: Later in the retreat we are going to be doing a type of Compassion/ Lovingkindness meditation that uses some of this creative imagination. But we are going to base it on something that is very likely to be happening in the world. We call it the "Waking up in the morning Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation." For many years, I used to do Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation as soon as I woke up. What I would do is to try to imagine myself in a situation and recreate it vividly. This is using your imagination in a very beneficial way. I would imagine myself as a refugee, trying to actually put myself in that situation and imagining what it would be like waking up in a tent or something and learning my whole family disappeared. Then allowing the mind to open up to the possibility of many people in the world waking up like this today.
So we are using our imagination, but we are actually thinking of human situations in the world that can be very real, perhaps a soldier waking up in the war, not wanting to kill or be killed. How would it be? We know that so many people may be in a similar situation this way. So we make it up, but we know that it is based on things that may be happening in the world, trying to put ourselves in their place and understand how it could be.
Another way to do Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation is to go through the alphabet and think about different people's occupations. Imagining what it would be like to be in that type of occupation. Imagining the Dukkha someone may experience in a particular occupation. We're using our imagination, but you know there are many types of occupations, we're not making them up. We need people working in these occupations for the world to keep going, right? So if we're able to use our imagination, trying to put ourselves in a situation and understand the Dukkha a person may experience in it, then perhaps when we meet them we won't just treat them as a function in our life, but as a human being and feel close to them as a human being.
So this is very helpful when you feel that you are running out of ideas. The human imagination is vast. We can put it to good use. In reflective-type meditation we can guide it to the specific purpose and result we wish to arrive at. In this case we want to uncover the greater Compassion inside, our greater Wisdom, and Yonisomanasikara, or reflective thought. The more we use it wisely, using our imagination to become very interested in it, the more we will be absorbed in it, and the deeper it will go.