This week’s focus is compassion, which landed differently because my Vipassana course just ended with Metta, the loving-kindness practice.
Metta is simple: you offer wishes of goodwill, first toward yourself, then outward. We did it for 5-10 minutes after each long hour session (and I’ve been able to keep it up this week). There’s no requirement to feel warm or forgiving. You’re training the intention to not close the heart, even when the mind wants to label or harden.
But what really shifted for me was noticing how often my default is to reduce people (especially myself) to a single moment or mistake. One bad reaction and suddenly that’s who they are.
Vipassana slowed that reflex down. Sitting for hours, you watch your own mind generate impatience, craving, judgment. None of it feels chosen. It just arises. And if you don’t feed it, it passes.
That was humbling. If my own reactions aren’t really “me,” how can I treat someone else’s worst moment as their essence? I realize now that compassion isn’t dramatic acts. It’s small internal shifts. Pausing before judgment. Leaving room for complexity. Remembering that whatever someone is acting out is something I’ve seen happen in myself too.
I’m working on catching that reflex faster, because the pause before reaction is where compassion lives.