First, it is important to start by arousing a deeply felt warmth, sensitivity, and compassion for all beings. To do so, begin by thinking about someone who has been very kind and loving to you; in most cases, this could be your own mother.
Remember and reflect on her kindness—how she gave you life, how she suffered the discomforts of pregnancy and the pain of childbirth, how she looked after you as you grew up, sparing no effort. She was ready to make any sacrifice for you and to put your welfare before her own.
When you feel strong love and compassion, imagine that she is undergoing terrible sufferings, that she suffers in agony before your very eyes, being dragged along the ground or tortured.
Continue to imagine your mother (or another person that you have taken as the object of your meditation) undergoing situation after situation of suffering. Turn that intense compassion to all beings, realizing that each one of them must surely have been your mother many times and deserves the same love and compassion as your mother of this present life. It is important to include all those whom you now consider to be enemies or troublemakers.
With an intense feeling of compassion, begin the practice of “exchange.” Think of all those who suffer and consider that as your breath goes out, all your happiness—all your vitality, merit, good fortune, health, and enjoyment—is carried out to them on your breath in the form of cool, soothing, luminous white light.
Make the following prayer: “May this truly go to my enemy and be entirely given to him!” Visualize that they absorb this white nectar, which provides them with everything that they need. If they need money, imagine that now they are wealthy; if they are unhappy, now imagine them so full of joy.
As you breathe in, consider that you take into yourself, in the form of a dark mass, all the sickness, obscurations, and mental poisons of others, and that they are thereby completely relieved of all their afflictions.
As you take their suffering into you, you feel great joy and bliss, mingled with the experience of emptiness. Repeat this, again and again, until it becomes second nature to you.
Sometimes, visualize that your heart is a brilliant ball of light.
As you breathe out, it radiates rays of white light in all directions, carrying your happiness to all beings.
As you breathe in, their suffering, negativity, and afflictions come toward you in the form of dense, black light, which is absorbed into your heart and disappears in its brilliant white light without a trace, relieving all beings of their pain and sorrow.
GUIDED MEDITATION ON LOVE AND COMPASSION
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