Recently, while doing a meditation practice based on compassion, I found – much to my dismay – that my focus was anywhere but on my practice. What made it even worse (and even embarrassing) was that I was doing the practice for a friend of mine who had experienced a significant medical emergency.

In a previous post in this site, Forget About Yourself, Meditate for the Sake of Others!, we discussed using our meditation as an opportunity to meditate for the benefit of others. But, what about when we are meditating for the benefit of others and can’t even bring our mind to bear on the subject of our meditation?

What happens when we find ourselves so caught up in the habitual patterns of our distractions that our most sincere intention of focusing on another is thwarted by our tendency to get locked into our claustrophobic habit of thinking of ourselves?

Meditation is a state of non-distraction, whereby whatever arises within our mind or within our sense faculties (eye, ear, nose, etc) is allowed to simply be, without our elaborating on these phenomena. So, how is it any different when we’re meditating for the benefit of another, practicing directing our attention of compassion towards them, and practicing working with the distractions of our mind when we’re “just meditating?”

What I’ve noticed is that there’s no difference in the quality of my meditation or – more commonly – in the amount of my distractions, whether I’m meditating for the benefit of another or for the benefit of my own mind. The key difference seems to be in how I relate to, or react to, my distractions. When I’m meditating with others in mind, I seem to beat myself up more for having become distracted than I do when I’m doing it “just for myself.” Why is this?

In cultivating compassion, what we’re doing is cultivating a mind free from distractions and judgments, much like we’re doing when we’re practicing meditation…in fact, the very same thing that we’re doing when we’re meditating. One quote about compassion that I’ve used a lot when discussing self-compassion is from James Finley’s book, Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God. It so clearly presents to us how we have to be with ourselves when meditating that it equally applies when we’re working on a compassionate contemplation. The quote is:

Our feelings of impatience and frustration with ourselves in meditation are certainly understandable, especially when they persist in spite of our best efforts to overcome them. But as we sit in meditation we can begin to recognize the subtle violence inherent in our impatience with ourselves. As our awareness and understanding of our limitations in meditation continue to deepen, we begin to gain greater insight into what is happening. We realize we are catching ourselves in the act of perpetuating violence towards our wandering mind, our wayward will, or our sleepiness—in short, toward those very aspects of our self that need to be loved the most. We realize that to stop meditating simply because we feel we are not good at it amounts to abandoning the very aspects of our self that need patience and loving encouragement. We see that the whole venture in meditation is going to be a rough ride unless we can learn not to invade and abandon ourselves in response to all the ways in which meditation exposes our limitations and shortcomings. It is precisely at this point that we begin to appreciate the liberating power of compassion.[i]

I like this quote so much because it so accurately describes what I do to myself when I find myself distracted during my meditations on compassion. I’ve practiced long meditation long enough so that I don’t tend to perpetuate violence towards my wandering mind (borrowing words from Finley). However, when it comes to focusing on another, I still slip into this unconscious pattern of harming myself by bringing judgment to bear upon my wandering mind. What to do?

Stop it! No, seriously, that seems to be what it takes. We need to remember that even when we’re meditating compassionately for the benefit of another, the distractions that we encounter are no more important or serious than those that we encounter when we’re “just meditating.” Therefore, it behooves us to approach our wandering and compassionate mind with the same degree of forgiveness that we have for our meditating mind; bringing our mind back to the present, moment-to-moment awareness when we find ourselves distracted. Try it.

As always, please feel free to share your comments. Let me and others know what situations you find yourself in when you’re able to be compassionate with yourself when finding yourself distracted during a compassionate moment. And, as always, please feel free to contact me if you’d like to see additional content or other discussions on this site.For more information on how to meditate, exercises in working with the breath, and other nifty stuff, please see the Related Posts below.

Also, don’t forget to download the free ebook, Can Meditation Change the Way that You View Your World?, for help with getting started in you meditation practice. Also, you can now download the new ebook, How to Work with the Four Distractions to Meditation.

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