LOVING-KINDNESS

Embracing Emotional Pain by Jon Kabat-Zinn

A Loving-Kindness Meditation Script by Jon

We can see into the nature of the anger or grief or whatever it is, and in the seeing, in the embracing of it, in the knowing of it as we have seen it, attenuates, weakens, evaporates.

Very much like touching the soap bubble or like writing on water.

What emerges in such moments is nothing less than loving kindness itself, arising naturally from extended silence without any invitation.

Because it’s never, not.

Already here.

So, in a dignified sitting posture or lying down, whatever you prefer.

As you feel ready, bringing your awareness to the breath and the body is a hold breathing.

And resting here for a period of time, establishing a relatively stable platform of moment to moment awareness, riding on the waves of the breath.

And when you feel comfortable resting with the flowing of your breathing in this way.

Picturing in your mind’s eye to whatever degree you find it possible.

Someone in your life who loves you or who loved you unconditionally.

Evoking and giving yourself over to feeling the qualities of the selfless love and kindness they accord you or accorded you.

And the whole aura or field of.

Their love for you.

Right here, right now.

Breathing with these feelings.

Bathing in them.

Resting in the warmth and radiance of their heartfelt embracing of you just as you are or.

Drinking in the experience that you are unequivocally and unconditionally loved and accepted as you are.

Without having to be different.

Without having to be worthy of their love.

Without having to be particularly deserving.

In fact, you may not feel particularly worthy or deserving.

That does not matter.

It is in fact irrelevant.

The relevant fact is that you were or are loved.

Their love is for you, just as you are.

For who you are now already.

And perhaps always have been.

Allowing your own heart to bask in these feelings.

To be cradled in them.

Entrained into them.

To be rocked.

Moment by moment, in the swinging, rhythmic beating of the loving heart of another and in the cadences of your own breathing.

Allowing your heart to be held and bathed in this way by the warmth of this radiant, pulsing field of loving kindness.

And if you encounter some difficulty in bringing to mind or conjuring up such a person from memory in this moment.

Then see if you.

Can imagine someone treating you in that way.

In imagining with great vividness, the feelings of love and kindness and regard.

And that can actually serve equally well.

In this practice.

There as you feel ready and whenever you feel ready.

See if you can become the source as well as the object of these same feelings.

In other words, taking on these feelings for yourself as if they were your own rather than those of another.

Lingering as best you can with the rhythmic beating of your own heart, cradling in your own heart these feelings of love and acceptance and kindness for yourself.

Beyond judgment of any kind.

Just basking in feelings of loving kindness akin to the all loving embrace of a mother for her child.

Where you are simultaneously.

Both the mother and the child.

Resting here in these feelings as best you can.

Man from moment to moment.

Bathing in your own kind regards.

Your own complete acceptance of yourself as you are right here in this very moment.

Letting this feeling be self-sustaining, natural, in no way forced or coerced.

Even tiny tastes of it are bomb and sucker for all the negativity and self-criticism and self-loathing that can lie beneath the surface of our psyches.

In resting here.

In this field of loving kindness, this embrace of loving kindness.

You may find it useful to whisper to yourself inwardly the following phrases.

Or he’ll then being whispered to you by the wind, by the air.

By the breath.

By the world.

Or even asserted more strongly with great feeling.

May I be safe and protected?

And free from inner and outer harm.

May I be happy.

And contented.

May I be healthy and whole to whatever degree possible.

May I experience ease of well-being.

Gently, at your own pace, over and over.

Inwardly whispering, inwardly hearing, feeling, sensing.

May I be safe and protect it and free from inner and outer harm?

May I be happy and contented.

May I be healthy and whole to whatever degree possible.

May I experience ease of well-being.

May I be safe and protect it?

And free.

From inner.

And outer harm.

May I be happy and contented.

May I be healthy and whole.

To whatever degree possible.

May I experience ease?

Of well-being.

At first, it may feel artificial to be saying such things to yourself, or even thinking them.

After all, who is this I?

Who is wishing this?

And who is the I who’s receiving these wishes?

Ultimately, both vanish into the feeling of being safe.

And free from harm.

In this moment, into the feeling of being contented and happy in this moment.

The feeling of being whole in this moment since you already are whole.

The feeling of resting in ease, of well-being far from the disease and fragmentation we endure so much of the time.

This feeling.

This very feeling.

Is the essence.

Of loving kindness.

But you might object.

If this is a selfless practice.

Why am I focusing on myself, on my own feelings of safety and well-being, on my own happiness?

One response would be.

Because you are not separate from the universe that gave rise to you.

And so are as worthy an object of loving kindness as anything else or anyone else.

Your loving kindness cannot be either loving or kind if it does not include yourself.

But at the same time, you don’t need to worry.

It’s not limited to yourself because the field of loving kindness is limitless.

If you like, you can think of the loving kindness practice as we’ve been engaging it up to this point, on a relative level at least.

As tuning your instrument before you play it out in the world in this case.

Tuning the instrument is itself a huge act of love and kindness.

Not a means to an end.

Once you have established a fairly stable field of loving kindness around yourself and have lingered here for a time and the feeling of being held and cradled and rocked in its embrace.

You can intentionally expand the field of the heart, just as we sometimes expand the field of awareness in the mindfulness practice.

We can expand the field of loving kindness around our own heart.

And our own being inviting other beings, either singly or all as a mass, into this growing embrace.

This is not always so easy to do, and so it’s helpful to start with one person for whom you naturally harbor feelings of loving kindness.

And only if you care to explore it.

Otherwise, you can simply keep embracing yourself as the recipient of your own love and kindness, either using the phrases we are already using or modifying them to suit yourself.