LET GO OF DESIRES AND EXPECTATIONS
When doing kindness meditation, let go of desires and expectations
In life, there will always be some people who do good deeds with "impure motives". They may expect praise and glory, or they may expect money. However, we must let go of our desires and expectations as we meditate on the return of goodwill. Some meditators always think: I'm doing kindness meditation, so people should be kinder to themselves. This often backfires because of your own desires.
When practicing kindness meditation, you must not have desires or expectations.
True goodwill must come from the heart without persistent thoughts, do not expect to return the heart. It can also be interpreted as a kind of repayment or debt for the grace of countless lives that they have been living from the past to the present. A mind with desires and expectations, even a meditation text that parrots the method of kindness meditation, will not have the desired effect of meditation. So let go of your desires and expectations.
In addition, the object of kindness meditation is lust, not love, when one has a special feeling for someone. An act of "kindness" aimed at one person is too stingy. Meditating on one or two specific people is likely to cause mental pain and risks turning love into lust. If you choose that person to meditate on because that person is amazing, because that person helps you a lot, because that person is happy to be with, that is also a sign of willfulness and desire.
Many people meditate on their loved ones or their children, and it's hard to get genuine goodwill from within without desire or expectation. On the contrary, it can lead to negative situations such as stress, anxiety, and physical discomfort.
Therefore, as we meditate with kindness, let us have the belief that we may all life be happy.
While kindness meditation doesn't work as well as it should when we harbor desires and expectations, it doesn't mean that nothing can happen to us in life after all the good deeds we do. Take our spirit of sharing as an example, sharing is never one-way. When we truly learn to share, we can naturally learn from it. Sharing is a natural outpouring of love, without expecting anything in return, but not without something in return.
We hear about the benefits of sharing, such as that sharing can bring us, love, sharing can make us feel happy, and sharing can make us have more friends. They all say the same thing: It pays off. There's nothing inherently wrong with what they say. It does pay off, but not necessarily in the way we want. When we see a chimpanzee carrying a bunch of bananas, we throw an apple at him in exchange, but he gives us a pebble or nothing and walks away happily. Would we accept such a reward? It does return, it returns with pebbles or its own happiness, and we may not accept its return. We denounce ingratitude in anger or bitterness because we expect kindness in return. If we give kindness, righteousness, and virtue without any expectation, without any thought, would we still have these sufferings?
When we expect something when the reward doesn't match the expectation, we suffer; And when we have no expectations, we feel joy from the bottom of our hearts.
In life, there will always be some people who do good deeds with "impure motives". They may expect praise and glory, or they may expect money. However, we must let go of our desires and expectations as we meditate on the return of goodwill. Some meditators always think: I'm doing kindness meditation, so people should be kinder to themselves. This often backfires because of your own desires.
When practicing kindness meditation, you must not have desires or expectations.
True goodwill must come from the heart without persistent thoughts, do not expect to return the heart. It can also be interpreted as a kind of repayment or debt for the grace of countless lives that they have been living from the past to the present. A mind with desires and expectations, even a meditation text that parrots the method of kindness meditation, will not have the desired effect of meditation. So let go of your desires and expectations.
In addition, the object of kindness meditation is lust, not love, when one has a special feeling for someone. An act of "kindness" aimed at one person is too stingy. Meditating on one or two specific people is likely to cause mental pain and risks turning love into lust. If you choose that person to meditate on because that person is amazing, because that person helps you a lot, because that person is happy to be with, that is also a sign of willfulness and desire.
Many people meditate on their loved ones or their children, and it's hard to get genuine goodwill from within without desire or expectation. On the contrary, it can lead to negative situations such as stress, anxiety, and physical discomfort.
Therefore, as we meditate with kindness, let us have the belief that we may all life be happy.
While kindness meditation doesn't work as well as it should when we harbor desires and expectations, it doesn't mean that nothing can happen to us in life after all the good deeds we do. Take our spirit of sharing as an example, sharing is never one-way. When we truly learn to share, we can naturally learn from it. Sharing is a natural outpouring of love, without expecting anything in return, but not without something in return.
We hear about the benefits of sharing, such as that sharing can bring us, love, sharing can make us feel happy, and sharing can make us have more friends. They all say the same thing: It pays off. There's nothing inherently wrong with what they say. It does pay off, but not necessarily in the way we want. When we see a chimpanzee carrying a bunch of bananas, we throw an apple at him in exchange, but he gives us a pebble or nothing and walks away happily. Would we accept such a reward? It does return, it returns with pebbles or its own happiness, and we may not accept its return. We denounce ingratitude in anger or bitterness because we expect kindness in return. If we give kindness, righteousness, and virtue without any expectation, without any thought, would we still have these sufferings?
When we expect something when the reward doesn't match the expectation, we suffer; And when we have no expectations, we feel joy from the bottom of our hearts.