Vipassana Excise 1: Metta-Vipassana
Instruction: Sit in a comfortable position, repeating each phrase in your mind, mouthing it silently if you wish, for 2 to 45 minutes depending on skill and familiarity. Remember, go easy on yourself. There is no rush, you have you whole life ahead of you.
First, bring to mind the image of someone who brings to mind peaceful, pleasant feelings. It could be a teacher or a friend. Generally these will be people you do not have a very close relationship with, as the closer our relationship with someone the more complex it tends to be. It could be a person you know personally or an a public figure you relate to. Begin with silently repeat the phrase in your mind, "may you be peaceful," while visualizing their image. You may also add their name into the phrase. Work with various people until you find someone who reliably produces a peaceful feeling state, representative of the relaxed coolness and calmness that is the mind state of lovingkindness.
Once you are comfortable working with two or three difficult people who's images reliably produce the mind state of metta, move on to working with yourself. Use the phrase, "may I be peaceful." Visualize yourself or the outline of your body, your general presence, meditating.
After you have spent some time working with yourself, begin to work with a friend or loved one. This should also be someone who brings to mind more of a mind state of metta than more difficult emotions, so again these will probably not be someone you experience a challenging relationship with.
It is suggested you work with those first three categories until you are comfortable and familiar with them before moving on to more challenging categories. Further categories to explore in practice include neutral figures, those you have challenging and activating relationships with such as parents or family members, those who bring to mind highly difficult, activated feelings such as your enemies.
Metta practice is traditionally ended with a focus on all beings. Repeat the phrase, "may all beings be peaceful," while you visualize those around you in building, your local region, your country, your continent, the world and the universe. Try and focus on the expansive quality to this practice.
Other basic phrases you may wish to explore working with:
- May my body be at ease just as it is right now.
- May my mind be at ease just as it is right now.
- May I live with ease in the face of life's challanges.
This is fantastic and is what I am practicing at the moment with amazing results (after less than a week of practicing this after a few years of letting my practice slip away), I would highly recommend once you have become adept at simple mindfulness you move onto this more advanced technique. It's extremely powerful.
The only thing i'd say is that I was taught this differently in Laos and Thailand by monks - but of course there are millions of variations on meditation techniques depending on what school of Buddhism you approach (which is the beauty of it).
This is how I was taught how to do Metta-Vipassana combination technique.
1. Practice mindfulness meditation; Count your breathe until the mind is settled. Be patient with this: Sometimes it can take me just 2 minutes, other times 15 minutes. Be patient with yourself, the mind is different everyday.
2. Start with developing feelings of loving kindness to YOURSELF. This may seem counter-intuitive to the teachings of Buddhism and it's selflessness, but the fact is you cannot love others without first loving yourself. This is what I was taught and I find it makes perfect sense.
You may also find it's very hard at first to do: Like when you try to write down "good" things about your personality, it is difficult for most of us, but easy to do for people we admire!
So if you have issues you can first focus on someone you admire and love a lot and have no issues with, build that loving kindness energy in your chest area: You can even visualise it as a ball of powerful soothing white energy. Hold it there. Then repeat mantras to yourself like: "I deserve happiness, I have the Buddha nature within me like all other living beings, I am imperfect like everyone else and that is absolutely fine." etc. If you have real issues you can also combine this with the Forgiveness Exercise below posted by toothpastedog.
3. Once you feel that love towards yourself, then again move on to someone you admire (though not a lover or anyone you feel sexual feelings towards, as this can really ruin the whole practice by distracting you). Sit with the metta. Be patient, don't rush it.
4. Now move onto someone you feel neutral about. The guy at the shop that serves you from time to time, the bus driver, a neighbor you feel indifferent about etc. Develop the metta again for this person. You will probably find it's a little more difficult now, but you can repeat those mantras above, and also contemplate how you do not know them and what there life is like, times they may have been surly or hostile towards you were days they were having bad days or they don;t enjoy there jobs at all or they were having a bad time with depression or family problems at home. Contemplate that and build metta for them. If you have real trouble, go back to the person you admire, and re-build the metta, then try again.
5. Now it's time to work with those difficult people. They may be enemies. Make sure they aren't too overwhelming, just people you have difficulties with, not outright hatred (these people that have caused you real abuse will be too difficult at this stage for most to deal with - you can deal with these people as your practice improves, as it will).
Again, contemplate how they are suffering inside for some very powerful reason, and this is why they have been hostile and aggressive towards you, or hurt you. They may have had an abusive childhood or some terrible thing happen to them. Really contemplate this. Forgive. If you feel anger in your stomach rising, sit with it, breathe it out, and return to developing metta.
Be really patient with this part. You can now test by going through from self to admirable person to neutral person to this enemy or difficult person. Is the feeling of metta the same for all of them? Then congrats! You have made a genuine change to your perception of people.
6. Now take this metta and spread the feeling across your neighbourhood, your city, your country, the whole world, to all animals, humans all living beings. Wish them all happiness. Sit with the metta as long as possible.
You can at this point even progress into a meditation on 'interconnectedness of all things' - contemplating how we are all interconnected and so any feelings of animosity is really pointless and the metta can then really flow naturally to everything.
7. When it feels like a natural time to come out of meditation, do so very slowly. Stretch your legs slowly. If you have a Buddha statue focus on the face while stretching out of your lotus or cross legged position. Let the insight and compassion you have developed wash over you for a couple of minutes and maybe say a prayer to your Buddha statue wishing all living beings happiness. Dedicate your practice to the world including your own peace and happiness!
If you are practicing this with someone you can then chat after 5 or 10 minutes about your experiences. Or if you are doing it alone, post your experience online.
After you have done this practice after some time you should start seeing results in the "real world": The insights and changes of feelings towards difficult or neutral people you gained in the metta-vipassana practice should manifest itself in some powerful and wonderful ways that will bring you a lot more inner peace and happiness and less stress in your life: You will find yourself being more friendly to strangers (those neutral people), you will love those close to you even more, you will be more grateful, you will notice things in nature you perhaps didn't notice before that are very beautiful, and those difficult people who may still try to attack you: It wont affect you nearly as much, because you know they are suffering, so how can you really be angry back (which just causes you suffering too)? You may find you respond to their hostility with gentle jokes that calms the situation down, or you may ask questions like "How is your day going? Is everything ok?" which will over time soften their ego too and you may even find they become friendly towards you over time.
But as always don't expect over night results. This is not a particularly easy meditation, but with persistence it will become easier and will have a profound affect on your life.
It really works and anyone can do it. If it didn't work it wouldn't still be practiced by millions of people 2500 years on lol
Hopefully this proves helpful. It's just an alternative way I have been taught by Therevada monks on my long stints living and travelling in South East Asia.
Love to all of you.
F'loki
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
I'll get to it sooner or later.
