Empathy Meditation

Bring to mind someone whom you care dearly for. Allow yourself to be aware that this person has a life that may extend far beyond your experience of him or her, a story that runs just as deep as your, that is filled with their own hopes, dreams, fears and struggles.

Picture this person going through their life cycle, imagining what they might have faced and felt at each stage:

• • As a newborn, born into a confusion world that they didn’t understand, totally reliant on others for life

  • As a toddler, learning to move about the world, influenced by their family, other caretakers, and environment.

  • As a child, entering school, making friends, perhaps experiencing rejection

  • As an adolescent, struggling to define themselves and to fit in with peers, perhaps experiencing being left out. What might their relationships with their families and others looked like? How might these have shaped them?

  • As a young adult, with hopes and dreams, striving to take their place in the world. Again, what types of relationships might they have had with others and how might this have affected this person?

  • Moving through adulthood, establishing priorities, settling into a rhythm of life, experiencing successes and upheavals, and moving on

  • As an elder, observing their physical strength beginning to fade even as their wisdom grows

  • On their deathbed, looking back on their life, and closing their eyes

This person, born with a pure mind, just like you, wants to be happy and not to suffer.

Allow yourself to be filled with the kind wish that he or she may have a life filled with happiness and peace, that his or her life may be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.

Repeat the meditation for someone with whom you are unfamiliar or about whom you have no definite opinion.

Lastly, bring to mind someone that you have a difficult relationship with. You might first do this meditation with someone that annoys or irritates you, perhaps graduating over time to those who are very difficult, even using, e.g., national political figures, those who might be harming many people, and such. As you bring this person to mind, do so with an aspiration to better understand this person so that compassion might be cultivated.