Personalize their own experience by visualizing his/her own
mother and in effect,
associate inner emotion & raw compassion for
the one who created and protected them.
I also thought that the
realization of immense inapplicable rebirths, that everyone has
been
everyone’s mother in a sense, is a powerful tool towards introducing compassion
for
all beings. Just understanding the respectful nature of this
compassion in general is a
basic fundamental towards what the second
Dally Lama, Gendun Gyatso calls ‘giving
and taking’.
It
(‘giving and taking’) has many phases, and taking responsibility, and
feeling empathy, towards all things is essential throughout. First one
pictures his/her own
mother personalized in his/her own frame of
reference and associates the compassion of
his/her mother towards other
people close, like friends, family and pets by ‘giving and
taking’. The
second level of this concentration of the mind is feeling compassion for
his/her enemy and even strangers he or she has never ever met. The next
stage of
this meditation is of course having compassion for all beings
through compassion for the
sake of helping other people to fulfill
enlightenment.
I should mention that anyone who wishes to practice
the meditation of ‘giving
and taking’ must have the self control and
discipline attained by more basic meditations,
for example \'mindfulness
of breath\'. With out such discipline, his/her mind may easily be
swayed
by any various stimulation that ‘giving and taking’ may evoke.
I thought it was interesting the book said
that realizing the love of my
Mother is indirectly responsible for who I
am today, and here I sit writing and studying
the holy practice of
Dharma. And here I am appreciating my good fortune. And of course
stay
away from the negative and strive towards the positive for all, eliminate the
harmful
and to produce and encourage happiness towards all.
I also want to add some positive criticism towards the excerpt
‘How to Meditate
upon the Ultimate Bodhi-Mind’, on page 163 of ‘Entering
the Stream’. The idea, often
thought of as ‘I’, or the ego centered
towards the self, is only a mental imputation. I think
it is important
to remain humble and courteous, even other religions express respect
and
honor for one’s own mother.
All in all, I feel that I am fortunate
to read and study this book, or at least parts of
it, on my own if
giving the chance, and try to maybe see if anyone else would be
interested in learning more about Buddhism