Love and compassion meditation: a nondual perspective.

Meditation is often viewed as a gradual, goal-oriented practice aimed at cultivating positive qualities like love and compassion. A nondual approach offers an alternative: these qualities are not goals to be achieved but are already present as innate dimensions of one's authentic being. This perspective may have relevance for clinical applications of love and compassion meditation, suggesting that practitioners can discover these qualities within themselves rather than striving to develop them.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This paper discusses meditation from the unique perspective of the nondual approach and explores the possible relevance of this approach to applications of love and compassion meditation in clinical settings. It contrasts the nondual approach with the better known gradual or goal-oriented, dualistic view of meditation. This paper also introduces one of the central ideas of the nondual approach-that love and compassion, like other positive qualities that are ordinarily considered as goals of meditation practice, can be found to be already present within oneself as innate dimensions of one's authentic being.