Daily Lamrim

The purpose of this meditation is to practice the mental activity of giving. In this meditation we imagine that we fulfil our wish for all living beings be experience happiness by directly giving them happiness.

I began the meditation by making the appropriate preparations, and then settled down to clear my mind by following a clarity of mind meditation. I brought my centre of awareness down to my heart, and imagined myself at the centre of an infinitely large ocean. The water was completely clear – clearer than a clear sky, clearer than a clean mirror – completely clear, in a different way from physically clear.  I focused on being in this ocean of clarity and let thoughts rise and fall away. I imagined that these thoughts were like bubbles in the ocean. Bubbles come from below, pass by me, and then disappear upwards, into the clarity of mind.

After a while, my mind felt completely still, completely clear. I remained in this peace for a while, before moving on.

I then thought about my wish for everyone to be happy. I thought about my previous meditations, where I so desperately wished for all living beings to find true happiness. I let the wish manifest once more, and then imagined my body slowly transforming into a wish fulfilling jewel, like that held by Avalokiteshvara at his heart.  I imagined light rays radiating from my jewel body and touching all living beings, filling them with happiness. I felt joined to them all in happiness – Universal Happiness. I let the happiness flood into my heart, and kept it in my attention for the rest of the meditation.

Needless to say, I am going to enjoy this week of meditations on giving

Dedication

May all living beings experience pure happiness, and quickly become enlightened for the sake of all.

Practice in the Meditation Break

I will remember my wish for everyone to experience pure happiness, and imagine light rays joining us in pure happiness.

I meditated today while on the train going back home after a few days away in London.

I meditated on wishing love and it struck me that living beings are rather like passengers on a train of dissatisfaction. I developed the wish for them to be able to get off the train and find true happiness. I imagined this scenario and worried a bit about what they would find if they go off the train. After all, unsatisfactory though it is, the train is all they know, and the train IS going somewhere, which is probably a good thing.

But then it seemed to me that once they were off it they could see that this train of dissatisfaction was actually just running around again and again in one big loop, going nowhere.

I wished sincerely that all living beings could find their way off this train, and find happiness.

I meditated today on wishing love. I wished that all living beings could experience the bliss of pure happiness. It seemed so unlikely that this could happen. Am I being realistic?

The answer is that nothing will happen without at least one person having the wish to achieve it.

I will be the one who holds the wish, and I will keep it in my heart. May everyone be happy.

I meditated today on the wish that all living beings could complete their journey from beings suffering in samsara to beings completely free from suffering, experiencing pure happiness.

I meditated today on wishing love, wishing that the door to happiness could be opened for every living being.

The purpose of this meditation is to generate a lovely feeling of wishing others to be happy.

I began by making the appropriate preparations for meditation, and then I remembered that all living beings (visualised around me) have been my kind mothers in the past, and continue to be kind to me even now. I thought of how, when they were my mother, they wanted nothing but the best for me. They would go without so that I could have the best food, the best clothes, the best comfort she could obtain.

I then thought of how I in turn wish the best for them. I reminded myself that through my practice of taking, I have removed all their suffering. They enjoy the neutral feeling of freedom from suffering, and to them it feels like bliss. But there is so much more. There is undreamed of happiness to be experienced in the blissful state of inner peace. I wished that all living beings could experience this blissful inner peace continuously.

It seemed to me that their journey out of suffering was like rising up from darkness up to a pure white expanse of light, like rising up from the monochrome depths of a black ocean of suffering, to the white surface. Although wonderful, I wish for more. I want the best for them. I wish them to carry on rising and experience the technicolour bliss of complete, permanent happiness.

I focused on this idea of wishing all living beings could rise up from darkness to light to colour and let my mind rest on this. Slowly a feeling which encapsulated the whole idea formed in my heart, and when it was clear, I focused on it. I tried to keep my attention on this feeling for the rest of the meditation.

Dedication

May all living beings experience pure, everlasting happiness, and quickly attain enlightenment for the benefit of all.

Practice in the Meditation Break

I will wish for people to experience ‘technicolour’ happiness.

The purpose of this meditation is to generate a feeling of wishing others to be happy.

I began by making the appropriate preparations for meditation  and then thought about how all my kind mothers have looked after me so kindly in the past. I felt a love for them, and I wanted only for them to be happy.

I focused on all the living beings around me and I wished that they could find happiness both now and for evermore. I kept repeating to myself ‘May you all find happiness now and for evermore’. I was filled with a lovely feeling of part wishing them to be happy and part actually feeling their potential happiness.

It was a lovely and meaningful feeling, and I focused on it for the rest of the meditation.

Dedication

May all living beings find happiness now and for evermore.

Practice in the Meditation Break

I need to constantly pay attention to what my mind is doing in the meditation break, and when I realise that I am day dreaming, I will try to bring my mind to my meditation object of today.

The purpose of this meditation is to generate a feeling, a really strong feeling of wishing for happiness for all living beings.

I began the meditation by making the appropriate preparations, and then I started by remembering that all living beings are my kind mother. They have been so very kind to me – I thought about this for a while, and felt a natural warm and affectionate feeling develop towards them.

I then thought about how their happiness is important. They struggle every day to find happiness but happiness eludes them.

I began wishing that they could find happiness and I began to feel like I was lifting them somehow – lifting them towards happiness. I imagined how wonderful it would be if they could all experience true happiness for the rest of lives, and for all their future lives.

I focused on this feeling, which was very profound and enjoyable, for the rest of the meditation. When I lost my concentration, I went back to my contemplation of wishing them to be happy, and when the feeling arose again, I focused on it once more.

Dedication

May all living beings find perfect happiness, and become enlightened beings.

Practice in the Meditation Break

I will try to remember my wish for everyone to be happy.