Using The Mother As A Model In Meditation :: essays research papers

I feel that using the mother as a model in meditation fascinating because one can Personalize their own experience by visualizing his/her own mother and in effect, associate inner emotion & raw compassion for the one who created and protected them. I also thought that the realization of immense inapplicable rebirths, that everyone has been everyone’s mother in a sense, is a powerful tool towards introducing compassion for all beings. Just understanding the respectful nature of this compassion in general is a basic fundamental towards what the second Dally Lama, Gendun Gyatso calls ‘giving and taking’. It (‘giving and taking’) has many phases, and taking responsibility, and feeling empathy, towards all things is essential throughout. First one pictures his/her own mother personalized in his/her own frame of reference and associates the compassion of his/her mother towards other people close, like friends, family and pets by ‘giving and taking’. The second level of this concentration of the mind is feeling compassion for his/her enemy and even strangers he or she has never ever met. The next stage of this meditation is of course having compassion for all beings through compassion for the sake of helping other people to fulfill enlightenment.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  I should mention that anyone who wishes to practice the meditation of ‘giving and taking’ must have the self control and discipline attained by more basic meditations, for example 'mindfulness of breath'. With out such discipline, his/her mind may easily be swayed by any various stimulation that ‘giving and taking’ may evoke.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  I thought it was interesting the book said that realizing the love of my Mother is indirectly responsible for who I am today, and here I sit writing and studying the holy practice of Dharma. And here I am appreciating my good fortune. And of course stay away from the negative and strive towards the positive for all, eliminate the harmful and to produce and encourage happiness towards all.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  I also want to add some positive criticism towards the excerpt ‘How to Meditate upon the Ultimate Bodhi-Mind’, on page 163 of ‘Entering the Stream’.