Tara Brach - Compassion - Responding to Suffering with Care

Episode Date: August 25, 2010

2010-08-25 - Compassion - Responding to Suffering with Care - Our capacity to respond to ourselves and our world with compassion is the essence of all healing and spiritual awakening. This talk explores the trance of separation that blocks our natural compassion, and includes guided practices that enable us to directly cultivate a compassionate heart. Please donate at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

We are on the second week of a four-part series, and it's fine if you weren't here last week, and it's available. You can download or podcast them on what are called the divine abodes. An abode is the home. And really, it's when we are truly at home in our fullness and our wholeness. What are the expressions of that? And in the Buddhist tradition, the expressions of being fully at home, fully here, our loving kindness that we naturally express a quality of loving kindness

and the second of the divine abodes is compassion which we'll explore tonight the third is joy and the fourth is equanimity which is the wisdom the understanding that really allows each of the other expressions of love and joy to be mature

so each of these expressions of heart-mind arise from a wise understanding of reality which sees past the trance of separation. It's totally natural, it's given, we're programmed to have that trance occur in these body minds

and we have the capacity to wake up out of it and when we do, in the moments we're not caught inside the sense of I'm here and everyone else is there and we're separate, there is a natural sense of tenderness that sometimes feels like loving kindness or love and sometimes like compassion, sometimes like joy. When it's loving kindness,

it's because in that sense of connectedness or oneness, we're just seeing the goodness. We're seeing the beauty, the dearness, the preciousness of life, and then the heart opens with that feeling. When it's compassion, it's because we're seeing the suffering. We're seeing the pain of keeping ourselves separate. there's a tenderness that comes when we see it.

And it's not from up high like, oh, poor person over there. It's a sense of compassion that this is just part of the predicament that we all are in. And so compassion sees our shared vulnerability. Begin with a story. I shared a year or so ago that I like. And in this woman writes, a while back, an old tired-looking dog wandered into the yard. I could tell from his collar, though, no tags and well-fed belly. and the fact he was clean he had a home.

He followed me into the house, down the hall, and fell asleep on the couch. My dogs didn't seem to mind, and he seemed like a good dog, and I was okay with it, so I let him nap. An hour later, he went to the door, and I let him out. The next day he was back, resumed his position on the couch, and slept for an hour. This continued for several weeks.

Curious, I pinned a note to his collar, and I wrote, Every afternoon your dog comes to my house for a nap. I don't mind, but I want to make sure it's okay with you. the next day he arrived with a different nop into his collar he lives in a home with three children he's trying to catch up on his sleep may i come with him tomorrow so our shared predicament you know in that kind of tenderheartedness there's a wonderful saying just as be kind everyone you know is struggling hard And it doesn't mean everybody at every moment,

but that we all are in these bodies and we all lose everything and everything's very uncertain and it's not easy. So be kind. So there's this natural compassion in the Buddhist tradition that's sometimes described as the quivering of the heart in response to suffering. There's a story I wanted to share with you

about a man who's who's so good that the angels ask God to give him the gift of miracles. And God wisely tells them, you better ask him what he wants. So the angels visit this good man and offer him the gift of healing by hands and then the gift of conversion of souls and lastly the gift of virtue.

But he's just not interested. He refuses them all. So they insist that he chooses a gift or they're going to choose one for him. So very well, he replies, I ask that I may do a great deal of good without ever knowing it. So I want to read you how the story ends.

The angels are perplexed. They take counsel and resolve upon a plan. Every time the saint's shadow fell behind him, it would have the power to cure disease, soothe pain, and comfort sorrow. As he walked behind him, a shadow made arid paths green, caused withered plants to bloom, gave clear water to dried up brooks,

fresh color to pale children, and joy to unhappy men and women. The saint simply went about his daily life, diffusing virtue as the stars diffused light and the flowers sent, without ever being aware of it. The people respecting his humility and his love for fellow beings just followed him silently,

never speaking to him about his miracles. Soon they even forgot his name and called him the holy shadow. What I love about this story is it in a way describes the qualities of mature compassion, which are that you care and that you act

and yet you're just not taking it personally. because it is active compassion as we're going to explore is not simply oh i feel terrible for that happening there is a response but it's not a response of i am going to fix it i'm going to heal it and i need to be known for it in any way it's not personal it's just we belong it's our shared vulnerability of course there's a response so like the holy shadow there's just happening and yet we know It's like if you think of your life, it's so comforting just a sense that people are being helped, that something about our smile or that when if we touch someone on the shoulder or we say something that reminds them that they're okay. You know, we don't need to take credit, but there's something about sensing we're part of that process of healing that is sweet and comforting and nice.

to know and when you sense well how come how come we want to do good you know without taking credit we just want to do good my sense is that you know of course on the ego level many of us were programmed to want to be a good person and there's an ego thing about I'm now worthwhile because I'm helpful that's one level of it and for most of us we've got some of that programmed in and that's okay but there's something deeper, you know, deeper than our worthiness project. Okay. And, and what it is is that it's more truly who we are. You know, in the moments when we're feeling that sense of, it's not you and me, but it's just our, you know, it's our shared vulnerability and just naturally

extending ourselves. We're more at home in the truth of what we are. We're not caught in the trance of small self, as I sometimes describe it. For me, it's reassuring to know that even when our hearts don't feel open, which often they don't, often they don't, we still care about caring. Isn't that so that even when we're really kind of cut off or shut down or even angry, some part of us still cares about that there be love or the caring is there. The Bodhisattva path, in Buddhism is the path of an awakening being. And every one of us is on this path, whether it's conscious or not so conscious.

There's still something in us that has a longing to be more fully what we are, to manifest that. And what that means is to manifest an awake heart, a heart that cares, and to manifest this wisdom that sees that even though we feel separate and we act from that separation, there's a deeper truth, and it's possible. We intuit that it's possible to feel connected.

So in an evolutionary way, you can sense that there's a fundamental shift that's going on from a felt sense of separate self to more of a sense of belonging to a web, and that that shift, and this is the way the Dalai Lama put, put compassion and this realization of our connectedness is in our daily life, I think, the foundation of human hope, the source and assurance of our human future. This shift in identity from, I am separate, and it's, you know, then our days organized around, how am I doing, what's

happening to me, what's going to go wrong to me, to a sense more and more of here we are together, this field that we belong to, this energy, aliveness, love, wakefulness, whatever we want to call it, that shift is the hope for our evolutionary consciousness. It's a shift in identity. So the challenge to this evolutionary shift, the challenge, and this is the root of our suffering, is that we have very strong conditioning that's amplified by our thinking. mind to keep centered on this notion of a self that's limited that might be doing something wrong and that has to constantly be looking out for itself defending itself proving itself and we can sense that the more we're stressed the more we're locked into that mindset of

I'm a separate self that's in trouble things are going wrong and I need to do a lot to make it different that's our fixation and as that happens others become objects in our field they become increasingly less real does that make sense that language that when we're stressed others become more kind of just characters and the drama out there they're not so real it's hard to really sense their subjective realness some of the unreal others are causing trouble and some of them have something we want and some of them have something we want and some of them are neither causing trouble, nor do they have something we want, so they're kind of like irrelevant. They're just there. But mostly we have an agenda. There's a wonderful Sylvia cartoon. I don't know how many of you read the Selvia cartoons.

I read them in the past more than, but in this one, a woman comes to complain, and Sylvie is in the guise of a fortune teller. And she says, well, my husband won't talk about his feelings. And Sylvia goes, well, what's new? But anyway, she goes, all right, I'll answer. So she goes into a trance, and she says, my guide is about to speak. And she says, by the end of 2010, men are going to begin talking about their feelings.

Women all over America will be sorry within minutes. So it's, you know, not getting what you want and then getting what you don't want. But that's the self-trans. And it can be really, really thick. You know, the sense of separat. can be thick and the heart can be quite armored and it's very physical the shutdown. It's humbling how we go into reactive trance and we can see it with those close to us.

I mean everyone knows what it's like when you feel judged how quickly the hackles go up or if you feel disregarded or disrespected or mistreated and that stuff happens all the time with the people we live with and we work with. It's just on some levels, especially to the jury we were wounded in earlier times, were triggered off a lot. So that trance of separation is thick. And in the moments that were in reaction, we cannot begin to enlarge enough

to sense what another's experiencing. And I had this, as I was reflecting on this talk, I was remembering some years back after I led a retreat, I met up with some old friends and we got together and had a kind of short vacation together. And one of my friends, ever since I had known her, she'd always been a little, she had an edge.

But she was in a very kind of angry space in her life. And she was actually doing some therapy that was telling her that anger let it happen. You know, so she was kind of giving herself a lot of permission to express herself. And we were her friends feeling, you know, and she has a very, really good sense of humor, and it has a bite, you know. So it was, I got this, I started feeling kind of not safe. Like I could say something and she might turn it into a kind of a funny thing, but it would be, it would have a little bit of a cynical edge. And others I could sense were grumbling too.

And I realized that she was, had become other during this vacation. That on some level I was tensed against her. And one night we were talking and she said something about, and this is, um, There was a lot of political talk, and she was, you know, like I get very upset about things going on in the world. She was scathing, you know. And so that was going on. But then after that, she mentioned something about, yeah, and my brother betrayed me. It's just those words.

And she somehow rather was part of something else. But I remember lying in bed that night, and it kept going through my mind that phrase and then realizing, okay, she's angry. if she couldn't be angry, if she didn't have that storminess, what would she be having to be feeling? What's the energy that's, you know, being catalyzed from underneath? And I could really sense, oh, she feels really betrayed by her life in some way. I mean, she always has in some way I felt like let down. And in that moment, everything changed. when I could stop taking the anger personally

and anger is a hard one it's hard to get compassionate when somebody's angry because it feels dangerous and your heart tenses against them does that make sense it's just very hard to soften but in that moment that I kept those words

my brother betrayed me something changed and then I made it my intention was to create a safe enough space for her to be able to speak more and as she could say more where she was vulnerable the edge started softening.

We're going to explore that more tonight, but just to say that the suffering, the trance of separation, does not begin to dissolve until we can sense another's suffering. I remember after 9-11, talking with a friend of mine who's a minister in New Jersey, and, you know, he had gone to ground zero

and just to kind because he really wanted to sense what was going on you know just sense you see if he could connect with with the tragedy so many were experiencing and he described for him

what had most impact was seeing all these walls filled with posters bearing pictures of those who are missing and there was these faces and names and then words describing the person with pleased for any information that might lead to a loved one, to a reunion. And it was when he started

seeing the pictures and the words of loved one saying, please, can you help me find this person? You know, and then, of course, when he started hearing the phone calls made by those who realize they're about to die and the message, you know, was always had the same theme, which was, I want you to know that I love you. These are the people in the planes going down. So I'm sharing this because for this man, that bringing himself right into, so what was that? Who are these people? What is the suffering? That's when it went from being a story to something real. They were no longer unreal others. There was something that was very human that he could contact. So I find the same thing now we hear, whether we hear about the Gulf of Mexico. can we really imagine the life forms that are suffering in the water and on the land and the humans?

When we imagine Pakistan, is it a story? Like, you know, I'm just bringing it up here with us, just sitting here. Is that a story to us? You know, when we hear 20 million people lost their homes, like, what happens when we hear that? And I'm trying to slow down right now for me too, because it's so, you. easy for it to be an unreal other and be a story even where we we something else goes oh that's terrible and we know it's terrible but can we get it losing our homes 20 million people losing their homes so the key to compassion which is the the polywords caruna is this willingness to be touched

the magnitude of the suffering's hard to bear but it's like are we willing to be touched and Kafka said that removing ourselves from the suffering is the one suffering we could have avoided because we're removing ourselves from our own fullness of heart so that's the path of compassion to let ourselves be touched by our own and the world's pain and the natural response is a tender caring and and just to say that being touched by suffering does not mean that we then push aside or forget the beauty and the goodness and the celebration of this wonder. It does not mean that we fixate on suffering. It also doesn't mean that we take responsibility thinking we're supposed to fix the world or save the world. It just means

we realize we're part of the world. We belong to the world. Can we let ourselves be touched? Now at this juncture, there's a question that comes up that many people have, and they come up after class and ask me, and they say, I'm too touched. I'm thin-skinned. When I begin to open to the reality that there are 3 million children at risk for deadly disease in Pakistan, it just absolutely devastates me. I can't stand it. That's what comes up. And so there is an intelligence in how we walk this path of compassion. And that intelligence is that if there is a very deep reactivity in us to suffering, that's the suffering that we start with, our own reactivity. It means that there's been a lot of wounding in our own life, and our system is locked into a really kind of a traumatic reaction to pain, and that really we need to very gradually and with support

begin to bring kindness to our own rawness. It means we don't try to look around to see what else we can take in. We've got plenty. Does that make sense? The path is to be touched by our own in this world suffering and we start with what we can handle and we start with that integrity that says, hey, I can take this much and I need to have.

support and it needs to be slow and that's okay too. But we realize that ultimately, and I think Rolka says it best, he says, I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may never complete the last one, but I give myself to it that we over and over again open to the truth of our belonging, our enlarged belonging to this web. that it matters what happens to the water and the Gulf, and what happens to the people in Pakistan. It matters. So on this path of compassion,

we begin again and again with the first circle, the circle of right here what's in my heart. We begin right there with this vulnerability, this life within, and we return again and again. And this self-compassion is not selfish. It's compassion for the life that's right here. and it opens our heart. If you can truly be tender

towards the life within you, that tenderness will be edgeless. They'll be boundless. So how do we do that? How do we open with compassion? The alchemy of compassion. And when it's within ourselves, one of the key pieces that I find that is necessary

is that there's an acknowledgement when we begin to touch something, that this is difficult, that we can sense, okay, this challenging part of my life, this is painful to be with, and without diluting it and saying, oh, but others are suffering a whole lot more, or, oh, but I did something to deserve this. You know, we have ways of deflecting so that we don't actually let ourselves go, oh, this hurts. So we're going to do a couple of reflections tonight that are the Bodhisattva trainings the trainings to widen the circles of compassion

and the first one just a brief one just to kind of touch in a little bit just to get us connected with our own hearts so just a brief reflection take a moment to let your attention go within and you might feel your breath and gather yourself that way You might let come to mind something that's difficult that's going on in your life right now.

And it might be something that's going on in a relationship, something difficult that's going on for somebody that's important to that you're having a strong reaction to. It's bringing up fear, anger, maybe something going on with your body or struggle with addiction, something to do with work, with money. and let yourself let your mind go to what's really difficult about this situation,

like what's really upsetting. And the first question I'd like to ask you to check out is how do you usually relate to the difficulty and to what it brings up? Do you try to fix things? Are you focused on how do I solve this? Do you ignore it? Do you judge yourself in some way for what's going? going on? Do you spend time maybe blaming other people? Are you always trying to figure something

out about the situation? In other words, what are the ways that you're dealing with this other than just purely bringing a compassionate attention to yourself? What are your strategies when there's difficulty? Again, this is something you can continue to reflect on. This is the whole domain of self-compassion. So here's something you might reflect on. Just the words, may this difficulty awaken compassion in me. Just sense that wish. May this be part of the Bodhisattva path, that this awakens compassion. This is the first circle. Some compassion that this is difficult. This is painful. And you might sense the part of you that's most having a struggle. whether there's a feeling of anger or fear, hurt, confusion,

to sense a part of you that's having a hard time so that you can just begin by acknowledging, okay, suffering, vulnerability, this hurts. You might even ask that part of you how it wants you to be with it. You know, what does it want from you? And I find it helpful to place my hand on my heart when I'm communicating inwardly, just offering a real listening,

kind attention. So you're beginning to bring a compassionate presence to the part of you that's having a hard time. And you might vary the pressure of the hand on the heart and just sense what pressure

actually communicates a kind presence. It's very rare that we actually occupy that space of kind presence with our own inner life. Our conditioning is not to do that. So you might experiment right now.

This is the beginning of compassion to the world is to have a tenderness towards the life right here. And if there's any words to offer inwardly, if there's any message, that can be part of the compassion, the action of compassion inwardly. Sometimes the words are simply, I care about this suffering.

It may be, I'm sorry and I love you. It's the message that one Hawaiian healer offers. The sign of compassion is a shift of identity that rather than reacting from our fear or hurt, we're relating to it with care. So on this bodhisattva path, we begin with the inner circle. And it might be that we're at a point in our lives

where there's nothing that's major, compelling, vulnerable, and that's fine. We bring our attention to others or words, wherever we experience it in this world, but this capacity to regard our inner life with kindness is the grounds of all compassion to others. So you might take a few full breaths, and then when you're ready, open your eyes.

So Rilke describes it that we live in widening circles, and it keeps on being sourced in this inner capacity. And then the widening circles is that we begin to sense others, and sometimes we start in the simplest way of others with similar kinds of pain. And that's very, very natural, that we develop friendships with people that might have some similar patterns. And sometimes people form, you know, relationships based on sickness and, like, we share our sickness together, and that can be a real stuck place, a storyline.

And sometimes in the, just the naming and the sharing and the honesty, there's a kind of mutual waking up out of it. So we see in the 12-step programs, it can be a very healing process of just naming the stuck places and realizing, oh, it's not my addiction, it's our addiction. It's this shared suffering. And that actually loosens up the shame and makes room for healing. Similarly, in the Buddhist tradition, we have Kalianamita groups, which are spiritual friends groups. And you can find out about them more on the website.

where if you want to have a group to share what's going on, how to bring these practices alive in daily life, and how to be able to really name in a safe space what is difficult, again, it opens up the compassion. So it's not just me and my struggle, it's just our shared human predicament. That is a waking up of consciousness. Not my pain, but our pain.

Ran across an illustration of this, years ago I wanted to share with you. I'm going to read parts of it. There was a at San Quentin Prison a coming together of the members of the San Quentin Gospel Choir with a tantra choir, some Tibetan monks that were famous for their multivocal chanting. So they planned to bring these two groups together so they could perform for each other. So the members of the San Quentin Gospel Choir were all African Americans, many of them big men who worked out with weights. And in their years in prison they'd been born again touched by the spirit of Jesus. And their songs were testimonials to their depths of suffering and to the light of the gospel

that had been awakened in them. The organizers feared that the Tibetan monks would appear to be merely foreigners and heathens to these newly awakened Christians. And then when they quote unquote heathen monks arrived, the contrast was even more apparent. Dwarfed by the African Americans was a group of small Asian men wearing maroon skirts. So the question was, okay, how do you bridge the gap? Okay? Because this is a setup for the trance of separation. Okay? So a key sponsor found a very amazing kind of a way of an inspired introduction. This is what he said. Almost all of these Tibetan men who have joined us today have spent years in harsh prisons. The communist Chinese army not only imprisoned them for expressing their beliefs but tortured them as well. Somehow they were released or able to escape from prison. and then to find freedom they walked across the Himalayas the highest mountains on earth. Some tied rags on their feet because they had no good shoes.

But even now they are in exile. They're forced to live far from their home, apart from their families and community, and they do not know if they'll ever be able to return. What has kept them going through all their struggles have been their songs and prayers. This is what they'll sing for you today. And in an instant the gospel choir and the Tibetan monks looked at one, another with eyes that shared the vulnerable depths of human sorrow and they found understanding. Each group sang to the other from the heart and when their music was

finished they came together to hug and embrace like long lost brothers. So they found their circles of belonging and then expanded to sense this is our shared vulnerability. This is what we all are facing and this again is this the next part of the practice in the training of compassion, is that we feel our own and then we widen and to sense the suffering of others.

So that'll be our next practice. I'd like to again invite you, if you will, to close your eyes and just check in for a moment. And again, feel the breath and feel your heart. And you might reconnect again with the difficulty

that you identified just a few minutes ago and sense where the vulnerability or pain that comes up in you around this difficulty lives in you and for some it's helpful to breathe with what you contact to breathe in and it's just breathing in is almost like okay let me touch it let me feel it breathing right into where the rawness lives and the breathing out is really offering at space, kindness, connecting with more the field of compassion. Again, if you feel like this resonates for you, you can put your hand on your heart and just sense that okay, so offering presence once again, breathing and feeling, okay, this is what's happening in this life, in this

body. Then sensing yourself widening the circles to tune into who else might be struggling in a similar way. And there may be quickly somebody you know that you can sense, well, that person too is feeling a sense of failure. Or that person too is feeling a sense of fear about

what's going on in their body or a sense of loneliness. But just to sense others that might be feeling the same way, struggling with the same pain or vulnerability. So it's our shared suffering.

So that you're breathing in for that person are those people too, including them in your hearts and breathing out, sensing may we be free from suffering? May we awaken to a space of peace or ease, fearlessness, well-being, whatever the wishes. Let your prayer be for all of us that struggle in a similar way. Again, sensing the difference of reacting out of fear or hurt. or anger to being the compassionate presence that offers care to our shared vulnerability. The shift in identity. And just notice, do you feel enlarged? Can you sense that freedom that comes from opening the space of awareness to include others? Rose said the miracles to see through

another's eyes for even a moment. So this, This is the training that rather than being fixed and trapped and imprisoned in the perspective of a separate self, we begin to have the flexibility and freedom to look through others' eyes. So that rather than that lag time I had with my friend, if I had been more awake in those moments, I would have been able to step inside, seen past the veil of the anger and said, oh, so what's really happening? when we do we can sense, oh, what that person needs, some safety, you know, or whatever it is. So what happens when we start training like this, where we feel our own, but then very purposely,

and this is deliberate, say, who else? What's it like for them? Can I breathe for and pray for and hold that? We become enlarge. We start developing this capacity when we encounter others that becomes very spontaneous. It's almost like some part of us is looking through their eyes and saying, well, what does that person need? We're not just occupying a separate self-space. Story that I heard, this is written by Fran Peavy,

and she's a psychologist. She says, one day I was walking through Stanford University campus with a friend when I saw a crowd of people with cameras and a video equipment on a little health side. They were clustered around a pair of chimpanzees. Now, the male was running loose, and the female was on a chain about 25 feet long. It turned out the male was from Marine World, and the female was being studied for something. The spectators were scientists and publicity people trying to get them to mate.

Okay, so there's this eager male, and he's free, and he's grunting and grabbing the female's chain and tugging, and she whimpers and backs away. He pulls again, she pulled back. watching the chimp's faces. I, a woman, began to feel sympathy for the female. Suddenly, the female chimp yanked her chain

out of the male's grasp. To my amazement, she walked through the crowd straight over to me and took my hand. Then she led me across the circle to the only other two women in the crowd,

and she joined hands with one of them. The three of us stood together in a circle. I remember the feeling of that rough palm against mine. The little chimp had recognized us and reached out across all the years of evolution to form her own support group. So I love that story because there was something about, you know, some shared understanding and it can be felt, you know, beyond, you know, what we think our psychics can feel when we're looking through another's eyes and when our hearts are having that quivering and response to suffering, others feel it.

It creates a field that's healing. The miracle is to see through another's eyes, if only for a moment. So there's in all of us a conditioning to scan for difference. And when we scan for difference, we don't, we aren't able to, sometimes called roll reverse. We're not able to make that stretch. So I think of this bodhisattva training. As just recognizing that we do that, but with that practice of looking through each other's eyes, we begin to widen and widen and widen the circles.

And with that, as I mentioned, comes a sense of kind of an intuition about what others need. There's a responsiveness. It's not just that we care. We know how to hold hands when hands are needed to be held, you know. in another story about this is a man who was the head of one of the departments of family medicine at an East Coast school and this was told by Rachel Raman there was a woman a homeless woman who would come to have meetings with him you know clinical meetings with him a couple of times a month

and she would she would make the long trip to the clinic you know she would bring her all of her possessions were all in a cart and she'd go up the hill and tie them to tie it to a meter and finally get her carts to the clinic front door. And so he saw her, he saw her periodically, and it was on a Wednesday, and her speech was sometimes rambling and so on. She was eccentric. But this man was very, very kind and respectful and not caught in this kind of superior thing of, I'm the medical doctor and you're the poor suffering person.

He was respectful. And he would just listen to the details of her difficult life, and it wasn't like he was trying to fix her. He was just listening. and caring and need to do what he could to ease her burdens, but it was just basically presence. And so after you've been seeing her for some time, he became aware that she sometimes came to the hospital

and Daisy wasn't there. And the clinic nurses were puzzled by this at first. She seemed to know what day it was that wasn't her day, and she'd go up to the consulting room, and although she didn't go into his room, she'd stand on the threshold and slowly and deliberately place her right foot inside the empty room and then withdraw it again and again. And after a while, she'd be satisfied

and she'd go away. So that's what she did. She'd come when he wasn't there and just put her foot in his room, kind of pull it out, put it in, pull it out. So as Rachel puts it, the places where we're seen, these spaces are holy places. And I think of the field of compassion is creating a holy space, a space that invites our own inner life into more of a wholeness, and in that it becomes very vast and includes others

and invites others into a wholeness that really can transform, transform pain. So our third reflection will be to just choose somebody that's having difficulty and look through their eyes a little. So again, if you will,

let your attention go inward. So you might, as you let the mind quiet and just feel your breath, sense someone in your life who's having a hard time. Not going through what you go through, just their own hard time. But someone you know, someone you've been around. And you might, as you sense this, just kind of notice how you might normally perceive their hard time. Kind of like how much are they an unreal other?

Just to be honest with yourself, how much is it a bit of a story and somewhat removed, even though you worry, perhaps, it's just there out there, somewhat like a character in a book or something. Just to be aware of that, because this is an opportunity to let that person be very close in right now and begin to investigate. So what would life be like to be, if I was looking through this person's eyes? just to imagine with that this person's body this person's heart this person's eyes and the difficulty whether it's a sense of disappointment or fear betrayal loss so as we

did before you can let the breath help you to breathe in and let yourself just touch just touch the the pain but make sure to breathe breathe out again because the breathing out is the offering of care, sensing the space of compassion, so you're not holding on to the pain. It's as if you're letting it flow into you and touch your heart and then out again into this vast space of the awakened heart. You can imagine, if you'd like, that you've got your hand on that person's cheek or heart or your arms around them and that in some way very close in, you're feeling what's real for that person and offering care. And the inquiry is what does this person most need?

Sometimes the care that they need is like this woman to be seen and heard, like the homeless woman. It's just a space of being seen and heard. and sometimes what's needed is that person might need just feeling really safe and that's the energy that you're offering and sometimes it's directly to feel that they're cared about that you love them and you might imagine that person receiving what's needed and sense what happens as they receive it and as you practice in this way know that you're practicing the great and precious

Karuna meditation of compassion, the awakening of the heart to the suffering that's within and around us. You might sense as you feel yourself looking through another's eyes and offering what's needed, just your sense of who you are. Just to kind of check that. What's the sense of your own identity or your own sense of self as you are. offering care. Is there even a sense of a self there? Those are something more open, more tender, more luminous, more edgeless care, taking a few full breaths. Come on back. So this tonight are just really the core trainings in the awakening of the heart. And as you can tell, they're what I call very deliberate.

You know, they're not, it's the, the understanding is that compassion is a natural capacity within us. And yet because we spend most of our time in a rather self-centered trance, the awakening of compassion is a deliberate practice. And as with all deliberate practices, if you want mastery,

it takes a real sincere commitment. And we began with the Holy Shadow And the commitment is in this waking up of compassion. It's very simple that we let ourselves be touched, that we care, that we respond. But not from a sense of self that's trying to fix or thinking that we're responsible or we're going to save the world. And the words and the actions that arise from a sincere compassionate presence really have the power of blessing. If you take the time to pause and sense, what does this person need? and in some way give whatever.

It may be your silent prayer and it may be just a slight touch on the arm and it may be a smile. It may be that you give time or help or money. Whatever it is, it might be social action, speaking of truth, that of compassion. The deepest thing you're offering is your presence that you're wholeheartedly showing up.

So it's a real journey of the spirit. when you commit yourself to deliberately awakening Karuna, compassion, it's a journey of the spirit. You start walking through this life where you see your friends and you see your family and you see strangers and you actually are looking to see who's there. You're saying, okay, this is not an unreal other. Real, real being, what do you need?

It's like everybody, anybody, anybody, meet, that's possible. This person's real. And it's not like you're saying, what do you need, like you're the great fixer, it's just this recognition of here we are. And there's this shared vulnerability and what's true, what's true? There's a wonderful description in this training that to be kind, we must swerve regularly from our path. And I find that's really, really true. To be kind, we must swerve regularly from our path. Our path, meaning our small path, is pretty goal-oriented about what am I going to get done and what's going to make me more comfortable.

And, you know, we get very tasky. And in the moments that we pause, we pick up a lot more information and it's possible to respond. And that response might be to what's going on inside us, our own loneliness, or restlessness, or fear, that we were steamrolling over in our busyness. We're swerving to be kind to what's inside us, and we swerve to be kind to each other. So don't wait. Don't wait to awaken this.

Just even this week, since if there are times that it's possible to swerve from your path and pause. And just to ask that question, you know, who is this and what does this person need? Or ask it to your own being. What's really this heart need begins to have ripples of healing in this world? So we'll close together just again, just to take a moment to check in

and come back to the first circle. Come back to this aliveness that's right here. Sensing your intention to respond to this life with compassion. sensing if anything in this moment is asking for attention in this moment and it doesn't have to be a dramatic meditation on compassion it can be simply noticing in this moment

if there's anything that feels raw or if there's any self-judgment if there's any discomfort or restlessness or anything that's challenging just offering a kind presence inwardly to widen the circle and sense perhaps one person in your life that right now and maybe over the next days to come, you'd like to just practice attuning to a little more, sensing this is not an unreal other, this being is real,

looking through their eyes a little more, just one person, letting your heart be touched, sensing that opening, that field of caring and compassion. And then as a group, as a collective here, of those sitting here tonight, those listening from other places, is to sense that together these sincere hearts are holding this world in a field of compassion. This earth, our mother, that has so much dis-ease, that out of ignorance and greed, is being so injured. the species that are suffering, the humans that are in cycles of war, and the places where there's natural disasters right now, Pakistan,

so many places of suffering, that we hold the earth our mother in all beings in our heart. And feeling our breath, feeling this life breath, and feeling the tenderness of our hearts, we feel our prayer. that all beings might be free from suffering, that all beings might touch natural great peace, that all beings might awaken and be free.

I'm just taking these last moment, just to feel right here in this moment. These are the words of Nikki Giovanni. She says, and if ever I touched a life, I hope that life knows that I know that touching was and still is, and always will be the true revolution.

The talk you just listened to has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule, or about programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit either my website, which is tarabrock.com, our IMCW site, which is IMCW.org. Thank you very much.