Having been to a free lecture organised by the Melbourne University Buddist Studies Society I thought the topic roughly related to Master Lius eastern thinking lecture.
Its called the art of METTA meditation.
Similar to Liu, Buddhist Nun Venerable Dhammananda Bikkhuni believes that meditation can quieten the mind and allow an increase in our productivity.
In order to cultivate healthy emotions inside our bodies, they can't be stressed or doing too many things at once.
As Liu described the lifetime as a subsciption to various doctrines, Bikkhuni used the analogy of carpet to explain that no one carpet (religion) can cover the entire world. If we have protective slippers however (a strong belief of our own) then we are able to protect ourselves from that which we disagree with and assimilate with others harmoniously.
The most intriguing and obvious point was that our own happiness or unhappiness can all be controlled with our mind as long as it is strong. If our minds are not skillful and resilient then we can get hurt by others easily.
With strength comes the ability to not hurt others with our actions or words and not not be hurt by others.
It all sounds very fantastic but how to we do that?
Meditation is where it all starts. Its the usual deal. Let go of all of your anger for others in order to find peace within yourself. Bikkhuni does this by picturing the tenderness, kindness and honesty of small babies. So try thinking of small babies next time you meditate.
This acceptance has to extend to everyone. It has to be of all four types of people, lovers, friends, indifferents (strangers) and enemies. The stranger part seems stupid but think about how often during the day you get annoyed at cars swerving into your bike lane for example; they're strangers and they're annoying.
You need to know your own personality and be alright with all of it. If you aren't then it is impossible to love someone else properly. You won't be able to accept their bad qualities either. This is where the analogy "you hate others because they are a reflection of a part of you" comes from.
It all starts to sound very simple, if you omit/emit good energy then you will receive this from others with minor exception.
- you also have to ask for nothing in return. which would be difficult. something i'm not sure i'll ever be able to do. for example it would be hard to love someone and never expect them to love you.
- if you hate your mother or father then you essentially hate half of yourself and have not come to terms with it yet.
It is always important to remember that behind all nastiness is a reason, some underlying problem in someones life that treating them like an enemy will not fix. (This sort of sounds like Freuds idea about everyone having a hole in them that they are despereately trying to fill).
Heres the good part, after you've finally embraced your crappier side and unconditionally loved people and only put out good energy and meditated about all of this for a really really long time, the following may or may not occur
- higher levels of concentration
- protection from angels (she said it not me)
- you will have a beautiful face that never carries any sign of stress (always a plus)
- you will be incapable of killing others
- You will cease to have bad dreams because you are dealing with all problems in the conscious mind and they do not seep into your unconscious (something to tell Freud)
- you will sleep easy and feel rested when you wake up
- you can't go to hell (not sure if that even exists but would be a good precautionary measure)
- you will have a good relationship with all types of people
- you will seldom feel confused and your mind will remain clean.
My question is when are you supposed to get angry? If someone does something unprovocably horrible to you, are you supposed to just accept that? I could not think of anything worse than creating a pushover exterior for yourself. It will create a mentality that the behaviour is tolerable and therefore correct.
I think before all this accpeting and loving etc happens you need to get quite angry about things in order to stick up for yourself and prevent them happening again.
There is also a question of acceptance versus pushing yourself. How would anyone ever personally improve if they accepted their emotional state as it was and didn't progress? I guess you'd have to accept in order to progress so that each minor progression is just seen as an added bonus on top of something you're already happy with.
And thats all I've got on Loving-Kindness Meditation
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