Necessity For Compassion

So,

As I said,

This is the second week that we're exploring what my teacher calls the four faces of love.

And this image of a four-faced heart is borrowed from the Buddhist myth of the god Brahma,

Also from the Hindu myth.

So Brahma has four faces,

One for each of the four kinds of unselfish love championed in Buddhism.

And in the language of the Buddha,

In Pali,

These four faces of love are called metta,

Karuna,

Mudita,

And upeka.

So,

Metta translates to loving kindness,

Karuna to compassion,

Mudita is appreciative or sympathetic joy,

And upeka is equanimity.

And because the god Brahma is said to dwell in these four forms of love,

They're known as the Brahma viharas.

Vihara is the Pali word for a dwelling place or home.

So these are known as the Brahma viharas.

And they're considered to be attitudes in the mind that we cultivate that are boundless,

Meaning that they're not just reserved for our friends and family,

But for all beings,

As the metta sutta kind of pointed to.

And they're also described as something that we cultivate.

So when I think of cultivation,

You know,

Growing up on a farm,

It's the process of tilling and loosening the soil,

Preparing the soil for planting.

And so when we look at these qualities within ourselves,

The invitation is to kind of go and start to cultivate them.

You know,

What have we been cultivating?

And sometimes what we discover is that the soil of our cultivation is really hard.

And so we have to nourish our minds,

Kind of fertilize the mind with bringing the loving kindness to ourselves.

And so that's kind of like watering the mind.

Meditation is a practice of watering the mind so that we can start to till and loosen the stiffness,

The fixed views,

The ideas and concepts and perceptions that we have.

So that these qualities of the Brahma Viharas,

These kind of divine or boundless states can really take root.

And so on Thursday,

We began with loving kindness,

Metta,

And I kind of pointed to that loving kindness has has its roots in a way in intention.

Intention,

You know,

And when we point this,

When we practice with ourselves,

You know,

The instruction is to start with ourselves and then to extend it to our loved ones,

The ones closest to our life in our lives,

Then to the neutral people like the people that deliver our mail or those that provide support in the grocery store.

And then as we can keep extending this out,

Then we extend it out to those,

Those beings that we find difficult.

The way that it's described in the suttas is like the,

Our enemies,

Our enemies.

So this intention,

You know,

It can be as simple as may I experience ease and gratitude in my life.

This is an intention.

May you experience freedom from clinging.

Also an intention.

Now that they,

Each of these,

Uh,

Divine states has a,

What they call a near enemy and,

Um,

A far enemy and the near enemy of loving kindness is attachment.

So love with attachment.

You know,

And,

Or love to our intent,

Like attachment to our intention.

So a stiffness around it.

And that's kind of why last week I started with the investigation of,

So what were we taught about love?

You know,

What in our family of origin was the message that we were taught about love?

Because if we're taught that love is conditioned or that it's kind of transactional in a way,

Then what happens is that colors how we love others,

How we love others.

So these,

This loving kindness practice,

Practice is colored with kind of a false sentiment.

Like you hear the words,

May I experience,

Uh,

Love and ease for my life,

But they don't really land because we haven't really included what we were taught about love.

We say the words and it's like an auto response.

So it's important to investigate that piece of what,

What is my conditioning around love?

And the far enemy to loving kindness is hatred,

Is hatred.

And I think that,

Um,

There's a lot of hatred in this world right now.

And maybe you experienced that.

Maybe you are,

Maybe your heart has hatred in it,

Or maybe you're experiencing hatred.

So for today's teaching,

Um,

We're going to explore Karuna.

Karuna.

Karuna in English is compassion.

And as I was preparing for this talk,

I went back to a classic book that I,

Um,

Read decades ago that some of you probably read also it's from,

Uh,

Jack Kornfield.

It's the,

The path with heart,

Such a classic.

And Jack is such a beautiful teacher.

Um,

And he said in his book that the ground of compassion is established by first practice practicing towards ourselves.

So I really relate to this,

You know,

I really relate to that loving kindness has to start with ourselves.

Compassion truly arises from a healthy sense of self.

Compassion honors our own capacities.

You know,

It honors that we have fear.

It honors our feelings,

Um,

And our resistance.

Compassion is really this counter move to cruelty.

Cruelty is the far enemy of compassion.

And compassion is not pity.

That's the near enemy.

And I think that oftentimes in our culture,

Pity,

This near enemy is what is,

Um,

Illustrated more than true compassion.

Compassion is to,

Um,

I think in the Latin,

It is to,

Uh,

Feel with the pain of,

Uh,

The pain with another.

I might be butchering that a little bit,

But the root of compassion is to really experience pain with another.

So ordinary compassion,

Um,

I think that we've all experienced this in particular,

Those that are parents of this group or those that have animals,

You know,

When,

Um,

When I see that my son has injured himself,

And this happens all the time in his sports,

Um,

The natural movement is to come toward compassion.

You know,

I don't want this child to suffer.

Another natural experience of compassion is if you've ever sat with somebody who is dying,

You know,

That experience,

Uh,

Of sitting with the dying is just to sit with the suffering of that and wish for their suffering to end.

And to become a divine state,

This Brahmavihara of compassion,

It,

It needs to reach beyond the limited group of individuals who we have preference towards,

You know,

We,

We tend to let it begin with those that are close to us,

But,

Um,

The act of compassion is to extend it to all beings.

So that's where the,

The practice becomes a cultivation to extend the,

The practice of compassion beyond our chosen people.

And we have to feed that and water that.

My experience with this practice of feeding compassion was,

Um,

I spent two years sitting with the dying,

Um,

At Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco.

I fed this ability to be with the suffering of another,

Not in,

Not in my circle with people that were quite different than I.

Compassion,

Um,

It's sort of like you're getting right in the,

In the bed with pain,

You're snuggling up to pain.

In a sense,

It says,

I know what it's like to suffer and I am right here with you.

I am right here with you.

It's a willingness to be with what is really uncomfortable and what is hard and what hurts.

We often describe compassion as a relief from suffering,

But,

Um,

In my experience,

It,

It's,

It gives,

It just gives us the capacity to stay with suffering,

To stay in the room with it,

To stay when the going gets tough,

You know.

And this also applies to self-compassion,

You know,

As Jack Kornfield was pointing out,

Um,

The Buddha said,

You know,

You can search through the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of love and affection than you yourself.

And that person cannot be found anywhere.

You yourself,

As much as anybody in this entire universe deserves your love and affection.

And yet we as human beings repeatedly forget this,

Doubting ourselves,

Questioning ourselves,

Berating ourselves.

So what we're doing is in our practice is we're practicing patience.

Um,

We,

When we catch ourselves,

Uh,

Feeling self-pity,

So that near enemy of compassion or experiencing,

Uh,

Any afflictive emotion,

Instead of running away from it,

Which is our,

Uh,

Kind of habit pattern,

We turn towards it.

There's no use in blaming ourselves or blaming others,

You know,

Avoiding other people,

Avoiding,

Um,

These emotions,

These afflictive emotions and wishing things were otherwise,

It is not helpful.

We can allow the difficult to be present with the dignity of a Buddha upright.

I'm present for this.

We can learn to forgive ourselves.

Or we can learn to forgive whomever we might be blaming for our difficulties.

So there are different ways we can bring about the conditions for compassion.

Uh,

In this 18th or the eighth century,

Actually,

There's a beautiful,

Um,

Book.

I have it here somewhere on my bookshelf.

The Way of the Bodhisattva and it's by Shantideva.

It's a beautiful book.

And,

Um,

Shantideva writes,

All the joy the world contains has come through wishing happiness for others.

While all the misery the world contains has come through wanting happiness for oneself alone.

And I think we can experience this directly.

You know,

Um,

I offer these teachings freely as a service to the community,

To all of you.

Um,

And it is a gift to offer these teachings.

If I were doing it for myself,

When I do things solely for myself,

There's always some,

There's always this little bit of,

Of suffering that's accompanying me.

When I have my self-centered objectives happening,

There's a contraction and it is immediate.

I can see it.

I can feel it.

And because you're all practitioners,

I sense that you can too.

So one of the practices that I found very useful is that when you're feeling a contraction or sorrow or self-pity or,

Uh,

Why me,

You know,

Victimization.

It's helpful to think of all the other beings in the world right at this very moment that are also feeling exactly how you are.

So many of us.

And I'm not saying it's a magical practice,

But there is a certain power in understanding that you are not alone.

That somebody else out there,

Maybe hundreds,

Maybe thousands of people are also experiencing this.

Another practice that my teacher Gil,

Um,

Has shared and I think is really beautiful.

And I,

I try to do it,

But I sometimes,

What I do more often is to remember that there are others like me feeling,

Uh,

Suffering and sorrow.

But if you can,

Um,

Hold your own hand.

You know,

Holding your own hand,

This gesture is an act of nonviolence.

It's a gesture of inner nonviolence.

It says that I care about this.

I care about this suffering that I'm experiencing.

So these are my thoughts on Karuna,

Compassion.

And I open up the floor to all of you and thank you for your attention and your practice.