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Today's topic is really about compassion,
gratitude, reverence for this appreciation
of the moment and of the beauty in humanity.
And one other things... I was Joking with a friend at lunch
how I'm actually a a pretty third-rate meditator. I'm in the minor leagues, never
done very well at it...
But one of the things that happened to me in an experience of meditation
that you were directing and I felt it again is this,
this dwelling in compassion. And so I wanted to ask you about
how you
think about and consider this mindfulness and compassion dialogue or
relationship. What is that?
>> There's an awful lot of talk about it And I don't actually think about it that
much, to tell you the truth
I try to live it, without the words
>> yeah >> because I think sometimes the words, you know,
carry, you know, sort of concepts and beliefs and a lot of
evidence in structure, but it's basically a narrative and it can be
very useful
to tell ourselves a narrative as we try to
conform to a particular kind of mmmm recipe or algorithm
that we think will make us better, but
from the perspective of the
the non-dual, we're already
compassionate, were good enough as we are, so it's more a question of
uncovering our compassion rather than trying to,
you know, build it up or something like that,
so the way I see it is that, mindfulness,
the cultivation of the quality of presence
simplifies things an enormous amount because it allows us to actually
embody who we already are as opposed to construct some
alternative identity for ourselves, and who we already
are is compassion. All your data is suggesting that, that it's like the
core universal
emotion and that... perhaps it's partly because I
our babies need to be cared for in some very profound way for a very long
time and, of course, we in some ways prefer
our babies to other babies, but in a certain way, we don't. And even
the bonobo and the chimp bring up those kinds of feelings.
There'ss a wonderful quotation from Einstein that's in several my books about
recognizing the entire universe in this way and talking about
the prison of our own ideas and opinions when we start to separate things
and see ourselves a separated from the universe, he describes it as a prison, and then he says,
our task must be to free ourselves,
must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening
Our circle of compassion... This is Einstein
talking, widening our circle of compassion to embrace
all beings in their beauty, and then he says
nobody is able to achieve that completely, but the striving for such
an achievement is itself a foundation for
liberation, he uses the word liberation, in inner security
so that's been the sort of vector that I've always taken, that...
...and it's a good sort of way of, especially if you think of yourself as a
bad meditator
then a shortcut to being a good meditator, in quotes, is
just realiz.. reminding yourself, just saying to yourself,
it's already here. It's already here. There's nothing to get, there is no place to
Go, there's nothing to do,
and there's nothing special to attain, because
what's special is already here, it's already attained and what
realizing it means is...
...making it real and how do we make it real?
By being present, then we trust
that the knowing is itself
inherently compassionate. And if you study Dzogchen and Tibetan teachings on Mahamudra
...
that's the way they talk. That the actual, the spaciousness of the
awareness, pure awareness, is compassion.
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