Imagine today is my birthday. It's not, but let's imagine. Imagine you're in an interview with me, and you find out that it's my birthday. Would you wish me Happy Birthday? OK, would you mean it? And do you want anything back? No. Imagine you're in town and you're shopping and the clerk at the store is very friendly and you're having a nice chat with them at the same time, and you find out it's their birthday, can you wish them Happy Birthday? Do you mean it? Do you want anything back? OK. Happy Birthday is a miniature Compassion/Lovingkindness wish that says, "For this day I hope you have no pain. I hope it's a happy day for you." Most adults can wish Happy Birthday to others even if they only meet them for ten minutes in the store. They mean it, they don't want anything back.
Now let's think about this. When you do the Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation, do you actually mean it, or are you looking for a feeling to prove that you mean it? This is interesting. If you're looking for a feeling, then actually you're doing a Desire Meditation. When I do the very long Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation, for many people, the first time in particular, some things go very deep. And there's a lot of emotion, a lot of feeling, a lot of reactions. And if they don't get it that night, that's why we put the newspaper article on the board the next day. A lot of people just don't believe those stories that I give, even though I personally know the man who pushed the other man over the pier. True story.
OK, so we put the newspaper notice on the board and there's a feeling, there's a definite feeling. When you think of heavy Dukkha, and you have compassion towards that Dukkha usually there's a fair bit of feeling. Yet when you watch someone walking down the street who's dressed nicely and you don't know anything about them, there's often no feeling. If there's somebody walking down the street who's got one leg, you might have feeling.
Now the feeling does not mean prove we're compassionate or not. It's the sincerity in the wish. If the wish is sincere, that's fine, that's what we're working for. Sometimes the feeling comes, sometimes it doesn't, that's not the judge of whether you've got compassion or not. It's whether you're sincere in the wish.
OK, how do we test the sincerity of the wish?
As far as sitting down on a pillow, there's a pretty good way of testing it, and you can try for yourself later and you can see it's true. First do some of your close friends and relatives, the ones you really like, just do it for them. And you might see that your wish goes something like "May so and so, so and so, so and so... find Peace of Mind." Now do that for about ten minutes, just people you really like, close relatives or friends. Then bring up one of your difficult people, and then it often goes like this, "May so and so,