One of the challenges for many people is that there is so much suffering.
For example, I'm a doctor and one of the things that happens to doctors—
and especially to people, if you will, in the caring professions
—is they get overwhelmed with suffering, as does the average person.
And they say, “There's so much suffering, what can I do?”
People are afraid of being overwhelmed by suffering,
and they lose their hope, their courage, and so on.
There must be a way to live in order for you to be strong enough to...
to handle the suffering inside of you.
If you don't know how to handle the suffering inside of you,
you cannot help another person to suffer less.
That is why the practice of mindfulness is first of all to help you yourself suffer less.
First of all you have to learn how to release the tension in your body,
how to reduce the pain in your body.
The practice of mindful breathing, mindful walking, sitting meditation, and total relaxation
can be very helpful in reducing the pain in your body.
Then with the practice of mindfulness you can learn how to create,
how to generate a feeling of joy, a feeling of happiness.
This can be done by anyone if we want to learn how.
For instance, when you breathe in, if you focus your attention on your in-breath,
you can bring your mind home to your body.
There is the energy of mindfulness and concentration in your in-breath.
And you realize that you are alive!
because someone who is already dead does not breathe in anymore.
[laughter]
So, one in-breath that may last three or four seconds can create
mindfulness, concentration, and insight.
When the body and the mind are together, you are established in the present moment,
in the here and the now, and you can get in touch with the wonders of life
that are available in the here and the now.
With that kind of mindfulness and concentration,
you realize that you are lucky enough, luckier than many people.
You have enough conditions to be happy right now, right here,
and you don't have to run into the future to look for happiness.
That happens after three or four seconds of the practice of mindful breathing.
You get the insight that there *are* conditions of happiness
that are available in the here and the now, that you are very lucky,
that you are alive.
Insight can happen just after a few seconds of practice.
If you recognize that these conditions of happiness are there, available,
you can create a feeling of joy and of happiness right away.
A good practitioner of mindfulness can create a feeling of joy,
a feeling of happiness for himself, for herself, and for the other person.
And that is easy enough.
Then mindfulness practice can help you to go home to yourself in order to...
...to get in touch with the pain, the suffering, the despair, the anger,
and the violence inside.
With the energy of mindfulness and insight,
you know how to handle the suffering within yourself.
You have compassion toward yourself.
Love for another person depends on your capacity to love yourself.
If you don't know how to love yourself and take care of yourself,
how can you love and take care of another person?
So, the practitioner learns how to suffer— how to handle the pain and suffering
inside of himself or herself.
And because he knows how to do that with compassion, with insight, with mindfulness,
he can suffer much less than other people who do not know the practice.
And he can go further.
He can make good use of the suffering...
in order to create something more positive, like understanding and compassion.
It’s like people who grow lotus flowers.
They know how to make good use of the mud in order to grow lotus.
No mud, no lotus.
No suffering, no happiness, no compassion.
So the practitioner, generating the energy of...
mindfulness and concentration, recognizes the pain in himself or in herself
and embraces it tenderly.
The fact that you can recognize and embrace your pain can bring you relief.
Because the pain is a kind of energy and mindfulness is another kind of energy.
This energy, mindfulness, embraces the other energy and
produces a kind of change, like a mother holding her baby.
The baby suffers.
The mother does not yet know what the cause is of the suffering of the baby,
but the fact that she's holding the baby tenderly can make...
the baby suffer less right away, because there is the energy of tenderness
of the mother penetrating into the body of the baby.
That brings relief.
If she continues with mindful holding,
she will find out the cause of the baby’s suffering, and then she can change the situation.
For the practitioner, holding his pain or her anger is like holding our own baby.
We have to handle the suffering in us tenderly, with nonviolence.
We should not try to suppress the pain.
We should not suppress our own baby.
And you get relief.
If you know how to practice, you can gradually transform the pain,
the anger, and the despair in you.
So the practice of mindfulness helps people to suffer in such a way that
they suffer much much less than other people who do not know how to practice.
To get relief and to make good use of the suffering in order to...
create understanding and compassion are the very foundation of happiness.
There is a deep connection between suffering and happiness;
it's like the connection between the mud and the lotus.
If you have the time...
to listen to your own suffering,
to look deeply into the nature of your own suffering,
understanding will arise.
Understanding here means understanding of the suffering.
And when understanding arises, compassion is born.
That is the mechanics of compassion.
When you look at another person,
if you have the time to look at him or her mindfully and with concentration,
you can recognize the suffering in that person.
And if you are more concentrated, you can find out that...
the person does not know how to handle the suffering in him
and that is why he remains a victim of his own suffering.
So far no one has helped him to handle the suffering in him.
And since he suffers, he makes the other people around him suffer,
even if he doesn't want to do so.
So with mindfulness and concentration, you can realize, you can recognize,
the suffering in him and understand that suffering.
And if that understanding arises, you are not angry with him anymore,
because compassion has been born in your heart.
When compassion is born in your heart, you don't suffer anymore.
It's like a miracle.
And instead of trying to punish him or her for having made you suffer,
you want to say something or do something
in order to help him suffer less.
This can be done in our daily life with the practice of mindfulness and concentration.
If we understand our own suffering,
then it will be much easier for us
to understand the suffering of another person and help him.
That is why the meditation on compassion and on suffering should begin with yourself.
Our suffering carries within itself the suffering of...
our father, of our mother, of our ancestors.
Maybe our father suffered so much
and he didn’t know how to transform and handle the suffering,
so he has transmitted it to you and it is in your genes.
You are a receiver of that transmission.
You have to accept it.
If you know the practice, you will transform the suffering of your father in you,
which is also your own suffering.
Your suffering also reflects the suffering of your society, of your nation.
If you understand your own suffering, you will understand...
the suffering of your community, of your nation, of your people.
So, understanding suffering is very important
for compassion to arise.
And once compassion is there, you suffer much less.
Suffering has a positive role to do.
We can speak about the goodness, the usefulness, of suffering.
It's like the goodness, the usefulness, of the mud in helping the lotus flowers.
That’s why my idea of the Kingdom of God...
is not a place where there is no suffering.
If there is no suffering, there is no happiness either.
That is the teaching of interbeing.
Interbeing means you cannot be by yourself alone;
you have to inter-be with us.
The left cannot be by itself alone;
the left has to inter-be with the right.
If you remove the right, the left disappears right away.
If politically you are on the left, don't wish that the right would disappear.
If the right disappears, you disappear also.
That is the teaching of interbeing.
Interbeing means you cannot *be*, you can only *inter-be*.
I think compassion is like everything else;
compassion cannot be by itself.
When you look into a flower,
you see the flower is made of non-flower elements, like a cloud.
I can see a cloud and I can touch a cloud in the flower.
All of us know that without the cloud there will be no rain and no flower can grow.
So when I look into the flower, I see non-flower elements, including the element of cloud.
I see the sunshine, I see the minerals, the earth, the gardener, and so on—
non-flower elements coming together
in order to help the flower to manifest as a wonder of life.
Compassion is a flower.
And compassion is made of non-compassion elements.