Dear Instructors,

In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition there are a number of meditation practices designed specifically to develop compassion in the practitioner. These practices seem to involve meditating on a certain topic or circumstance – for example, placing yourself in the other person’s shoes, meditating on the fact that everyone is essentially interconnected, meditating on the fact that other people want to experience happiness and have an equal right to it. These practices seem to have a common ground in the fact that they all give the student a specific "topic" to contemplate or meditate on.

Would the Instructors recommend this kind of meditation?

I ask because from the lectures I’ve listened to, compassion seems to be spoken of as something that develops naturally, spontaneously, from the student's efforts in awareness, momentariness, comprehension and elimination of the ego etc. Specific meditations geared towards specifically developing compassion seem to be spoken of less frequently.

Many thanks for any clarification