The Intelligent Heart: A Guide to the Compassionate Life

You may be a kind, considerate, soft-hearted person, but if the negative energy in your thoughts and emotions reaches a certain momentum, it can flood the space of your mind. Then you may become confused about why you’re thinking the way you’re thinking, feeling the way you’re feeling, acting the way you’re acting. This can lead to strong feelings

The second part is to think of all sentient beings as your mothers, and generate love and compassion in a similar way:

While generating abundant love and compassion toward your own mother, use your breath to give and take alternately. As your mind softens, do this practice more and more from the depth of your heart. In this way, for the sake of your own mother—for her happiness and protection—you should feel that you actually give up all your attachment to the smal

The five poisons of attachment, aggression, jealousy, arrogance, and stupidity, which in turn come from the source of all suffering: self-importance.

death—

This is the suffering of samsara: birth, old age, sickness, and

“I am going to meditate on love and compassion with my mother as the object.”

There are many versions of this practice, but all of them involve imagining one or more beings who are suffering, and performing an exchange based on one’s breath. As we breathe in, we imagine ourselves taking on their suffering. Breathing out, we imagine ourselves giving them our happiness.

tonglen.