a center for
personal and planetary
awakening

Mystic River Yoga
196 Boston Avenue
Suite 3900
Medford, MA 02155

781 396 0808
info@MysticRiverYoga.com

Intro Page

Yoga/Yoga Teaching

Non-Dual View

Collective Awakening

Shadow, Psychology and Emotions

              Heart Centered Practices

Sutra I-33  maitri-karuna-muditopekshanam sukha-dukha-punyaapunya-vishayanam bhavanatash-chitta-prasadanam (Patanjali Yoga Sutras)

  By cultivating and impressing into oneself the sentiments of amity and love, compassion, gladness, and indifference with regards to those comfortable, those suffering, the virtuous and the non-virtuous (respectively), the mind is purified and made pleasant (and attains ekagra, one pointed stability). (translation by Swami Veda Bharati)

maitri, (metta in Pali): amity, friendliness, loving kindness

karuna: compassion

mudita: joyfulness, empathetic joy, gladness

upeksha: indifference, equanimity

  These 4 upayas (practices), also known as parikarmas (ways of polishing, training, prepearing the mind), brahma-viharas (heavenly abodes) or the four immeasurables, are powerful antidotes to the most common emotional afflictions of malice or anger, cruelty, jealousy and intolerance.

  Maitri or metta, the first and fundamental practice of the four, is an invitation to recognize our own heart, and see in it the interbeingness, the common heart of all beings. Loving kindness is the natural expression of an open heart, feeling a deep connection and relatedness to life in all of its manifest expressions. It arises as a deep desire for the well being of all of creation, including ourselves, and allows us to recognize that we are the source of loving kindness, and not any other object, person or situation.

  We all have a deep longing for well being and yet we often pursue it as if it exists "out there" somewhere. "I want you, I need you, I love you" sang Elvis. You are the source of my possible happiness and I need you for my own fulfillment. This desire to find fulfillment from without is called attachment or raga in Sanskrit and is a major cause of suffering. It is a total fantasy, overly empowering the other by projecting onto it all sorts of false qualities, and disempowering oneself. Attachment can easily degenerate into disappointment and anger when the imperfections and frailties of the person or object of desire are finally seen and the fantasy dissolves.

Loving kindness practice first and foremeost asserts that we are the souce of happiness, that in fact we are happiness. Love is our true nature. We just do not always recognize ourselves, but by just pretending that we do actually transforms our inner experiences and begins the process of healing the heart that has lost touch with itself.