- So in my view, when mindfulness
or compassion are in full bloom,
full bloom, full compassion, full mindfulness,
they are both there, you know.
That's to say for compassion you need suffering,
but when you're fully mindful in the face of suffering,
you will be fully compassionate.
If you're also fully compassionate,
your heart is like really open, your attention will be open,
your awareness will be refined, you will be mindful.
This is in the absolute state
or in a very high level of compassion and mindfulness.
But most of us are just not there,
we live kind of ordinary lives.
And so, you know, we feel this, you know,
we feel aversion, we feel grasping, we feel confused.
There's just like, basically the mind is, you might say,
infiltrating our mindfulness and compassion.
So that's at the relative level.
And at the relative level,
I think it's really important
to know some of the differences
between mindfulness and compassion
so that you can know how and when to apply it.
And I think that's especially relevant for us right now
in this group.
So mindfulness can be described as loving awareness
of moment to moment experience.
Loving awareness of experience
and self-compassion is loving awareness of the experiencer.
In other words, the sentient being.
And if you've been practicing and the wisdom tradition,
most people kind of choke on that a little bit
because we know that the sense of self
is the source of untold, unnecessary suffering.
So aren't we reifying the self when we say self-compassion?
I'll get to this in a little while,
but my experiences and lots and lots of people's experiences
that both compassion and mindfulness dismantle the self
but they do it in a different way.
Mindfulness diminishes the rigidity of the self
but they do it in a different way.
Mindfulness dismantles the self
by breaking down our experience moment to moment
or by looking at the, you know, machinery of perception.
Compassion dissolves the self.
And we all know this,
like if you have had a real bad problem
and you're struggling and you're ruminating
and somebody comes up to you and gives you a hug
and you really feel connected and understood,
isn't it so that your anguish begins to subside,
your preoccupation diminishes
and you can begin to see things clearly again, right?
This is how compassion works.
It actually dissolves the self through warmth, right?
One dismantles, one dissolve.
So both diminish the dominance of the sense of self.
Mindfulness asks what do I know
or what am I experiencing now?
That's the question, mindful question, you know.
What's happening?
Self-compassion ask the question, what do I need?
What do I need?
This is really quite different.
If you're really struggling
and somebody looks at you and says,
Oh I'm so sorry for what you're going through,
what do you need?
And not just leave it at that,
what can I do for you?
So that's really what compassion is about.
Compassion is about responding to a person's need
when they're suffering and also taking action.
So the self-compassion question is what do I need?
Mindfulness is what am I experiencing, or what do I know?
Another interesting difference is in emotion regulation.
So mindfulness has been in the academic literature
particularly the psychological literature
since like maybe the beginning 1989, 1990,
so like 30 years, you know.
Compassion has really only been around
much for 10 years or 15 years, more like 10.
But both have been found to be powerful
for emotion regulation, but they seem to work differently.
Mindfulness regulates emotion through attention regulation
which is what are we paying attention to?
And how are we paying attention to it?
You know, spacious, focus,
what is the quality of your awareness?
Mindfulness regulates emotion through attention regulation
whereas compassion regulates emotion
through care, and connection.
And they're a little different,
connection is the awareness that I'm not alone.
That's a powerful emotion regulation insight
and care which is a warmth and goodwill.
So when we experience warmth and goodwill,
we down-regulate difficult emotions, okay?
What's interesting too,
is that actually the brain is only fully online
for attention regulation when we're 27,
whereas and probably also for emotion regulation
to be honest, but other people
have been regulating our emotions since birth
through care and connection.
So what we're doing with self-compassion
is actually tapping this fundamental way
of regulating emotion that we are familiar with since birth.
So we have access to this.
You will find that people
who are very good at compassion for others,
they might not actually
be particularly compassionate to themselves
but if they want to, they can do it really well
because they know how to be compassionate.
So then it's just a question of redirecting
that quality of care and connection.