Day 37: Situational Compassion

Welcome to 40 Days of Mindfulness and Compassion Day 37!

 

Lecture

 For several meditations during this course, we have worked at globalizing or universalizing pro-social states such as compassion, kindness and appreciation. In this approach, inherent positive capabilities are broadened and extended. It is important that the expansion process not become excessively abstract. Sometimes the practices begin to feel very good and meaningful, and you might have experienced this during these 40 days.

There is a danger here of doing these practices to produce a desirable effect and to lose sight of the intention, which is compassion and kindness etc. At this point, it is actually possible to use the practices to bypass actual day-to-day challenges. For instance, I might cultivate “global compassion” on a daily basis, and yet remain bitter and non-compassionate to “difficult” people and situations in my life. Here will be offered a meditation called “situational compassion” that is designed to bring the broadening process into direct relevance to the complexities of real life.

This practice came from my own work with compassion practice in daily life. Many traditional compassion expansion meditations begin with a loved one, and then spread to a “neutral” person and then spread to a “difficult” person. From there, compassion can then be extended to other individuals and groups, and ultimately, to everyone. We have used adaptations of this technique during these 40 Days.

In attempting to bring this practice into my daily life I developed the practice of “situational compassion” that we will work with today and tomorrow.

 

Meditation

Meditation Day 37: Situational Compassion

 

Self-Reflective Activity

 Meditation Tip # 29: What we are conscious of is only the “tip of the iceberg.” With consistency, my experience is that something is shifting under the surface. This might not be consciously apparent or obvious at first. I compare it to exercise. Training for something sometimes hurts, and on a daily basis sometimes it does not feel that any progress is being made. But, with time and consistency, results emerge.