Consider a water bucket sitting under a dripping tap.
One of the problems a lot of people have with the reflections, the Compassion/ Lovingkindness also, is they're doing desire meditation, they're not doing wise reflection, they're not doing the Compassion/Lovingkindness properly, they're doing desire meditation. So I'll explain what I mean by that. They're wanting, they're doing the meditation with a big wanting. For example, in the Compassion/Lovingkindness often the person is wanting a feeling, wanting "compassion". Yet we don't have to get a feeling, it may come, it may not come. You read the newspaper article we put on the board every retreat, the man comes home, his wife and kids are dead, oof, it kind of hits, that's a bigger feeling. You take a look at any of the meditators just doing walking meditation, do you get hit? No. Still, the person in the newspaper article, you wish them a Compassion/Lovingkindness wish, and the person doing the walking meditation, you wish them a Compassion/Lovingkindness wish, too, without wanting.
The feeling may come sometimes, it may not come other times. With the reflections, every once in a while we get a poof, ooh, gee, that's what it's about, that's it! All of the sudden, occasionally we get a big insight, and it may stay with us and it may not. It may go away, but hopefully it stays, and then some people do the reflections just wanting to get a big insight. No, it isn't always that way. It may just be we're going through the thoughts over and over.
We may be thinking about Dukkha, and what kind of Dukkha the body have; maybe nothing will happen at all, no great big insight, but we've dropping wisdom into the mind. So even though there isn't any big deep experience or whatever, it's a like water dripping into the bucket and sowing the causes for the deeper insight when it's full.
Why is it that we tell you to do the Five Reflections briefly at the beginning of every period? Just one or two sentences is all you have to do. I could die today. That might be your only sentence for death, but you say it over and over, over and over, every time you start. Why is it that we do this? It's just in rote, you can memorize it, that's fine. You don't have to feel anything big, occasionally you do, but you don't have to. Why is it we want you to do that? We're filling the bucket with drips. We're bending the mind in a certain direction so that it will think that way more automatically.
Why is it many people have fairly violent thoughts arise? How many TV shows and movies have you seen where you're watching violence? Think of cartoons, great Saturday, Sunday cartoons for little kids. What have they figured out? Every half-hour there's 42 acts of violence or something? I don't know, 142 probably. It seems so harmless, the road runner blows up the coyote or whatever, the coyote's back alive again, no big deal. No, no, no, conditioning of the mind, it's conditioning, it's conditioning, it's conditioning, everything that goes into your eyes, everything that goes into your ears is going to produce an effect, it's going to product a result, Law of Cause and Effect. So the more you sit there and you just think about the reflections, whether they go deep or not, it's creating a result, it's affecting you, it's going to bend your mind so that you think that way more often. It's as simple as that. Don't worry if they are shallow and they don't go deep, they will eventually get there, you're going to fill that bucket, even if it's drip by drip.