Musings on Karuna: The Practice of Compassion
This week, we continued to explore the second of the brahmaviharas - which is karuna - or benevolent compassion, as a theme in my yoga classes. We connected this to the action of Inner Spiral to widen our hips, and our lower backs, all the way up to T12, and up to the back doors of our hearts. By creating this opening by widening needed areas within our bodies, we begin to widen our perspectives and perceptual lens as well. Only then, can we truly embody compassion. Only then, can we truly embrace the unity that is at the root and heart of all diversity. We often regard compassion as a form of love - and very much like the practice of metta - or lovingkindness, we must cultivate compassion toward ourselves - in order to more fully embody and reflect it to others. Kuan Yin is the Goddess of Compassion to the Japanese and Tibetan Buddhists, and the story is often told that when she was ascending to heaven at the end of her life, she heard the cries of all the suffering beings that ...