“Be full of kindness toward yourself. Accept yourself
just as you are. Make peace with your shortcomings. Embrace even your
weaknesses. Be gentle and forgiving with yourself as you are at this very
moment. If thoughts arise as to how you should be such and such a way, let them
go. Establish fully the depth of these feelings of goodwill and kindness. Let
the power of loving friendliness saturate your entire body and mind. Relax in
its warmth and radiance. Expand this feeling to your loved ones, to people you
don’t know or feel neutrally about – and even to your adversaries!”
- Bhante G., Mindfulness in Plain
English
In the West, many teachers and proponents of
mindfulness work with the belief that all mindfulness practice inherently
includes a compassion component, therefore compassion does not have to be
taught. I maintain, however, that compassion practice should be taught directly
during any mindfulness training, particularly in the West, and especially with
beginners. Without direct instruction in compassion and in particular
self-compassion, mindfulness loses one of its most valuable ethical anchors,
and vulnerable students can get lost in self-doubt, feelings of unworthiness,
or failure. Without kindness, mindfulness could even become dangerous.
In an effort to make
mindfulness easier to mainstream, in an effort to get more people onto cushions
and into the present moment, some of the ethical and moral guidelines of the
practice have been left behind. Jon Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness many ways,
but often with these basic phrases: “moment-to-moment, non-reactive,
non-judgmental attending …” (p. 286). I feel that this focus on a
non-judgmental attitude is incorrect – that mindfulness is not non-judgmental.
Rather, there is a filter of gentleness, of kindness, of reverence that must be
present for mindfulness to arise. Mindfulness practice separated from
befriending, from gentleness, loses some of its potential to affect positive
change in the practitioner’s life and in the world at large. I agree with Ed
Halliwell, who recently wrote that “Mindfulness just isn’t mindfulness without
kindfulness … Mindfulness is just not
neutral noticing. There are a clear set of attitudes which underpin the
practice, and compassion may be the most important.”
Compassion
and lovingkindness are two of the four heavenly abodes taught by the Buddha
along with sympathetic joy, and equanimity. “Heavenly abodes” is the most
common translation from Pali, but, according to Nyanaponika Thera, another
translation is “sublime states of mind.” They are called abodes because the
mind should, with practice, come to reside in them more often than not. It is
recommended in the teachings that practitioners use these sublime mindstates as
“… principles of conduct and objects of reflection but also as subjects of
methodical meditation.” (Thera). In other words, these desired states of mind
require practice in order to manifest.
The
modern mindfulness movement in the West largely owes its existence to Jon
Kabat-Zinn’s groundbreaking work in bringing mindfulness to the masses through
his Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program. In designing that
program for use in the medical community, Kabat-Zinn sought to remove any
potentially-limiting religious undertones from the traditional vipassana, or insight, meditation
practice. There are some that feel that this streamlining of mindfulness has
led to “McMindfulness” – a repackaging and repurposing of the rich practices
steeped in Buddhism and centuries of moral and ethical study for the more
fast-paced, impatient, grasping West. Jon Kabat-Zinn discusses his decision not
to include lovingkindness as an explicit practice in his MBSR programs. He
feels that “…all meditation practices are fundamentally acts of lovingkindness,
and when taught and practiced that way, obviate the need for a single practice
claiming that orientation.” (Kabat-Zinn, p. 285).
As
a beginning meditator, and, in fact, for several years of practice and of
studying Kabat-Zinn’s books and methods, I personally did not understand that
the awareness that was being cultivated was to be of a gentle or loving nature,
and because of this, I found that it was difficult to sustain practice both in
length of an individual sitting and in trying to maintain a daily practice over
weeks or months or years. With my default mode naturally turning toward
self-criticism, the practice of mindfulness was just another place where I practiced
critical mind states: I did not feel good enough, or I felt like there was
something lacking in my practice that made it not worth the effort to maintain.
Simply put, over time, I felt like I was not meditating correctly, and perhaps
I was not cut out for the practice. With time and with a better understanding
of lovingkindness, practices, however, my practice has flourished.
In reviewing some of the
prominent texts on mindfulness, I have found that different teachers choose to
approach the subject of teaching mindfulness in different ways. Jon Kabat-Zinn,
as we have seen, feels that the practice of mindfulness itself contains
lovingkindness, and so the focus, especially with beginners, can be placed
firmly and exclusively on the mindfulness practice. He states: “… my biggest
reservation in regard to teaching formal lovingkindness practice was that it
might be confusing for people who were in the early stages of being introduced
for the first time to the attitude and practice of non-doing and non-striving
that underlie all the meditation practices … The reason for my hesitation was
that in the instructions for lovingkindness meditation, there is an inevitable
sense that you are being invited to engage in doing something, namely invoking
particular feelings and thoughts and generating desirable states of mind and
heart.” (p. 285-286)
In the newest edition of his
influential book Mindfulness in Plain
English, Bhante Gunaratana (known
as Bhante G by his students) has added an afterward that explains metta practice. Bhante G explains how he
translates the word metta: “The word metta comes from another Pali word, mitra, which means ‘friend.’ That is why
I prefer to use the phrase ‘loving friendliness’ as a translation of metta, rather than ‘loving kindness.’
The Sanskrit word mitra also refers
to the sun … Just as the sun’s rays provide energy for all living things, the
warmth and radiance of metta flows in
the heart of all living beings.” (Gunaratana, p. 181)
Bhante G splits off a bit from Kabat-Zinn in describing the focus of
learning mindfulness. Here Bhante G seems to be describing
learning the two practices – mindfulness and loving friendliness - in unison
and practicing them together: “Without
loving friendliness, our practice of mindfulness will never successfully break
through our craving and rigid sense of self. Mindfulness, in turn, is a
necessary basis for developing loving friendliness. The two are always
developed together …” (p. 177)
Christopher
Germer, a clinical psychologist who uses mindfulness and compassion-based psychotherapy
in his work, describes three levels of mindfulness practice. One starts with
focused awareness, usually on the breath, then moves on to choiceless awareness
or open monitoring, where attention is granted to whatever sensations or
thoughts arise in the moment. From there, the practitioner moves on to
lovingkindness and compassion practices. (Germer, p. 16-22) Each of these
aspects of practice can be a point of meditative focus and study in its own
right. As Germer describes it, focused awareness is how most mindfulness
practices begin, bringing attention to the breath or other bodily sensations
over and over again for a duration of time. By contrast, in open monitoring, “…
conscious attention moves naturally among the changing elements of experience …
open monitoring cultivates equanimity in the midst of random and unexpected
life events. Technically, mindfulness refers to the skill of open monitoring.”
(Germer, p. 18)
Germer
describes loving-kindness practice as “the quality of mindful awareness – the
attitude or emotion – rather than the direction of the awareness.” (p. 19) Lovingkindness
brings “… tenderness, soothing, comfort, ease, care, and connection. These
qualities are particularly important when we’re dealing with difficult emotions
that constrict our awareness and activate our defenses.” (p. 19)
My
practice has only gotten deeper with greater attention to lovingkindness and
less focus on sustaining focused attention on sensory details. In my practice
and in my students’ practices, we have found that using the breath or sensory
input as the only anchors can be limiting. Some of us have a natural tendency
to be too tuned in to sensory input already. For instance, some of my students
with asthma and other respiratory ailments find that focusing on the breath
evokes anxiety. For some, physical pain is constant and debilitating, and so
practices that are relaxing for others, such as guided relaxation or body
scans, only serve to turn up the volume on their pain perception. For some with
Asperger’s, the work is in turning down sensory input rather than turning it
up. In my work in yoga therapy, I have found that difficulties with being still
particularly plague those who are experiencing anxiety, panic, hyperactivity
and even more run-of-the-mill daily stress.
With anxiety and stress,
the mind and nervous system can feel as if they have been hijacked by the
fight, flight, freeze response. In this state, being present to bodily
sensations or to whatever arises in the field of awareness is challenging to
say the least. There are other mind states that do not lend themselves to
mindfulness practice, as well, at least in the beginning of learning how to
sit. Kristin Neff is a leading
contemporary scholar of self-compassion who currently is working to understand
the efficacy of self-compassion in wellness and to spread the practice of
self-compassion in a way that mirrors Jon Kabat-Zinn’s work with mindfulness. She
states: “Intuitively, it would
seem optimal to learn mindfulness before self-compassion given that mindfulness
is needed for compassion. However, for people suffering from severe shame or
self-criticism, they might need to first cultivate self-compassion in order to
have the sense of emotional safety needed to fully turn toward their pain with
mindfulness.” (Neff, in press, p. 26-28) Contradicting himself a bit, Jon
Kabat-Zinn seems to agree that explicit instruction in self-compassion is
sometimes necessary for individual practitioners dealing with particular mindstates:
“…these practices can sometimes
serve as a necessary and skillful antidote to mind states such as ferocious
anger, which may at the time of their arising be simply too strong to attend to
via direct observation unless one’s practice is very developed. At such times,
formal lovingkindness practice can function to soften one’s relationship to
such overwhelmingly afflictive mind states, so that we can avoid succumbing
completely to their energies. It also makes such mind states more approachable
and less intractable.” (p. 287)
Interestingly,
metta as a practice originally was
offered by the Buddha as a way to deal with anxiety and fear. The Buddha sent monks to meditate in a forest occupied by
tree spirits. The spirits tried to expel the monks, and, indeed, the monks were
afraid and ran back to the Buddha, begging to be sent somewhere else to
practice. The Buddha sent the monks back to the same enchanted forest but with
the protection of the metta
practices. “This was the first teaching of metta
meditation … it is said that the monks went back and practiced metta, so that the tree spirits became
quite moved by the beauty of the loving energy filling the forest, and resolved
to care for and serve the monks in all ways.” (Salzberg, p. 25)
In my teaching, I have
found that children delight in this story of the forest monks, and they tend to
love the idea of having a meditation practice that can help them to dispel
fear. The book Buddha at Bedtime by
Dharmachari Nagaraja has a beautiful metta
meditation for children that is a favorite of the youngest yogis with whom I
practice. The metta phrases suggested
there are “May I be happy – may I be really happy from my head right down to my
toes. I love myself dearly” with the focus first on the self, then on friends,
teachers, and neighbors, then on all beings (Nagaraja, p. 137).
Salzberg (p. 39-40) describes the beginning steps of the metta practice for adults, where one
gently repeats phrases of goodwill for ourselves and then for others. First,
practitioners sit comfortably and reflect on good things about themselves or on
their wishes for happiness. Then practitioners choose phrases that express what
they most deeply wish for themselves and they repeat these phrases,
coordinating this repetition with the breath or just resting on the phrases
themselves in turn. As I have been taught, these phrases are some variation of:
“May I be safe, may I be happy, may I live with ease.”
As a word of warning, Salzberg notes: “There are times
when feelings of unworthiness come up strongly, and you clearly see the
conditions that limit your love for yourself. Breathe gently, accept that these
feelings have arisen, remember the beauty of your wish to be happy, and return
to the metta phrases.” (Salzberg, p. 40) In a formal metta practice, these phrases are then turned outward to focus on a
dear teacher, a difficult person, adversary, or enemy, and then the universe at
large or all sentient beings, each in turn. Interestingly, another guiding
teacher, Narayan Liebenson, suggests that the difficult person, or enemy, might
be oneself.
As we can see from all of these teachings, these practices of befriending
begin with a focus on the self, making self-compassion the very basic seed of
the formal practice of lovingkindness. Typically, one begins the practice by
wishing love and good things for the self. Neff’s definition of self-compassion
has been incredibly useful in my own practice and teaching. She describes three
interacting components of the self-compassion practice: “…self-kindness versus
self-judgment, a sense of common humanity versus isolation, and mindfulness
versus over-identification when confronting painful self-relevant thoughts and
emotions.” (Neff & Germer, p. 28) It is useful to look at each of these
three components of self-compassion - self-kindness, a sense of common
humanity, and mindfulness - separately.
In the West, we put great value on being kind to others, but, either
directly or through messages from the omnipresent media, we are often taught to
be harshly critical of ourselves. Imagine, for a moment, if you were to direct
your own harsh self-talk toward a loved one and actually gave that self-talk
voice. We can be cruel to ourselves in ways that we would never tolerate if we
directed that cruelty outward. Neff (in press, p. 5) explains self-kindness as
working to be “… supportive and understanding toward ourselves. Our inner
dialogues are gentle and encouraging rather than harsh and belittling. This
means that instead of continually punishing ourselves for not being good
enough, we kindly acknowledge that we’re doing the best we can … instead of
immediately trying to control or fix the problem, a self-compassionate response
might entail pausing first to offer oneself soothing and comfort.” (Neff &
Germer, p. 28)
Common humanity, the second basic tenet of self-compassion, involves
recognizing that, as human beings, we suffer. This is one of the primary philosophical
building blocks of Buddhism. For some, when difficulty arises, there is a sense
of isolation, a sense of “Why me?”, or a general feeling that everyone else is
somehow better off, somehow immune to suffering. Instead of seeing suffering as
a basic human trait, it is easy to find oneself feeling singled out.
“Self-compassion connects one’s own flawed condition to the shared human
condition, so that features of the self are considered from a broad, inclusive
perspective … When failures and disappointments are experienced as an
aberration not shared by the rest of humankind, people may feel isolated from
others who are presumably leading ‘normal’ happy lives.” (Neff & Germer, p.
29)
The idea of commonality of suffering is another founding principle of the
Buddha’s teachings. The Buddha stated this fact as part of his Four Noble Truths:
“The first Noble Truth of the Buddha’s teachings is the centrality,
universality, and unavoidability of dukkha, this innate suffering of dis-ease
that invariably, in subtle or not-subtle-at-all ways, colors and conditions the
deep structure of our very lives. All Buddhist meditative practices revolve
around the recognition of dukkha, the identification of its root causes, and
the description, development, and deployment of pathways whereby we might each
become free from its oppressive, blinding, and imprisoning influences.” (Kabat-Zinn,
p. 127-128)
In contrast, in the dominant U.S. culture, we tend to avoid suffering at
all costs. After all, one of our nation’s founding truths is the right to the
pursuit of happiness! We stay busy to avoid looking at suffering, we run from
it, push it down, medicate it away, cover it up with gloss and glitter, and distract
ourselves from it with our various entertainments. Further, it is a common part
of our identification as fiercely individualistic that we act alone, and when
we suffer, we often are taught to suffer alone and privately, putting on masks
of positivity for the outside world. In our culture, asking for help – or even
acknowledging to oneself that one might need help - can be seen as weakness.
Common humanity asks us to see that we are all connected, that we all suffer,
and that we all need compassion and help (even from ourselves) during times of
suffering. “With self-compassion … we take the stance of a compassionate
‘other’ toward ourselves, allowing us to take a broader perspective on our selves
and our lives. By remembering the shared human experience, we feel less
isolated when we are in pain … Self-compassion recognizes that we all suffer,
and therefore fosters a connected mindset that is inclusive of others.” (Neff,
in press, p. 5)
In the West, another limit is often placed on self-compassion by prevailing
cultural thought. Here, we share the idea that we are flawed from the
beginning. Steeped in our traditions of original sin, we are taught that we are
flawed from birth (or maybe even conception). Because of the sins of our forbearers,
we need to be fixed, and our traditions teach that this fixing can only come
from some other – a priest or preacher, from God, from outside of ourselves. In
contrast, in the Buddhist traditions, it is taught that basic human nature is
pure and that answers come from within:
Traditionally,
Buddhists are reluctant to talk about the ultimate nature of human beings. But
those who are willing to make descriptive statements at all usually say that
our ultimate essence or buddha nature is pure, holy, and inherently good. The
only reason that human beings appear otherwise is that their experience of that
ultimate essence has been hindered; it has been blocked like water behind a
dam. The hindrances are the bricks of which that dam is built. As mindfulness
dissolves the bricks, holes are punched in the dam, and compassion and
sympathetic joy come flooding forward. As meditative mindfulness develops, your
whole experience of life changes. Your experience of being alive, the very
sensation of being conscious becomes lucid and precise, no longer just an
unnoticed background for your preoccupations. It becomes a thing consistently
perceived. (Gunaratana, p. 170).
The Buddhist
teachings tell us that we all have Buddha Nature, or the embryo of the Buddha, tathagata-garbha, within us. We are all
born whole and pure, embodiments of the Buddha nature, and we all have the
capacity within us to reach enlightenment. In some Buddhist traditions, we can
do this immediately, in this lifetime, and in others, it is the effort of many
lifetimes. This Buddha Nature at our center can give us something very
beautiful and innate to tap into when looking for ways to learn to practice
self-compassion, ways to learn to love ourselves once more.
Further, many of us feel that we only can love ourselves if we are worthy
of love. This is the difference between self-esteem and self-compassion.
Self-esteem has conditions attached to it, for example, “I will love myself if
I get that big bonus during my review at work tomorrow,” or, “If only I could
lose ten pounds, then I would be able to love myself.” Self-compassion is
loving yourself simply because you are. To overcome potentially a lifetime of
learning that we only are worthy of love under certain conditions, practicing
self-compassion must be just that – a practice.
There are moment-by-moment ways to practice self-compassion in everyday
life as difficulties inevitably arise: self-soothing and giving oneself
comfort, recognizing the commonality of suffering throughout the human
experience. There are more formal ways to practice as well. Neff has aspired to
boil down the broader practices of metta
to just self-compassion and to simplify and systematize these practices so that
they can be experienced by a broad group of people in the general public and in
clinical populations. Neff also aspires to have her work be quantifiable so
that the outcomes and effects of the practice on the various populations can be
observed and reported on. To that end, she has developed a program called
Mindful Self-Compassion, or MSC. In Neff & Germer (p. 30-31) she describes
the particulars of this program as follows:
The
structure of MSC is modeled on MBSR, with participants meeting for 2 or 2 ½
hours once a week over the course of 8 weeks and also meeting for a half-day
meditation retreat … MSC teaches both formal (sitting meditation) and informal
(during daily life) self-compassion practices. There are experiential exercises
and discussion periods in each MSC session in addition to homework assignments
to help participants learn how to be kinder to themselves. The goal is to
provide participants with a variety of tools to increase self-compassion, which
they can integrate into their lives ... The program also teaches general skills
of loving-kindness, which is a type of friendly benevolence given to oneself in
everyday situations (compassion is mainly relevant for situations involving
emotional distress) … The program makes it clear how judging oneself when
things go wrong tends to exacerbate emotional pain, while self-compassion helps
to alleviate that pain …
In place of the
traditional metta phrases, in Mindful
Self-Compassion, practitioners are taught these phrases: “May I feel safe, may
I feel peaceful, may I be kind to myself, may I accept myself as I am.” The
final phrase, “may I accept myself as I am” may prove to be the crux of the
self-compassion practice, and, indeed, the crux of mindfulness as well.
Kristin Neff has shown that Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) “… is effective
at increasing self-compassion, mindfulness, compassion for others, and other
aspects of wellbeing. Moreover, the benefits of MSC appear to be enduring,
lasting at least 1 year after completion of the program.” (Neff & Germer, p.
40) This study measured participants’ perception of increases in the following
aspects of well-being: mindfulness, compassion for others, and life
satisfaction while also measuring participants’ perception of decreases in
depression, anxiety, stress, and emotional avoidance. Further, Neff found:
“…the more MSC participants practiced formal meditation, the more they
increased their self-compassion levels. Similarly, the degree that participants
practiced informal self-compassion techniques (e.g., putting a hand over one’s
heart in times of stress) in daily life also predicted gains in
self-compassion. This implies that self-compassion is a teachable skill that is
‘dose dependent.’ The more you practice it the more you learn it.” (Neff &
Germer, p. 40)
It appears that healthy early childhood experiences and relationships may
lay the groundwork for the development of self-compassion. “Research supports
the notion that self-compassion is related to the care-giving system and early
childhood interactions. People who lack self-compassion are more likely to have
critical mothers, for instance, come from families in which there was a lot of
conflict, and display insecure attachment patterns, while the opposite is true
for those with higher levels of self-compassion.” (Neff & McGeehee, 2010)
Even though early childhood experiences play a part in developing healthy
levels of self-compassion in an individual, self-compassion skills can be
taught, as Neff shows in her work with MSC.
One limitation of Neff’s work so far is that most of her study participants
had prior mindfulness experience, but she (in press, p. 18-19) addresses this,
“… it might be that practices taught in the program are only effective for
those who already know how to meditate. On the other hand, the fact that MSC
participants increased in wellbeing even though most had prior meditation
experience suggests that MSC offers tangible benefits over and above
mindfulness meditation alone.”
Neff continues to research MSC practices in settings comparable to those
that Kabat-Zinn has used to quantify the effects of MSBR. Neff is showing that:
“Overall, research findings so far suggest that self-compassion may be a
stronger predictor of depression, happiness, life satisfaction and
psychological wellbeing than mindfulness alone.” (in press, p. 23) She
describes situations where one can be mindful without being accepting, and any
meditator who has practiced for any length of time will be familiar with this
scenario:
Feelings
of self-kindness and common humanity may often accompany mindfulness of painful
experiences, of course, so that self-compassion may automatically co-arise with
mindfulness itself. The two do not always
co-arise, however. It is possible to be mindfully aware of painful thoughts and
feelings without actively soothing and comforting oneself, or remembering that
these feelings are part of the shared human experience. Sometimes it takes an
extra intentional effort to be compassionate toward our own suffering,
especially when our painful thoughts and emotions involve self-judgments and
feelings of inadequacy. (Neff, in press, p. 20)
Metta or
lovingkindness or loving friendliness is a powerful practice that deserves to
be experienced fully on its own with dedicated practice. It is my belief that
it should be taught alongside mindfulness both as a way for practitioners to
support themselves in the practice of meditation and as a way for practitioners
to bolster themselves in the face of difficulties that may arise on the mat or
cushion. This is particularly important for beginner meditators, for child
meditators, and for meditators raised on the prevailing cultural belief in the
West that the individual is inherently flawed. Lovingkindness, particularly its
seed practice of self-compassion, can be a powerful antidote to difficult
mindstates for those whose experiences on the cushion include anxiety, stress,
self-doubt, fear, and other big emotions or nervous system activation.
“Ironically, we yearn for an intrinsic happiness that has been our birthright
all along. It has proven so elusive and so ephemeral because we have been so
lost in our own minds’ desires, by virtue of having, to one degree or another,
lost our minds and forgotten our hearts.” (Kabat-Zinn, p. 597). Lovingkindness
and self-compassion are the map back to our hearts, to a deep, lasting, and
loving connection with ourselves and to a deep, lasting, and loving connection
with all beings.
References
Bhante, Henepola Gunaratana. (2002). Mindfulness in Plain English. Boston,
MA: Wisdom Publications.
Germer, Christopher K., Ronald D. Siegel, Paul R. Fulton, eds. (2005). Mindfulness and Psychotherapy.
New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Halliwell, Ed. (2014). “The Power of
Kindness (and One Surefire Way to Know If You ‘Get’ Mindfulness).” Retrieved
from http://www.mindful.org/mindful-voices/the-examined-life/.
Kabat-Zinn, J. (2005). Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and
the World through Mindfulness. New York, NY: Hyperion.
Nagaraja,
Dharmachari. (2008). Buddha at Bedtime:
Tales of Love and Wisdom for You to Read with your Child to Enchant, Enlighten,
and Inspire. London: Watkins Publishing.
Neff, K. D., &
Dahm, K. A. (in press). “Self-Compassion: What it is, what it does, and how it
relates to mindfulness”. To appear in in M. Robinson, B. Meier & B. Ostafin
(Eds.) Mindfulness and Self-Regulation.
New York: Springer. Retrieved from www.self-compassion.org.
Neff, K. D., & Germer, C. K.
(2013). A Pilot Study and Randomized Controlled Trial of the Mindful
Self-Compassion Program. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 69(1),
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Neff, K. D. & McGeehee, P.
(2010). Self-compassion and psychological resilience among adolescents and
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Salzberg, S. (2004). Lovingkindness:
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