Deep within you there is always a potential for flourishing. This is a potential for loving-kindness, compassion, and inner peace. Try to get in touch with and experience this potential that is always present, like a nugget of gold, in your heart and mind. You need to develop this potential. Begin by becoming familiar with your own mind.
The Beginning of Meditation.
1.Sit quietly, in a comfortable but balanced posture. Whether you sit cross-legged on a cushion or more conventionally on a chair, try to keep your back straight, yet without being tense.
2.Rest your hands on your knees or thighs or in your lap,
3.keep your eyes lightly gazing in the space in front of you,
4.and breathe naturally.
5. Watch your mind, the coming and going of thoughts.... Just watch them arising and let them come and go, without trying to stop them, but without fueling them either.
At first thoughts rush through your mind like a waterfall. After a while your thoughts will become like a peaceful river. If you practice regularly, eventually your mind will easily become serene, like a calm ocean.
Whenever new thoughts arise, like waves raised by the wind, do not be bothered by them, they will soon dissolve back into the ocean.
(pp.57-58)
Using Mental Imagery
When a powerful feeling of desire, envy, pride, aggression, or greed plagues your mind, try to imagine situations that are sources of peace. Transport yourself mentally to the shore of a placid lake or to a high mountaintop overlooking a broad vista. Imagine yourself sitting serenely, your mind as vast and clear as a cloudless sky, as calm as a windless ocean. Experience this calmness. Watch your inner tempests subside and let this feeling of peace grow anew in your mind. (p. 74)
Develop Benevolence and Compassion
1.Begin by generating a powerful feeling of warmth, loving-kindness, and compassion for all beings.
2.Then imagine those who are enduring suffering similar to or worse than your own.
3.As you breathe out, visualize you are sending them all your happiness, vitality, good fortune, health and so on, on your breath in the form of cool, white luminous nectar. Picture them fully absorbing the nectar, which soothes their pains and fulfills their aspirations....
4. When you inhale, visualize your heart as a bright luminous sphere. Imagine that you are taking upon yourself, in the form of a gray cloud, the disease, confusion, and mental toxins of these people, which disappear into the white light of your heart without leaving any trace.
This will transform both your own suffering and others'.
5.You can also imagine that your body is duplicating itself in countless forms that travel throughout the universe, transforming itself into clothing for those who are cold, food for the famished, or shelter for the homeless.
This visualization practice can be carried out anytime and during your day-to-day activities. (pp.78-79)
The Deconstruction of the Self
It is worthwhile to devote a few moments of our life to letting the mind rest in inner calm and to understanding, through analysis and direct experience, the place of the ego in our lives. So long as the sense of the ego's importance has control over our being, we will never know lasting peace. The very source of pain remains intact deep within us and deprives us of that most essentials of freedom. (pp. 95-96)
Calming the Mind and Looking Within
Experience the gradual calming of chaotic thoughts. When thoughts arise neither attempt to block them, nor let them multiply. Simply continue to watch your breath.
Turn your gaze inward and look at the mind itself. Observe your awareness itself, not the content of your thoughts. (p. 118)
Freeing Emotions Directly
Bring to mind a situation in which you felt very angry and try to relive this experience. When anger arises, focus on the anger, not on its subject. Look at anger as a separate phenomenon. Observe the anger; it will evaporate under your gaze.
Apply this process of liberation in your daily life. With time your anger will grow ever more transparent and your irritability will wane.
Practice the same way with obsessive desire, envy, and other painful emotions.
(pp.132-133)
Meditate on Love and Compassion
1. Bring realistically to mind the suffering of someone who is dear to you.
You will soon feel a deep wish and resolve to ease the person's suffering and remove its cause. Let this feeling of compassion fill your mind, and remain in it for a while. Then extend that feeling to all beings.
2. Another method is to shift your meditation to impartiality by extending your feelings of love and compassion to all beings equally: dear ones, strangers, and enemies.
3. You can also focus on selfless love.Let loving-kindness permeate your mind and rest in this feeling of altruistic love. (p. 155)
At the end of your meditation ponder the interdependence of all things.... You need to develop wisdom and compassion.
Before engaging in your daily activities, dedicate to all sentient beings all the good you have accrued from your meditation. (p. 156)
Appreciate the Value of Time, Savor the Present Moment
Instead of being an endless succession of feelings, images, and scattered thoughts, time becomes pure awareness. When past thoughts have ceased, and future thoughts have not yet arisen, in the interval is there not a perception of nowness, a pristine, clear, awake, and bare freshness? (p. 232)
Practice Attentive Walking
Walking just for the pleasure of walking.....walk as free people... feel our steps growing lighter as we walk.... (p. 236)
Enter into the Flow of "Open Presence"
Sit in a comfortable meditation position, eyes gently open, posture straight, and quiet your mind. Try to make your mind as vast as the sky. Don't focus on anything. Remain relaxed, calm, and yet fully aware. (p. 238)
Source:
Matthieu Ricard. Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill. Translated by Jesse Browner. (New York, NY: Little, Brown, and Company, 2003)
