Compassion, particularly self-compassion, is an important part of meditation. Without it, meditation tends to be overly goal-oriented and driven by a need to be someone better, or to get somewhere better, than we are right now.
Self-compassion straightens out our approach to meditation, allowing our whole range of experience into the fold, and giving us the capacity not to turn away from our experience when things are difficult.
It is both an outcome of meditation practice, and a foundation for it. Compassion arises naturally as judgement lessens, and an atmosphere of compassion is the perfect container for a steady, sensitive awareness.
Judgement is the opposite of self-compassion
In meditation, we want to be able to see our experience as it actually is. To watch our inner lives unfolding, without stepping in and trying to manage everything, like a clumsy boss.
This is simple, in a way, it just requires that we stay attuned to our experience with sensitivity, and notice when judgement, control or distraction creeps in. However, in practice, this can be extremely difficult.
Deliberately cultivating self-compassion deprives judgement of oxygen. When we meet ourselves and our experience with kindness, judgement does not arise so easily. Instead, we can begin to see the reasons for our suffering, and to lessen the sense of self-blame.
Practicing self-compassion
There are many ways in which we can practice compassion towards ourselves. A common approach is to intentionally change the way we talk to ourselves. We can think kind thoughts, or speak kind words, to affirm our worth and our goodness. Such “affirmations”, if repeated enough, can filter through to the way that we perceive ourselves.
In meditation practice, this approach can be useful when things are hard.
When things are less obviously difficult, though, we need a more subtle approach. More fundamental than the thoughts that we think about ourselves is the kind of attention that we bring to ourselves.
Compassionate attention - listening to yourself deeply
It’s common for meditators to have a desire or a goal to be more compassionate to themselves, but for this desire to be given power, it needs to be absorbed into our very attitudes and ways of paying attention in meditation.
We may be caught in a belief that attention should always be neutral in meditation. This is unhelpful, although it is a natural mistake to make, easy as it is to conflate non-judgement with neutrality. Non-judgement means refraining from labelling a particular experience (a thought, sensation, emotion, sound, smell…) as good or bad, or even refraining from giving it a name at all (perhaps we can feel the dense, pulling sensations in our temples as just sensations, rather than calling them “pain” or “headache”).
Non-judgement should not imply a kind of indifference, apathy, or coldness. In fact, sensitivity, care and warmth are very much conducive to non-judgement. Judgement arises from an atmosphere of aversion and resistance, and it doesn’t arise in an atmosphere of kindness.
Imagine listening to a good friend telling you about something that matters to them. You are attentive, and listening with a kind ear. You listen with a real sense of welcoming this person’s words, of allowing them to be exactly as they are. You are not trying to fix their problems. You want them to be honest with you, to let you know what’s really going on, so you can understand them more deeply.
This is an attitude that supercharges meditation practice. Deeply listening, with a capacity to feel what may be difficult, we drastically reduce the need to turn away from experience - to numb out or distract ourselves. We don’t need to solve our problems by trying to think them into submission, and we don’t need to dissociate to escape from difficulty. We can meet it with an open-hearted honesty. We can instead feel: this is how things are right now, and it doesn’t need to be any different.
Establishing ourselves in this kind of awareness, we can watch our experience unfolding. The body, arising in each moment as a field of sensation. The mind, narrating, or babbling away like a river, or drifting in the background. Our emotional states, changing like weather patterns. All can be held in an atmosphere of compassion. And as this atmosphere deepens and becomes more durable, it gives us more space to inquire into the nature of experience, providing a foundation for spiritual inquiry and insight.
I don’t mean to make this sound easy. Compassion will be more available at some times than others, and at times it will feel completely out of reach. This is normal, and not something to feel bad about. After all, it wouldn’t be very compassionate to judge ourselves for our lack of compassion.
Desire for self-compassion is self-compassion
Desire plays a very important role in meditation. Simplistic thinking about meditation often denigrates desire as something always harmful, assuming that it must always be a kind of craving or attachment. As if all desire was akin to a distracted longing for a slice of chocolate cake.
A full-bodied desire for positive qualities, like compassion, insight, understanding, peace, is powerful fuel for practice. In the case of self-compassion, there is a very direct way that we can harness this desire.
Firstly, we need to notice when there is a lack of self-compassion. Perhaps we are giving ourselves a hard time, or putting pressure on ourselves in some way. Be clear: right now, there is less compassion than I would like.
Then we can follow these steps:
- Notice that we genuinely, deeply, desire to be more compassionate towards ourselves
- Feel this desire. This step takes time. Spend some minutes feeling this. You will probably also feel the pain of closing your heart to yourself - the pain of the unavailability of compassion. It hurts. Feel this in your body. Feel the desire to be more understanding of yourself, to be more on your own side, to care for yourself in the best way you can. Feel it in your body. Feel it in your belly, your heart, your whole body. Breathe with it, let your breath stoke its fires. It’s very important to feel this in your body.
- Notice that this desire itself is kind. It is compassionate. Tune into the quality of kindness that is inherent in this desire. You wish something beautiful for yourself - you wish that you could hold yourself with more compassion. This is kindness in itself. Let your heart open to the kindness embodied in this desire. Allow the desire to reveal its goodness to you, and feel this in your body. Let the compassion be seen, to come out of the shadows. Encourage it to fill out your body, to move from a fiery desire to a more subtle atmosphere of warmth.
- Rest in this atmosphere of compassion, and situate yourself in that atmosphere. Receive yourself from there, witnessing your body, mind and heart doing their thing, all held in this atmosphere.
Compassion is a skill, and it builds over time
Like everything in meditation practice, it takes time to cultivate compassion. Part of this cultivation is to become aware of when compassion is present and absent. Part of it is to care about compassion - to want more of it in your life. And part of it is actually practicing it in a way that works for you. With all of these ingredients, a movement towards compassion is inevitable.
I have some guided meditations on compassion in my meditation library, check them out if you’re interested.