day Fourteen {Meditation Challenge}: Lovingkindness

Becoming a parent has the power to transform us completely.  Our heart opens to a real unconditional love.  We gain strength from caring for our children and from loving them so completely -- so freely, without judgment, and with a boundless heart.  Before becoming a mama, I didn't know that my heart was capable of loving like this... of supporting so much and wanting so little in return.  This human heart is an amazing thing.

If the breeze just brought you by, today is the last day of our 14 Day Meditation Challenge.  I hope you'll enjoy the posts now archived here.  If you've been with us all along, thank you!  Sharing thoughts and reflections here has been a real joy.  

Today's practice is my absolute favorite.  I hope you'll try this one and consider sharing it with your kids.  It asks us to visit that place that being a parent sparks... that place where we love with our whole heart.  

To begin, sit comfortably with your eyes closed.  Breathe gently and imagine yourself sitting between two people who love you.  Visualize yourself receiving this love and recite a few phrases such as these:

May I be filled with lovingkindness.

May I be safe from inner and outer dangers.

May I be well in body and mind.

May I be at ease and happy.

As you repeat these phrases, picture yourself as you are now and hold that image in lovingkindness. 

Next, imagine someone you love -- your children, your spouse, or a dear friend -- and radiate this lovingkindness to them.  Repeat the same phrases, 

May you be filled with lovingkindness.

May you be safe from inner and outer dangers.

May you be well in body and mind.

May you be at ease and happy.

Then picture a neutral person - someone with whom you have few associations - and repeat your phrases for them.  Next, bring to mind someone with whom you've had difficulties.  Picture this person in your mind and hold that image in lovingkindness while repeating your phrases.  Jack Kornfield writes, "as your heart opens, first to loved ones and friends, you will find that in the end you won't want to close it anymore."

The next step is imagining all four -- yourself, a loved one, a neutral one, and a difficult one -- and radiating lovingkindness to all four.  Finally, allow your heart to open completely and radiate this love to the whole earth.  Something that I've really enjoyed is holding a picture in my mind of the Earth as our mother and giving her and all of the children who have grown from her -- all plants, animals, & people -- my lovingkindness.

In the three-minute video below, Sylvia Boorstein, a co-founding teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, gives a beautiful demonstration of lovingkindness mediation.   

For a seven minute long mediation with Sylvia, click here.  For more information, also see Sharon Salzberg's website and pick up her book, Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness.  For more on Loving-kindness Meditation for Children, visit Gregory Kramer's site at http://www.buddhanet.net/metta_k.htm

Lovebugs of Compassion

Today was the first day of our summer home school co-op.  Our July mindfulness unit is compassion and we kicked off our studies with a discussion about what the word means.  The girls did a great job naming examples. They said:
 
Understanding
Loving speech
Caring
Feeling other people’s feelings
Comforting others when they are sad
Empathy
A soft heart
Saying Namaste!

After circle time, I read the story of Kuan Yin from The Lady of Ten Thousand Names: Goddess Stories from Many Cultures retold by Burleigh Muten.  Kuan Yin is the goddess of compassion and her name means, "She Who Hears the Cries of the World."   

In this telling of her story, Kuan Yin starts her life as a princess who wants nothing more than to spend her days praying for the sick and nursing underfed animals back to health.  When she chooses a life in a nunnery over her father's wish for her to marry, her father burns the nunnery to the ground.  When she escapes the fire, he orders her execution.  The princess wakes from the sleep of death in the land of the gods where she earns her name, "She Who Hears the Cries of the World" by looking down to Earth and assisting those in trouble.


One day, she hears the cries of her own father and, despite his treatment of her, she goes to his rescue.  Because her heart was full of nothing but pure love, she is able to heal the king of his malady by sacrificing herself.  The Earth trembles, rainbow-colored clouds gather over the palace, the scent of lotus blossoms fill the air, and flowers rain down on Earth.  Kuan Yin rises into the sky like the round golden moon, spreading her glowing light all over the Earth.  From that day forward, the king shared his wealth with the kingdom, no one ever went hungry, and healers were always available for the sick.


The girls took picture notes while I read the story.  We talked about practicing to have a heart that holds nothing but love and how letting go of anger softens our heart and brings peace into the world.  Then they shared their pictures and answered a few listening comprehension questions.


Next it was time for a little movement.  The girls declared themselves "love bugs of compassion" and proceeded to buzz around the house giggling.  After a little silliness, it was time for some yoga.  With gratitude for her life-giving energies, we giggled our way through a few rounds of sun salutations.


For the last part of our day, we put our compassion into action with a little community service project that I'm organizing through Children Creating Change.   I'm connecting kids with nursing home pen pals at the local home where A. gives piano recitals twice per year.  The girls know that they may never get a letter in return but they're sending pictures and notes to bring a little cheer into the lives of some special grandmas.  If your child would like to adopt a grandma or grandpa, please post a comment below and I'll happily facilitate the connection.

The girls just finished eating fresh raspberries from our favorite local farm... and were convinced this one was a heart-shaped raspberry of compassion.  Now they're back in the classroom giggling and coloring.  Their little squeals remind me that compassion comes in many colors and is as essential as knowledge.  The Dalai Lama once said, “Each of us in our own way can try to spread compassion into people’s hearts. Western civilizations these days place great importance on filling the human 'brain' with knowledge, but no one seems to care about filling the human 'heart' with compassion."  I couldn't agree more and look forward to nurturing a little more compassion with these lovebugs this summer.

May: Flowers of Lovingkindness

May is the month of flowers.  It’s that time when all is in full bloom and the world is alive and thriving.  It is a time for celebrating mothers and honoring the life giving energies of the earth.

May Day is the half-way point between the spring equinox and the summer solstice and has been celebrated for ages as the holiday Beltane with crowns of flowers and dancing around the Maypole.  The month itself may have been named for the Greek goddess Maia, who was identified with the Roman era goddess of fertility, Bona Dea, whose festival was held in May. (from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May) 

This week we're launching a new mindfulness unit, May: Flowers of Loving-kindness.  Loving-kindness, or mettā in Pali, is the cultivation of the kind of love a mother has for her children.  It’s a gentle love -- a love without attachment and with an active interest in others.  

Giving loving-kindness to ourselves and then radiating it to others is a tender practice that encourages awareness of our inner world.  It’s a form of mindfulness practice that increases our capacity for compassion, can calm a distraught mind, quell anger, and even help us sleep better.  Loving-kindness is a state of the mind and heart acting in concert for the altruistic benefit of the whole.   Acharya Buddharakkhita gives this definition: 

“Essentially metta is an altruistic attitude of love and friendliness as distinguished from mere amiability based on self-interest. Through metta one refuses to be offensive and renounces bitterness, resentment and animosity of every kind, developing instead a mind of friendliness, accommodativeness and benevolence which seeks the well-being and happiness of others. True metta is devoid of self-interest. It evokes within a warm-hearted feeling of fellowship, sympathy and love, which grows boundless with practice and overcomes all social, religious, racial, political and economic barriers. Metta is indeed a universal, unselfish and all-embracing love.” (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/buddharakkhita/wheel365.html)

While the term, “metta” may be unfamiliar, the actual feeling is one that every parent knows.  Knowing this feeling ourselves gives us greater strength in teaching it to our children and helping them cultivate in their hearts this type of unconditional love for the world. 

To begin our month of loving-kindness, we’re hanging a blank sheet of butcher paper on our classroom wall.  At the top, in big, bold letters, I’ve written “Loving-kindness is…”  As the month progresses, we’ll draw pictures and write phrases that represent our understanding of metta.  I'll ask A. to think of people she loves and people that love her.  Then, I'll have her hold a flower in the palm of her hand and imagine how a mommy loves her baby.  That's metta.

Next, we’ll make a list of things – of noises and distractions that would usually illicit in us a reaction of annoyance or frustration... such as the phone ringing during school or the cat crying in the wee hours of the morning.  For the entire month of May, we’ll use these things as our bells of loving-kindness and practice transforming our unconscious reactions into conscious responses.  

When we hear the cat cry or the phone ring, we'll stop, take one deep breath, and picture a flower in our mind.  Before proceeding as usual, we'll say, "I love you cat," or "I love you telephone."  It’s here in this space that we can cultivate metta.  Our awareness itself is the first seed in the soil.  

We'll be sure to take plenty of mindful metta wildflower walks -- collecting wildflowers, tuning into the natural world as it blossoms and grows, learning about what's native to our area, and practicing experiencing the world around us with kindhearted interest.  We'll make bouquets and let each flower represent someone we know, tying a ribbon on each and saying their name while sending them metta.  When the bouquet is finished, it represents the whole universe wrapped in our loving-kindness.  

Stay tuned for more exercises, stories, and ideas for sharing the practice of loving-kindness with your children. In the meantime...


A heart of loving-kindness is also one of gratitude.  As a special thank you to Om School readers, Bella Luna Toys is offering 10% off though the end of May on "the highest quality Waldorf-inspired toys and playthings to nourish the senses and inspire the imagination."  Just enter the code IMAGINE10 at checkout at http://www.bellalunatoys.com.


With gratitude, deep peace, and metta to all, C.