Let's begin this practice by arriving home in the body and gathering a sense of how you're feeling in this moment.
If needed,
Seeing if you can bring a sense of ease and softness to your experience as you settle in.
Resting the attention on the breath to provide space for the mind to calm.
The breath can be the anchor in case at any point the attention drifts away from this meditation.
When you're ready,
Take a brief moment to think carefully about all of the people who in any way have led you to being where you are right now.
When you contemplate on who's led you to being here in this moment,
Who are the people that come to mind.
And with gratitude,
Letting go of those people from the focus of your practice.
And begin to sense into your connection to what you're seated or lying on.
Feeling where your body makes contact with its surface beneath you.
Consider how many people were involved with whatever you may be seated or lying on,
Whether a chair,
Cushion,
Floor,
Or bed.
Whatever it is that's supporting the weight of your body,
It required someone to design it,
Another person to put it together,
Someone else to clean it,
Somebody to purchase it,
A different person to deliver it,
And another to place it in this room.
Begin to sense into your connection that you and this cushion,
Chair,
Or bed make with the floor where you're situated.
This floor that is part of a larger home or building that would have taken several workers months to plan and make this building a possibility.
Consider the people it took to build the doors to enter this place,
And the lights that allow you to see,
And the walls that give you the opportunity to be in this space meditating.
And for you to be in this space today,
Who was really involved with you being here?
Consider who told you about this meditation app.
What supports from others did you require with childcare,
Work,
Or other responsibilities so that you could have this time to yourself to meditate?
And who inspired you to be on this journey of mindful and compassionate living in the first place?
Each of us are here because at one point in time someone introduced you to meditation and shared about their practice,
Which inspired your practice.
Maybe the reason you chose to pursue this path of mindfulness was because you were influenced by a particular person or because of the influence you wanted to have on others.
None of this today could have been possible without any one of its essential elements.
Without these people there could not have been this moment.
Even though there may not be anyone around us,
This very moment is a moment of connection between you and many people.
And yet while many people can often feel isolated and separated from others,
The truth is that in every moment we're connected to this web of life,
Linked to and interdependent with far more people than we can likely know.
Thich Nhat Hanh says,
To be is to interbe.
We cannot be in solitude because in each moment we are interbeing with everyone else.
No self separate from others.
Now recall all of those you brought to mind at the beginning of the practice.
Did you have all of these people in mind?
Make space for holding all of these people that really brought you here today with gratitude.
Notice how you feel when you contemplate this with both mind and body.
Albert Einstein,
When speaking to the interconnectedness of our existence,
Had once said,
A human being is part of the whole,
Called by us the universe,
A part limited in time and space.
He experiences himself,
His thoughts,
And feelings,
As something separate from the rest,
A kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us,
Resorting us to our personal desires,
And to affection for a few persons nearest to us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
So as you meditated on all the people who have made this very moment available to you,
Recognize that you too have this capacity to make this effect on others.
And knowing the impact that your actions can have on countless people far beyond your immediate circles,
How would this change what you bring to each moment?
How might you expand your circle of compassion to include all beings that you will directly or indirectly influence?
See if you can find an intention on the bottom of the outbreath to set the tone for how you will bring this compassion and action in each moment of today,
Tomorrow,
And your entire life.
Arriving back to the breath and taking in this air we all share on this earth,
Breathing with ease in the mind and body,
Knowing that we all belong to this web of interconnection,
This awareness,
A vehicle for our intercompassion.
