Meditation and Compassion

The most basic instructions given to beginning meditators (especially in the Vipassana tradition, also called "mindfulness" or "insight" meditation) usually include some reference to compassion. Engaging in mindfulness meditation involves the compassionate awareness (and clear observation) of whatever is going on right now, in the present moment. This attitudinal stance is not automatic; it takes practice! At first, nearly all beginning meditators find that they are highly judgmental about their own meditation practice. They measure themelves and their practice against various standards and preconceptions about what meditation "should" be like, and, many times, when it is not that way, they become discouraged and disappointed in themselves. They understand, for example, that the instruction is to "pay attention to the sensations of breathing," and they do that, for a little while; but, inevitably, they become distracted; when they notice that they have become distracted, they often get frustrated or angry. This type of response is a major challenge in the practice and teaching of meditation. We ask students to notice these emotional states and reactions (anger, frustration, discouragement) and to begin to bring compassion to those very phenomena, before letting them go, and returning the attention to the sensations of breathing. And it is not uncommon for beginning meditators to realize that they do not want to let go of their anger; they truly believe that if they are not judgmental toward their "failures," if they do not (in effect) punish themselves, then they will never be successful in achieving any goals. This can be a very difficult barrier to cross; and, in fact (as with so many barriers!) it must be crossed over and over again. But eventually, with practice, it become more clear that we can lead much more effective (and happier!) lives if we let go of reactivity and negative judgments directed toward ourselves.


Meditation practice can also involve the deliberate direction of compassion toward others. There is a very ancient method of meditation known as "metta," or (in the West, today) as "loving-kindness meditation." In this practice, instead of paying attention to whatever arises in the present moment, one uses a focus on particular individuals or groups of people (oneself, a friend, a neutral person, a person who is difficult to like, etc.) and directs the wish/intention for that person to have happiness, safety, peace, well-being. It was this form of meditation that was recently subjected to scientific investigation by some neuroscientists at the University of Wisconsin (Richard Davidson's team); here's an article about the study, and here's a link to the abstract for the actual study. Preliminary findings are very intriguing; using the technology of brain imagery, they found [excerpt from the article]: "When engaged in compassionate meditation, the brain region known as the insula burst into action when the expert meditators heard the sound of a woman in distress. (The insula—a part of the limbic system—has been associated with the visceral feeling of emotion, a key part of empathizing with another's emotional state.) And when these experts heard the female screams or the sound of a baby laughing, their brains showed more activity than the novices in areas like the right temporal-parietal juncture, which plays a role in understanding another's emotion."


This gives rise to what might seem a revolutionary suggestion: perhaps empathy and compassion really can be learned! In contemporary Western psychotherapy, efforts to do exactly that have not been particularly successful ("empathy training" for sex offenders has been a huge flop, for example). And it is generally thought that people who have psychiatric disorders that include symptoms of empathy failure (or, possibly, deficits in the functioning of the "mirror neuron" system), such as autism, narcissism, even psychopathy, do not generally have positive prognoses with conventional psychological and psychiatric therapeutic methods. Maybe this research will begin to provide contemporary science (in partnership with ancient spiritual methodologies) with another direction to use in addressing empathy failures. I can think of few things that the world needs more.


For more information about loving-kindness meditation: the well-known meditation teachers, Sharon Salzberg and Sylvia Boorstein, have written excellent books about this form of meditation. Boorstein's new book is called Happiness is an Inside Job, and Salzberg's book is Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness.