How You Can Participate

Before Meditation

• To enhance the body’s spiritual energy and focus:
  • Choose a vegetarian diet
  • Begin for a period of one week
  • Avoid intoxicants and smoking

 Meditation Day

• Dress in white or dark brown clothes
• Observe silence. Walk in meditation
• Care for yourself and others
• Be prepared with food, water, lodging and transport
• Hardship or discomfort
• Observe the highest qualities of humanity: compassion, kindness, sharing the joy of others and equanimity.

 When You Meditate

Your goal: Noble silence. Filing your heart with loving kindness to all beings.

   First Stage

• Sit in a position where you can be comfortable for about one hour. Keep your back straight but not stiff
• Close your eyes. Relax your face with a slight smile.
• Relax your entire body from your toes to your head; muscle by muscle, organ by organ.
• Take several deep breaths. When you breathe in, think of the positive energy entering your body. When you breathe out, picture the destructive energies leaving your body.
• Breathe naturally through your nostrils. Feel your breath as it passes the point below your nostril. Concentrate on that point. Know only that you are breathing in …and out. If your breath is long, know that it is long. If it is short, know that it is short. If your thoughts wander, bring them back to focus on your breath.

 Second Stage

• Think: my body is light. It is restful. When I breathe in, natural energies enter my being. My mind is light like my body. My mind becomes healthy. Anger, jealousy and selfish feelings leave my mind as the breath leaves my body. My mother’s mind and body becomes healthy and peaceful along with My father’s…my wife’s…my husband’s…my friends…my neighbors’…my coworkers…..my countrymen and women ….all people in the world…all living beings. In between these thoughts, concentrate on breathing in and out.
   
• Think of the loving kindness of spiritual leaders and saints of all religions. When you breathe in, think of their spiritual energies growing within you. As you breathe out, think of the divisive energies going out. All that is left is loving kindness you can share with others.
   
• Draw from the positive energies of sacred places; of this place where you sit in these moments from the peace inside temples, churches and mosques. In between these thoughts, concentrate on breathing in and breathing out.

Third Stage

• Think: divisive ideas on creed, caste, religion, class and language separate us. Do not cause any kind of harm, discomfort or indignity towards others or yourself. Like you, all other living beings do not wish to be harmed. They wish to live where it is healthy; calm
   
• Think of the millions of people, who can live in an atmosphere permeated with such energies. Concentrate on this thoughts three times. Think of all the people in the world. Meditate on the happiness of living in such a peaceful place.
   
• Concentrate 20 minutes on waves of unselfish loving kindness spreading throughout your consciousness, beyond you and to all living beings. With a calm mind, you become aware that you can help other living beings who are troubled, frightened or suffering.
   
• Concentrate for 10 minutes: May the spiritual energies of loving kindness arising in your mind be like a clean, pure jet of water rising from a fountain. May this energy enter the minds of people throughout the world.
   
• Meditate on this thought: No violent, harmful power can rise against this spiritual strength. May such thoughts be diminished and destroyed. May Sri Lanka and the world become peaceful.
   
• Receive these thoughts and spread them to the entire universe. Friends in countries throughout the world who are meditating at the same time are sending their spiritual energies to you, to enhance your own.
   
• Observe your body once again. Notice your breath striking your nostril. When you breathe in, think of the pure energies of loving kindness entering your body. When you breathe out, think that because of your energies all living beings will become more healthy and peaceful.

 Sung by all:

May there be  rains in due season

And render the fields fertile

May all hearts be well contented

May all beings be at peace

May the rulers be just and the world benefit

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