Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A nine-round death meditation anchors this 143-minute Monday-night session, with Ven Jampa Gendun leading the group through the first three rounds: the universality of death, the continuous decrease of lifespan (illustrated with a train journey that must eventually reach its station), and the composite, impermanent nature of the body. Before the guided sitting, he develops a broad conception of Dharma — not confined to Buddhism but anything that moves the mind from attachment to openness, hatred to love — and reads a short verse by the poet Michael Leunig on the discipline of living truthfully. After the meditation, he turns to great compassion, the fifth of six causes in the seven cause-and-effect instruction for developing the awakened heart, unpacking three progressive levels: a simple caring wish, an active aspiration, and a resolute personal commitment to act.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 3PA 2008 02 18.mp3
UUID: eb14e14b-1172-40eb-a7f7-29077d5298b6
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 2008-2009 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2008-02-18
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 143.2 minutes
Words: ~11,603
It’s nice to see some old faces from a previous life. Is everybody cool enough? It’s hard isn’t it? So we do as we normally do in terms of adjusting our motivation. It’s kind of a hassle sometimes, isn’t it?
Nonetheless, it’s quite necessary. Sometimes our minds are like I shouldn’t say our minds. My mind is like, you know, a stagnant swamp. Know, it just doesn’t want to flow anywhere. It just doesn’t want to move.
But nonetheless, we have trying to change our minds is, I think, very much what it’s all about. You know, whether we succeed or not, you know, maybe that’s, beyond our control. We can just create the causes and rely on cause and effect to work their magic. And we change for the better. We come perhaps, you know, it’s been it’s hot outside and maybe we’re feeling a bit uncomfortable or maybe you had a long day.
You know, most of you people have to do work outside of the home or inside the home. You’re very, you’re not like me. I’ve got it pretty easy. I’m lazy. So sometimes it’s hard for me to identify.
Can you hear me okay? Is it too soft? It’s hard for me to identify with what real people are doing in the real world. Nonetheless, I try. I know that for me, I have to always be encouraging myself, trying to inspire myself.
Remember my teachers and what they’ve said to me. Read and listen to tapes and try to encourage myself. It’s a there’s kind of a a inertia at work, isn’t it? It kinda holds us in place. It’s the force of our past habits, which keeping us keep taking us back to perhaps ways of thinking and being which, you know, in our better moments we’d rather, move beyond in some way.
So at least we can be reminded and encouraged. Have all these various levels of desires. And one of the deepest levels of desire is desire for our in our innermost values, what it is that is of deepest meaning to ourselves, what what makes us feel good about this this crazy wild thing we call our precious life? And then what resonates with ourselves at a deep level of our being gives us a feeling of purpose, makes it all worthwhile. You know, kind of lifts us up, if only momentarily, from the mundane.
It gives us a momentary experience of other possibilities, other ways we could be leading our life. Have inspiration. This idea of taking refuge, as I try to emphasize in one way or another, it’s not particularly Eastern, it’s not Buddhist, it’s something that we’ve all been doing more or less in one way or another our entire lives. Some people take refuge in their families, in their friends, in their community, and money, sex, politics, drugs, rock and roll, their jobs, status, material things. Lots of possibilities.
Lots of possibilities. And in this process, we often lose sight of where if it’s really working or not. It becomes kind of a thoughtless perpetual motion. We just keep going through the same activities and the same actions, never questioning, well, is it actually getting me what I want? And so at some point, we do what we do in the beginning of a talk or beginning of a practice, whether formally or informally, we stop and pause.
We stop speeding, stop distracting ourselves from ourselves, and we ask ourselves, Is this the direction I really want to go with my life? Unless you change a direction, you’re likely to end up where you’re headed. And is the overall inertia and the overall behavior taking me where I want to go? Is it working? Working?
Yesterday we were talking about Śākyamūni Buddha. There was a public talk. And I was reminded of what a not only what a genius the historical Buddha was, Śākyamūni Buddha, also his ruthless honesty. He had a situation which was very much like probably even better than ourselves, in terms of the relative material prosperity which he enjoyed. He came from upper class in his society.
His father was a member of royalty and so forth, was said to be king or a chieftain or whatever. And he had all the goodies that could be had at that time, not unlike ourselves, but probably even more so. But at some point in his life, he was honest enough to take a look at his life and begin to question, you know, is this really what I want? He saw, in fact, it was not. It would have been quite easy for him to sell out, to inherit his father’s position and so forth and lead a relatively prosperous life, the affluence and all the status that went with it.
But he was honest enough to admit to himself it wasn’t working. We have tremendous emotional investments in probably what we’re doing. We put a lot of time and energy in how we define ourselves, our identity that we’re holding to. And I think it takes a heroic effort to begin to question, well, is this what I want out of my life? We’re going to meditate on death this evening.
And I think it’s death that or the awareness of death which helps us to gain some kind of perspective. You know, we lose sight. We begin to see the individual trees and we get lost in the forest. But there are certain things which help us to step out of our patterns take some kind of overall view of where it is that we’re going and this is really where I want to go. So maybe there’s other possibilities.
And these are the possibilities, other possible refuges. Know, generally this is termed Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, isn’t it? And last week we talked about what Buddha might mean in terms of a refuge. You know, refuge is that which we can prevail upon, something that we can make use of, that we can actually become, which is going to help us to solve our problems. And in this context, help us to solve our problems at a fundamentally deeper level than perhaps we normally deal with our situation in life.
And the Buddha as a refuge, ourselves as Buddha, that we are the final transformation of this process, the person that we can become. And it becomes like a refuge for ourselves, isn’t it? Bringing about the kinds of changes we want in our life for the better in terms of who I can be and what I can do with my life, the possibilities of this precious human life and my potential. You know, healthy, loving, sane human being, you know, wisdom, love and compassion, personal power, and expressing these in practical ways in our everyday life, skillfully and fearlessly working with others. This is the Buddhist paradigm, the model of sanity, which we’re orientating ourselves toward.
And we each have our Buddha. What do we mean by Buddha? You know, what did a successful life would mean for all of us? And I think it’s really worthwhile to stop and ask ourselves. You know, you know, we don’t have to do it now.
Maybe sometime before you go to bed when you have an opportunity, when it’s quiet, really begin to reflect upon what it is that has made you happy in the past, what makes you feel alive, what makes you feel good about yourself. You don’t have to come up with any answers. It’s the question, I think, which is important. And maybe we can live with the answer in our everyday life without being aware of it. Things will change.
Our refuge will be redefined in terms of that person, in terms of what actually makes us happy, what actually solves our problems. But we actually have to do something. It’s not enough simply to become aware of the type of person, what a successful life might look like for you. We have to make choices. We have to begin to implement some methods whereby to bring about changes that we want for ourselves.
I’m afraid sincerity is just not enough. And there are some people who come to me and the tears, and it’s very sad. I mean sometimes the tears come to my eyes and they want life to be better. They don’t want this pain, whatever the difficulty that’s presently confronting them. They’re very sincere about change.
Sincerity is not enough. We have to do the work. That’s the importance of a sangha, isn’t it? Those who support us in the project, bringing about the kinds of changes who encourage us and assist us. And we need that kind of support.
But we also have to educate ourselves into the methods. You know, this Buddha House is an educational institution. And it’s called the Buddha House for the Advanced study of Buddhism. It’s too bad that we haven’t you know, that they don’t teach us in in school as we go along, in in in primary school and high school university, whatever. But they don’t.
Maybe some days things will change. But for the present, we have to involve ourselves in the process of learning about the nature of our situation. Our lives are lived in some kind of context, the significance that we bring to the events that occur to us, you know, how we’ve been educated, the meaning that we bring to all that we do. And Buddhism is simply a perspective on how to begin to perhaps redefine the meaning we we give to events, begin to see things perhaps perspective. Begin to you know, this is what we call the Dharma.
You know, technically, it is the path which leads to Buddha, to which leads to the cessation of our problems, the resolution of our difficulties and suffering, those cessation themselves. Really the Dharma is the truth of things. It is how things are beyond the continual fiction which we’re projecting on our world continually in one way or another. You know, the word dharma is a Sanskrit word. It means to hold back.
And its equivalent in the Tibetan language is chö. And one of the meanings of chö in the Tibetan language is that which transforms. So when we talk about implementing these teachings or the Dharma, it is that which holds us back from the pathologies of our life and assists us in transforming into becoming the person that we want to be. It has the power to transform. You know, you know, this is it doesn’t have to be Buddhadharma.
And then the Buddhadharma or the teachings of Buddhism, they don’t have a monopoly on truth. It doesn’t even have to be in the context of any organized religion. Religion doesn’t have the monopoly on the truth. You know, anything which is able to raise the level of our consciousness, know, anything which is able to take us from attachment to openness, from from pride to humility, from hatred to love, from confusion and ignorance to wisdom and clarity. That’s dharma.
It has the ability to transform and to hold us back from the difficulties what it is that we don’t want from our lives. You know, sometimes it can take the form of something, if we’re ready for it, if we can see the significance, if our minds can see it in context whereby we attribute it meaning, almost anything can help us to change our life for the better. You know, everything can become our teacher. You know, even like a leaf floating down from a tree can teach us, can give us instruction on on impermanence. You know, there’s a saying, sometimes a sixteen foot tall golden statue of Buddha is equal to a blade of grass.
And sometimes a blade of grass is equal to a sixteen foot tall statue of Buddha, which is to say that Dharma is what is effective changing our hearts and our minds for the better. And that the Dharma is what works for us in bringing about in helping us to realize more and more of our human potential and helping to solve our problems at a deeper level and and helping us, you know, along the path to becoming this happy, healthy, loving, sane human being, which is our goal, which is where the path is trying to take us. Conventionally, it takes the form of the various trainings, the various teachings and systems of meditation, all of what we’re talking about, the three principal aspects of the path and so forth. These are the formal types of Dharma. But I think essentially and most readily and in a profound fashion, I think it’s simply the truth of things.
Anyway, it said the Siddhas, the Buddha, they do not wash away sins with water, nor do they remove suffering with their hand, nor do they transfer their realizations to the minds of others. Buddha does by means of their showing the truth, the way things are in their actual reality, that we are free. And it’s the truth which makes us free. But it’s a lifelong we have to become students of the truth, the way things things are. You know?
In a way, we have no choice. Otherwise, we’re leading a substitute life, a false life. And that’s marked by dissatisfaction, disappointment, frustration, you know, all the various types of suffering that we’re continually experiencing. And we want to know how things actually are and begin to accord our mind with that reality. Then we can find some kind of harmony, both within ourselves in terms of this committee of mind, which is constantly involved in internal struggle, but also finding some kind of harmony with the world about us and living in accordance with relationship with the world and others.
So, you know, this this the Buddhist truth, you know, his his Dharma is therapeutic truth, you know, by means of which we’re trying to bring about finding complete health, you know, and well-being for ourselves. So it’s on this pragmatic so in this way, we can see it’s pragmatic in its nature. It’s in the sense that it is verified within our own experience. It all comes down to our own experience. You know, we’re not trying to please anyone, God, even our teachers, in a real fashion.
You know? We don’t have to be good boys and girls. We don’t really have to go beyond all the shoulds and ought tos of our lives, you know, in the sense of trying to find out who we are beneath all these taken for granted truths which we’ve accepted in one way or another, all this conditioning of our ideologies and our psychologies, our religious indoctrination, finding out what has meaning for myself, what works for myself, makes me, you know, bring about, what makes me fulfilled, what and what makes me happy, what what is sacred for me, what is my bliss. You know, for so to go for refuge to the Dharma is to go for refuge to the truth, to try to be as earnestly honest as possible with ourselves, to find out who it is we are beneath all this conditioning and try to be authentic in our everyday life as best we can. You know, ultimately, the the the Dharma which we go for refuge to is not something outside of ourselves.
It is each of ourselves as the living embodiment of Dharma, as as, you know, of truth, our own realizations, and our own self sustaining solutions to the problems as we find them and how we find expression in our everyday life. This is our real Dharma refuge. The Dharma is our refuge, the truth. The Buddha is the shore of refuge, but the ultimate refuge is the truth, the living life as an embodiment, an expression of that truth. And this is what we try to study.
This is what we try to come to understand. There’s a it’s a I like Michael Lunig, and he has a little verse about the truth. In order to be truthful, we must we must do more than speak the truth. We must also hear the truth. We must also receive truth.
We must also act upon truth. We must also search for truth, the difficult truth within us and around us. We must devote ourselves to truth. Otherwise, we are dishonest, and our lives are mistaken. God, grant us the strength and the courage to be truthful.
Amen. So, you know, the inner focus of our of our life, you know, this orientation. You know, orientation. You know, I’m just saying, what is your innermost desire? And we’ll call that a Buddha.
That becomes a it becomes important. It becomes a priority in our lives, amongst all our other priorities. And somehow, we’ve lost sight, probably. And we’re continually losing sight. So we have to continually reprioritize amongst what is important to ourselves, our family, our home, our job, living a good life, a successful life.
Amongst that is the priority of what is important to ourselves as a unique self actualizing individual. You know this? What has what this innermost value, living that out in our everyday life in combination with these other priorities. We call that living a Buddhist life or living a a successful life or a meaningful life, whatever. It doesn’t matter.
But we actually have to do something. We have to educate ourselves. We have to practice. We have to about we have to implement some kinds of methods and to bring about the kinds of changes we want. Sincerity and wishful thinking is not enough.
And so we go for refuge to the Dharma. And this all occurs within the social context spiritual community. Those who assist us in this process, who act as our teachers, as inspirations, shoulder to cry on, even supplying us with material means, material assistance in whatever way we can. This is the therapeutic culture in which this is like a greenhouse or, you know, where where these these sprouts are the person that we want to be, that we’re trying to become, can nourishment and protection until they’re strong enough to stand on their own. And it’s like a laboratory where we can experiment together.
We talk about things that just aren’t talked about, are they? And we can experiment with other ways of being. We can get in touch with the spiritual parts of ourselves. We can acknowledge the dissatisfactory quality of our life and what it is that we want from our life. And this is a laboratory.
It’s where it’s safe to feel these things and express them. And we try to raise the level of our motivation, the why behind and the purpose for all of what we do, why we’re involved in this, such that we’re not doing it just for our own narrow needs and limited self concerns, not just for our own piece of chocolate cake, because that’s not going to work. But we can begin with that one other person, even if one only one other person. Someone that you that you naturally care about, that you could imagine in front of yourself right now, and you could sincerely and genuinely wish, would like to see a smile on your face. I would like you to be happy.
I would like you not to have the problems that you might have or might have in the future. I’d like to be there for you in some more significant way than perhaps I’ve even been able to be in the past. You know, maybe I’d be a little more patient, a little more understanding, a little kinder, a little more understanding in some way. And therefore, what I’m going to do now, you know, this process of educating myself, of being trying my best to bring about the kinds of changes of the person I want to be is not just for my own piece of chocolate cake, not just for myself, but also for you. It’s for the both of us.
What I’m doing is for, you know, is for you and me. And then I think if we can sincerely generate that kind of motion, if, you know, something beyond ego’s vision, it’s myopic viewpoint of what the good life is about, we have to begin to open up to another perspective of what a successful life is about and why we’re here and what we’re doing. You know, this this saying of the Dalai Lama, is on the other side of that door, which I keep referring to, which I read just before I come walk in here every Monday night. Anyway, he says the purpose of life is to be happy, and the greatest degree of inner happiness is brought about through the development of love and compassion. That should be part of our educational process, the kinds of changes we want to make.
It should be a priority in our life. Then we can be sure that things can only become better. We can have some kind of confidence, you know, that we’re becoming you know, we may not be able to see all the details of the change. But, you know, on the other side of becoming that person, on the other side of love and compassion, we’re going to be a better person living in a better world. We can take refuge in love and compassion itself.
We can trust in that. I go for refuge until I’m awakened to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Through my practice of generosity and the other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am awakened to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Through my practice of generosity and the other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings.
I go for refuge until I am awakened to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Through my practice of generosity and the other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. May all sentient beings be inseparable from the joy that is without sorrow.
May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free from attachment for some and aversion toward others. Reverently, I prostrate with my body, speech, and mind. I present clouds of every type of offering, those actually arranged and imagined. I disclose all my negative actions accumulated during beginningless time and rejoice in all the virtues of superiors and ordinary beings. Please remain to the end of cyclic existence and turn the wheel of Dharma for migrating beings.
I dedicate all virtue, my own and others, to the great awakening. So we’re going to meditate. I thought and I I today, I was thinking of having spoken to someone today about perhaps a death that may happen in your future. I started thinking about a lot about death myself. And I thought maybe it might be worthwhile if we were to think about it together.
You know, the the Buddha said that we all of our experiences are filtered through four misperceptions. You know, it’s like we’re we’re like we’re wearing these sunglasses. We see the world in some kind of distorted way. That we see the impermanent as permanent. We see the is in fact dissatisfactory as pleasant.
We see, that which is impure as pure, and that which is without a self having a permanent independent self. You know, these are are the the sunglasses which we’re continually viewing the world through. And we we live in a distortion. You know, I talked about trying to this fiction that we’re continually projecting upon the world. And this is very much a part of that fiction.
You know, trying to arrive at the truth, trying to take off these these sunglasses. So we begin you know, we see the world in its actual nature as it truly is, and we begin to relate relate with it in accordance with its true nature. And we find we come to a new sense of harmony is you know, there’s a certain dishonesty in demanding that the world be other than the way it is. It’s sad to talk about death, isn’t it? We’d rather not.
And nonetheless, it is the way it is. And as certain of it, have to begin to accept that. I guess when we talk about this misperception of seeing the impermanent as permanent, I don’t think any of us would say, well, I’m never going to die. We would never say that. If somebody were to ask you, are you going to die?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure, I mean, everybody dies. Sure. Nevertheless, we still have an innate sense that I’m going to be around a very long time, that at some level we think we’re always going to be here intellectually. You know, we can hold different positions, different understandings or misunderstandings at different levels cognitive awareness.
We can hold diametrically opposed positions, and they never quite meet. You know? At one level, we can think one thing, but at another level, we’re thinking the exact opposite to that. And this is a this is a real struggle in meditation, isn’t it? To touch, you know, what to touch these misperceptions.
So, you know, like so that we begin to actually alter them. Otherwise, a lot of our you know, if we just in our meditations, if we or in our studies and so forth, if we don’t see the point where we’re holding the exact contrary position, if we don’t touch that and become aware of that and begin to counter that misunderstanding, then all of these teachings are like pouring pouring oil on water. You know, they just kind of float on the surface of your mind. And they really don’t counteract these misperceptions and this fiction. And we and this is what we’re basically acting out of, not what we say from our mouth or what we think intellectually, but something which is much more deeper than that.
We wouldn’t explicitly say I won’t die. But there is always underlying feeling, I will probably be I will probably live a long, long time. You know, we feel that death is not going to happen for sure this you know, not this year, for sure not this month. Oh, what to say and not tomorrow. Don’t be silly.
You know, we we we cannot we have to admit that people do die and that we that we are going to die some some day, but not too soon. Not a long, big and we’re able to raise some veils between ourselves inevitability of our own death. And it’s seen through a glass darkly. It’s always sometime in the far distant future. And therefore, it really has no impact upon ourselves, who we are now and what we do and how we lead our lives.
It’s just more or less a theory. We can talk about it intellectually, but we don’t have any sense of the feeling impact that it might have. But know, the the the you know, we’re not trying to necessarily overcome our fears around death. You know, the the the significance of thinking about death is to appreciate our life and thereby to ensure that we don’t waste our life, that we stop postponing what it is that we really want to do in our life, or we stop making excuses or rationalizing or getting distracted or losing the sense of our priorities in life, in the way we talked about before. Life becomes like a compromise, doesn’t it?
For one reason or another, we can rationalize it that way. Or we don’t even bother to rationalize it anymore. We just accept this is what I do. To ensure that we aren’t one of those kind of cowards who dies many times before their actual physical death, like they die an existential death, the living death of banality and emptiness, hypocrisy, inauthenticity, in a pettiness, which governs most people’s lives, what most people are are completely involved in in one way or another. And it it’s not really much meaning, not really of much purpose.
It’s kind of one hollow event following another hollow event in one way or another. It’s a poor imitation of life. It’s like a substitute life where we may come. So the purpose of when we meditate on death when we is that we not allow this opportunity our precious human life presents us with to to slip from our grasp, you know, while we still have it, while we can still make use use of it, to keep our priorities straight, to not lose sight, not lose ourselves, traditionally not lose ourselves in what is termed the eight worldly preoccupations or the eight worldly concerns. What are the standards by which we are living in our life?
You know, and within the Buddhist context, we talk about having to begin to free ourselves from this to from this total preoccupation, you know, with gain and loss, with pleasure and pain, with praise and criticism, with fame and notoriety. These are like we live in a prison we have created for ourselves. The outermost are these eight worldly concerns. And how do how do we you know, making conscious choices in our life what it is that we want for ourselves. But most of our choosing isn’t conscious, is it?
It is governed by the eight worldly concerns. Whatever, you know, whatever brings me pleasure, that’s what I’m going to do. Whatever would bring me plain pain, that’s what I’m going to avoid. Whatever brings me gain, that’s what I’m going to do. Whatever brings me loss, that’s what I’m going to avoid.
Whatever brings me praise, that’s what I’m going to do. Whatever brings me any type of criticism, that’s what I’m going to avoid, and on and on and on. And these are the unconscious choices which we’re making, which, you know, by which we lead lead our life, the kind of lives we’ve constructed for ourselves. You know, we don’t really value something until we lose it, unless we lose our intelligence. You know, just imagine losing your eyes and how much you would appreciate the opportunity to see again.
You would just look at things all day long. The beauty about us in the physical world, a flower or whatever, just appreciating this opportunity. And we have this opportunity with our lives. A teacher once asked a student once asked his teacher, Master, how do I prepare for death? And the teacher said, Learn to live.
And the student came back with, How do I learn to live? And the teacher said, Prepare yourself for death. So there’s an intimate connection between you know, of all the various mindfulness. People talk about mindfulness, mindfulness, mindfulness. I talk about mindfulness a lot.
But then the Buddha said amongst all the various mindfulnesses, it is the mindfulness of death which forms the foundation of our practice. It helps us to be mindful about what is important, what has meaning, keep our priorities straight. So I’m sorry. I’m going on and on to meditate on death in addition to our mindfulness of the breath. Okay?
We’re going to there’s a nine-round death meditation. We’ll just look at, the first three of these, of these nine rounds. Comes to a it’s, the root of this, of these three. We’re trying to come to some appreciation of the inevitability of death, that death is definite. And this has three supporting reasons.
Everyone must die. And it’s, you know, I’ll help you. I’ll give you some I’ll prompt you. But it’s important that you kind of you, from your side, that you supply what is relevant to yourself, make use your creativity, your imagination, your own experience. Everyone must die.
Okay. Presidents, kings, writers, musicians, criminals, laborers, students, bricklayers, people who give dharma talks on Monday nights, people listen to dharma talks on Monday nights. They do what they do. They rule. They love, they hate, they enjoy.
They suffer in all the very, very many things that we do. And then over the course of their life, and then finally they die. No matter how wealthy, no matter how powerful, no matter how saintly, no matter how sincere, no matter how brilliant, brilliant. It’s a it’s it’s of no use against death. You know, if we think about the, you know, the beginning of life on this planet, on the Earth, you know, from the evolution of these organic molecules forming single cell organisms.
And those evolving, dividing, evolving, gradually emerging into fish and amphibians and mammals, and then the first human being who inhabited this planet, the Earth maybe five billion years ago or five million years ago. And then, you know, and all of the people who have been born over the course of that, the billions and billions and billions of people who have been born over the course of that time of the evolution of humankind. They’re none of they’re not here anymore. And they they were just like us. And they too didn’t think they were going to die just like us.
They died because they were born. You know, what what distinguishes us from them? The second reason is that your lifespan is continually decreasing, you know, even as we sit here. Decreasing. You know, even as we sit here, our life we’re just that much closer to the time to that moment when when our life is coming to an end.
You know, the you know, that I I use this this image of the idea that which works for me. It’s like I don’t know. I used to go on long train trips. Well, most train trips are long in India, aren’t they? You know, they take you know, sometimes they take days, don’t they?
And you you laugh, you sleep, you read the newspaper, try to get by, you do all these various activities relentlessly, the train is moving. Even through the night, you pass these little villages, lights go by. There’s these people’s lives. There’s this story and all that involved. And it’s just a flashing glimpse in the night.
And you keep moving on and on and on. And then finally, you arrive at the station. And you have to get off. That’s where the train stops. You don’t have any choice.
Even as we sit here, is relentlessly moving moving on to that destination. And it’s going to reach a point when we have to get off. We don’t have any choice. It’s sad, but nonetheless, it is you know, we have to begin to accept that. The third reason is that that the body is a composite of constantly changing causes and condition.
This is maybe difficult, isn’t it? All that comes into existence through the coming together of causes and conditions just by that, by its very nature, is susceptible to decomposition. When the force which is maintaining that particular structure, pattern of materiality weakens and finally dissipates, and that structure decomposes, returns to its various elements. And that’s the nature of our body, our embodiment. You know, we’re continuing whatever is born is bound to decay and to die.
Whatever is stored, you know, is bound to run out. Whatever is built is bound to collapse. This is the nature of materiality of the physical world. We can’t transcend that process. So what we’re trying to do through through contemplating these three reasons, supporting the inevitability of death, is to develop the first of three determinations.
You know, you know, we may come to some kind of conclusion in your mind. Hopefully, at its best, some kind of heartfelt conclusion that while we still have this life, to make use of it, you know, mindfully with meaning and purpose. You know, find out what it is that you want and try to begin to live that, even if only in small ways in our everyday life, because you don’t know how much time you’re going to have to live that out. Okay. So we’re going to meditate on this.
So if you’d like to stand for a moment while and stretch, then we’ll meditate. Okay. So did you you want the air conditioning on? Did you push the the button down Hold it down? Yeah, where Chris is.
We don’t want anybody dying on us. The phowa cap. It’s snowing. Sorry, it’s gonna become a bit warm in here. Okay.
So take a couple comfortable firm posture. We’re going to begin with relaxing the body, starting at the crown, the scalp, and feeling the wrinkles in your brow beginning to smooth out. The pressure in and around your eyes diminishing. The muscles of your face softening relaxing relaxed. Coming around through the muscles at the back of the neck, perhaps gently turning your head to each side, very gently loosening, stretching the muscles at the back of the neck.
Stretching the muscles of the back of the neck, relaxing the muscles of the throat. Moving down to the upper back and shoulders perhaps rotating your shoulders a few times, lifting them and letting them drop comfortably to the sides. Feeling this burden this weight that we carry around on our backs moving down and through your body like like some burdens been lifted off your back. Moving your attention all the way down to your hands. Hands are loose and soft.
Relaxing lower arms and the upper arms. Your chest is at ease. Relaxing throughout the heart area and the lungs, and the central portion of the back, Stomach. Releasing the tension that we hold in our stomach muscles. Just allow your belly to go soft.
Relaxing throughout the abdominal cavity. Relaxing the lower back muscles, the buttocks, the upper legs, the lower legs and your feet Bring your awareness to your body in general. Looking through your body, noticing any tightnesses, any tensions which remain. Any areas of discomfort. Focusing upon those areas and feeling the tightness loosen, the tension diminish.
Just imagine as if it were so. If there isn’t some discomfort, don’t struggle against it. Befriend it, accept it, allow it to be there. It’s okay. Just accept it.
Wrap it around with a certain acceptance without struggling against the discomfort. It’s okay. The sense of physical well-being pervading your entire body. Just be with your body. Just be your body.
If thoughts arise, just let them go and come back to awareness of your body. Comfortable and relaxed, at ease. Nothing to do. Just be with your body. And then we’ll practice the six part breath exercise simply breathing in comfortably normally but upon the exhalation extending the exhalation completely emptying the lungs again breathing in comfortably normally again extending the exhalation and doing this six times individually When you’ve completed the breath exercise bring your mind to the breath.
Just the gentle in and out flow of the breath. Just pay attention to wherever the sensation of the breath is most clear and obvious to yourself. Wherever it might be that’s where you focus your attention. Wherever the sensation of the breath is most clear and obvious to yourself. Focus your attention.
Bring your mind back to the breath So now we’re going to meditate on the inevitability of death and we’re going to use three reasons. So the first of these reasons is that everyone must die. So within your own experience, you know, thinking of all the the people, the various people that you’ve known from from close friends to also to the various acquaintances, strangers, and all the various occupations, whatever strength they might have had physically, whatever much money they might have had materially, whoever they were, whatever they did, they lived and they died. So you can supply all the examples from your own experience which are meaningful to you. However rich, however famous, however strong, powerful, however loving, however caring, sincere, however ruthless, violent.
And then the second reason that we can consider that your lifespan is continually decreasing. Even as we sit here, we’re that much closer to that time when our life will come to an end. Know, it’s like we’re on a journey or it’s like a container of water that’s very slowly leaking. Drop by drop our life flows away and then the container’s empty. Our life is over.
And then the third reason is everything that comes into existence through the coming together of causes and conditions will eventually decompose. Everything that’s held together will eventually disperse including our own bodies. The force which is maintaining them will weaken and the body just simply returns to its elements and our life is over. That’s the natural way of things. What’s so special about me that somehow the universe is going to single me out for special treatment.
It’s not. See if you can come to some conclusion, even if it’s only artificial, you can at least think the thoughts that while I still have this life, I’m going to determine to use it as wisely, as meaningfully as I can find out what would I really want to begin to live that, if only in small ways in my everyday life. I don’t I’m definitely going to die. I don’t know how long I have. And then you can bring your mind back to the breath.
You’re still breathing. You’re lucky. And get in touch with your body, perhaps the pressure of your feet on the floor, your buttocks on the cushion, on the chair. Become aware of your body, the sensations, feelings within the body. And then in a slow and relaxed manner, just become aware of your surroundings, taking your time.
So we’re looking at the first of the two meditative traditions for developing an awakened heart. I think it’s it’s worth our energy and time to make effort in this. A lot of the things we get caught up in, perhaps, they really don’t bring us what it is that we hoped they would, and we just get tired out. And yeah, we don’t get much for what we did. But I think any energy or time we put into waking our heart, we can be assured that there’s going to be a great profit that’s going to bring us great returns.
It’s really worthwhile. So we’re looking at the two meditative traditions for developing the awakened heart. There’s the seven cause and effect instruction and equalizing and exchanging self for others. And we’re looking at the first of these two traditions. On the basis of the foundation of equanimity, an even-minded attitude which no longer reacts automatically to the categorizations of friend enemy and stranger.
We go on to create six causes bringing about the seventh result. The six causes as we’ve gone through is seeing all living beings as one’s mother, literally, remembering their kindness, developing a gratitude which wishes to repay their kindness, appealing love, and that’s as far as we’ve gotten thus far. So tonight we’re going continue with the fifth of the six causes, and the fifth cause is that of great compassion. You know, I think, again, I think this is a I think it’s useful to acquaint ourselves and work with this method. It’s it’s a challenge, you know, in seeing all beings as one’s mother.
Perhaps the the second of these two meditative traditions might be more accessible to most of us, but I think it’s worthwhile nonetheless. Great compassion. There’s a quote by Albert Einstein. It’s interesting. One of the greatest intellects of all time was also one of the was extremely spiritually concerned with was very concerned with the development of his heart.
A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires into affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by white widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. Beauty.
So, you know, we’ve talked about appealing love. Appealing love is when people begin to see sentient beings in general. They begin to look very attractive to us. You know, we’re we’re they look very appealing to us. There’s a certain attraction to them.
We pay attention to them. So whereas, you know, compassion is the other side of the coin of love. Becoming aware of the kindness of others, we naturally develop a gratitude which wishes to repay which wishes to repay that kindness. Seeing there you know, what we pay attention to is reality for us. You know, reality is not somehow independent of our own minds.
It’s just seen out there, you know, like a a big cow out in the pasture. If you walk over to the other side of the fence, it’ll come and knock you down. We we are co participants in the creation of our unique realities, our particular world version. If you pay attention to what people are doing wrong to you, you will see more and more wrong in the world. If you pay attention to the kindnesses of others, you will see greater and greater kindness in the world.
It’s simply a matter of what we pay attention to, what we what we familiarize our mind to. You know, I’m not saying that we should be naive or sentimental or look at the world through rose colored glasses. But there’s much more but we it’s more of an idea of you know, I said that Buddhism is pragmatic. It’s utilitarian. There’s greater profit to look to the kindness of others than there is to what they’re doing wrong in terms of our own well-being, in terms of our own happiness.
You you can look at this glass. Know, the the old cliche is a half full or half empty. You know, maybe both are true, aren’t they? But we will habitually and this is karma. We will pay attention to one or the other.
And some people are naturally drawn. They pay attention to the to the half emptiness of the glass. And they see life for them. There’s always this incompleteness. Something’s missing.
It’s never quite satisfactory. There’s never quite what we want. Other people, they naturally draw into the half full nature of the glass. And that becomes their reality. And they find meaning.
They find a sense of what they’re looking for more than not. And then we can say, oh, well, let’s be realistic. Why be realistic? I don’t know what that means. We can be pragmatic.
We want to be happy. We don’t want to suffer. There’s greater value in paying attention to what is right in the world than what is wrong. That’s pragmatic. You know?
We can argue all day long about whether the glass is half full or half empty, but I’d rather be happy. Compassion, you know, people look very appealing to us. We we begin to notice. We pay attention to their kindness. On the other hand, compassion so so so love concerns itself with the happiness of others.
Compassion concerns itself with the suffering of others. You know, with moreover, compassion concerns itself with the alleviation of suffering, the suffering of all living beings in terms of great compassion. You know, very I think very few people amongst us are sensitive and are willing to acknowledge even their own suffering and the immense level of dissatisfactoriness which permeates our It would not be Okay in our society. It’s not Okay if we were to feel too deeply or admit too openly the dilemma of what it means to be an ordinary human being, the human condition which we are all involved in, in one way or another. You know, it’s not it’s not okay not to be not okay.
You know, we’re supposed to be okay all the time, perpetually, continually. If we’re not okay, somehow we’re an inadequate human being. Why don’t you get your act together? Why are you causing all this trouble for us, for the world, for society? So I think, you know, in Alcoholics Anonymous, I think they they talk about is I’m not okay.
But it’s okay not to be okay. You know, I think it’s a skillful confronting of not okayness, which has made Alcoholics Anonymous successful. The confronting of our actual lived experience, and this this ruthless honesty that I was talking about. There is perhaps an insensitivity or a denial or a struggle against acknowledging the dissatisfactory texture of our life. Maybe there’s some kind of fear that it might take you under if you begin to indulge, if you begin to look at it too hard.
So you distract yourself or you numb yourself in one way or another, you know, through all of our various strategies that we worked out for ourselves to divert our attention to something else. So we never really genuinely feel compassion even for ourselves. You know? We never we never move by compassion to do something, to implement the means to to really work with our problems, this this this pervasive dissatisfactoriness of our life. You know, we’re always dealing with our difficulties at best on a superficial level.
Never really working at the with the underlying experience because we’re un we’re unwilling to look at the underlying experience, and therefore, don’t understand the nature of our experience. This is, you know, we never what we’re saying, you know, in terms of our present context, we never develop a will to awaken, to really grow, to change for the better. So we more or less remain perpetually stuck in more or less the same patterns of thinking and behaving. These perpetual cycles of dissatisfaction, it never ends. Our suffering never goes anywhere.
Nothing is ever learned. We take our suffering suffering involuntarily and unconsciously. And therefore, we we don’t learn from it, and it never ends. So it is insensitivity and this unwillingness to acknowledge the level of our pain, we never become serious about helping ourselves. And therefore, you know, if we never are serious about helping ourselves, if we never are willing experience our own pain.
Because then we how can we ever develop a genuine, stable compassion for others, knowing our own difficulties, our own dissatisfaction directly with our own lived experience, whereas we only know the pain of others indirectly, vicariously, secondhandedly. And we won’t. Without developing this this tremendous wish to change ourselves, to alleviate our own problems, we’re never going to be able to find that and extend that to others to help them to change, to help them to work through their problems. So there’s an intimate connection between acknowledging, becoming aware of our suffering. We all have had enough suffering.
We don’t need any more of that. But we have to begin to use our intelligence around our suffering. Life is continually bringing us lessons, but we either miss or dismiss the lessons that life is continually bringing us in one way or another. And therefore, we never change. You know, like, our suffering is like a mouth and is trying to tell the symptom, and we have to listen.
Otherwise, our suffering is meaningless. It’s just an undesired experience, which we hope not to repeat again. And then another suffering, and then another suffering, one tree after another, one suffering after another. We don’t see the forest. We don’t learn from it.
It just becomes another continuous event, an undesired event in our life. We don’t make any connections. We don’t see the patterns. And therefore, we don’t we don’t we don’t see the necessity to, you know, to address our suffering at a deeper level. It’s always piecemeal.
One suffering, well, let’s get rid that one. Then I get rid of that one. Work to get rid of that one. That one. So the compassion is first we have to learn to have compassion and love for ourselves.
And then we can begin to direct that toward us. You know, when we talk about renunciation or the determination to be free or the determination to free or the the will to awaken. What we’re what we’re it’s it is all all we’re all we’re saying is that we look we’re having compassion for ourselves, and we wish to remove the suffering of ourselves. That’s where we begin. But at a certain point, we simply direct the object of our compassion is directed toward others, and we wish to free them.
We develop the the and we awaken our hearts and want them to be free as well. So it’s just a matter of shifting shift shifting the the the object our compassion from initially ourselves to others. And there are three fundamental causes for awakening, for enlightenment or Buddhahood. There’s the awakened heart, this altruistic aspiration to achieve awakening. There’s this strong determination.
There’s great compassion, and there’s wisdom. And seeing deeply into the nature of reality. What what, you know, we can fundamental to this is compassion. You know? And we can say we can say, you know, we can translate this, you know, take this out of these lofty concepts of what, you know, of how we of of how these teach ings might appear to us.
And we can say compassion is a fundamental and necessary for mental health, of well-being, for a successful life. And Just like I mentioned about the Dalai Lama’s quotation, the outside of that wall, the greatest degree of inner happiness comes about through love and compassion. So if thinking about, well, what can make a successful life? What kind of priorities? Sure, you need money.
You want significant relationships. You want a nice, comfortable home, a job, interesting, stimulating. But part of that mix has to be compassion. And compassion doesn’t come naturally as we’re speaking of it here. It has to we have to work with it.
It’s something to be that we can work that we can cultivate. So this compassion is characterized by caring. Think something matters in terms of feeling. What matters is suffering. We feel an involvement.
There’s in terms of others, we have a sense of empathy. We’re able to identify with what they’re going through. We share we are able to, in some way, to share in their experience. We feel a connectedness to them. You know, as we’re trying in this context, the connectedness is a very is a very profound connectedness, the bond of a of a mother and a child, you know, seeing all these beings as our mother.
And that’s a very profound connect to us. Maybe that’s perhaps that’s asking too much of us. But, anyway, they matter to us. So we begin to have a you know, we can begin to we can have a sense that we can do something, that what we, you know, that what we do, what we say has consequences on others. It affects others.
We can affect people’s lives for better and worse. So, you know, using our intelligence, our abilities, our resources, our experience in helping us to to to learn how to affect people’s experience for the better in terms of their suffering. The implication of all this is that that the more we are, the more that we can be for others. The more that we are, the more we can be for others. So that becomes the motivating force behind what it is that we’re about to be to to be more and more there, be able to be and more there for others because they matter to us.
You know, this is the only this there’s no other way to actualize the highest potential than in in this manner. You can’t become a Buddha for yourself. It’s strange. We cannot you know, this this this highest human potential is only can only be realized. It’s the driving force behind it.
It can only be actualized for the sake of others, not for oneself. Maybe that’s trying to tell us something. So, you know, for most of us, compassion is is most easily and naturally evoked for people who are going through extreme gross suffering. You know, we all, you know, like on the evening news, when you see the news reports of Darfur in Sudan, the refugees. And you see the starvation, the little babies.
Know? Emaciated little bodies with the, you know, the sunken cheeks and the bald head and and the ribs protruding out. And unless we we become completely desensitized, we feel something quite naturally. We may feel annoyance. We may feel guilty as we cut into our nice delicious dinner, or we might fear feel fear.
But amongst all the various feelings which are probably this sight is arousing for us is probably compassion. We simply wish that this wasn’t happening, that this child wasn’t suffering. So these are uncomfortable feelings. And normally, our normal reaction is to to distract ourselves from uncomfortable feelings. Remember we were talking about the eight worldly concerns, our preoccupation with with avoiding uncomfortable feelings or displeasure or pain or suffering.
And that’s our normal standard of way that we deal with feelings. Now, let’s move on. Let’s turn turn the channel to something else. Unless we’re numb or we desensitize, these these images provoke uneasy, uncomfortable feelings, which we’d rather not experience if we but in cultivating cultivating compassion, we have to consciously stay with these feelings. We have to abide with these uncomfortable feelings.
We have to allow them to affect us. We have to allow them to penetrate our hearts, this tough ego leather of our self protection, of our defenses. Other people have to they have to matter to us and what they’re experiencing. And then we have to confront others’ suffering and feel how it must be for them. It’s called empathy, isn’t it?
And what it means for us as well. You know, what what kind of choices are we going to make in in in view of that suffering? We can we have a choice. We can either close down and move on. We can deny our own hearts, or we can respond.
We and I I I think making choices is extremely profound notion. We’re always making choices. Most of our choices are made unconsciously and automatically and habitually. Here, we’re trying to begin to make conscious choices in terms of what it is that we value. You know, I was talking about getting in touch with what is has meaning for us, what the kind of person that we might want to be, ten years from now, twenty years from now, and what we might want to do with our life.
And this requires that we make choices. If you want to be a loving, compassionate person, you’re going to have to make a lot of choices consciously to stay with the pain of others, to the uncomfortable feelings that that vision, these these images arousing you. Otherwise, you’re going to have to deny your innermost meaning, your desires. You’re going to have to build a wall around that, and you’re going to be dead inside. We were talking about that, weren’t we?
Leading a kind of substitute life, banality and emptiness and powerlessness. Purposely, we go out of our way to feel. So we stay in touch with our own hearts? You know, we we visualize this little, poor, emaciated child, you know, we that we see on the news staring expressionlessly at ourselves. And and you put, know, you put your little your your finger in its little hand, and you feel it squeeze.
It can hardly squeeze. It just wraps its fingers around your little your finger. You know? And and you have to allow what is happening to affect you. You know?
Allow the suffering that little creature’s pain to penetrate your hearts. You know? She doesn’t want to suffer, and that’s her reality. Maybe you don’t want to admit that. You don’t want to feel that.
But, you know, we talked about this truth which will make you free. This is the reality beyond all our fictions which we’re we’re trying to project upon the world, as if the people in Darfur, they don’t want to be happy and not to suffer like ourselves. They’re somehow different from ourselves. It’s Okay for them. Going through, somehow they’re used to it.
They’re they’re familiar. It’s it’s it’s not so bad. It’s okay in some way. We can somehow excuse ourselves from feeling. But in the past, that’s that’s your fiction.
That’s your fantasy. That’s not it has nothing to do with reality. This little girl, this little child doesn’t want to die. That’s her reality. But she is dying, and she’s in pain.
You know, compassion responds. Compassion begins with saying, it would be wonderful if you didn’t have to go through this. And it’s just a simple caring connection, a caring thought. Connection, a caring thought. You know, something begins to matter to us in terms of feeling of others. But it goes on.
You know, that’s one level. It goes on. May you not suffer? Suffer. You know, we start making some choices.
We you know, it’s nice to feel good and warm about it’d be nice if others didn’t have these problems. But maybe we can begin to intensify that and begin to become involved. I wish you weren’t suffering. May you not suffer. We come to some kind of conclusion, some kind of determination.
And finally, compassion says that’s the most difficult level of compassion. I’m going to do something. I’m going to commit myself. And even if it’s only in some small way, even if it’s sitting here feeling what you’re feeling, staying with your suffering, maybe that’s all I can do at the moment. But honoring your suffering, I’m going to take responsibility, doing what we can.
This last level of compassion is that of taking responsibility is the first level of exceptional resolve, which is the next, the sixth of the seven cause and effect instruction in developing an awakening heart. So we’re talking about I’m not very good about time, am I? You have to have compassion on me. So we’re talking about these three levels of compassion, which we purposely cultivate. This is really worth our time.
And just like it’s you know, we talk about going from refuge to this and that and this and that. Compassion is a worthwhile refuge in itself. Love and compassion. We can trust in it. So, you know, a simple caring involvement.
It would be wonderful if you didn’t if you weren’t going through this. It’d be nice. I would like that. And intensifying that level, a a strong wish. May you not.
This is what I want. And finally, a resolute commitment. I’m going to do something. We work with all of these various levels of suffering. Can first work with it in terms of gross suffering, extreme suffering.
That seems to be what most easily evokes naturally for all of us, our compassion. You know, when we talk about growth, we talk about self-development. We’re talking about fundamentally means enlarging and expanding horizons outwardly and our boundaries of what is our concern of a successful life, but also inwardly in-depth terms of how we feel. Of feel. I think that’s a good place to start, you know, with gross suffering.
But, you know, if we really become aware of suffering, if we can begin to, you know, get the taste, get some perspective, we can understand that that everyone is and is experiencing dissatisfaction, frustration, disappointment, suffering in all its various forms. Only whether it’s desired or undesired suffering, whether it’s worthy or unworthy suffering, it’s all suffering, only differing in kind and degree. During my retreat in January, really felt this in the sense that unless we really deal with our problems at a deeper level, then all of our struggles at the superficial levels amount to nothing. They’re just a diversion of our attention, a waste of our time and energy, blaming everyone and everything for the difficulties experience when, in fact, the root cause is within our own mind. That’s the source of suffering.
It always varies. People are laughing, whether they’re crying, whether they’re rich or poor, whether they’re stuffing their mouths full, whether they’re starving, they’re all suffering in some form or another, some degree or kind or another. It’s pervasive. And so, you know, it becomes a great compassion. It goes beyond, we have to begin somewhere so we could begin with this gross, extreme suffering.
Sure. But we don’t end there. We go inwardly in-depth in terms of the levels and degrees. And we begin to recognize the fact that everyone is suffering. All what it means to be an ordinary human being is to suffer.
This was a great truth that the Buddha recognized and tried to work with. You know, is life a bitch and then we die? Is this all there is? So we have to work with all the various great compassion directs itself to all sentient beings at all times, at all levels of suffering. And not just the gross, not just the temporary difficulties, but all people at all times.
So we need to work with many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many individuals with many, many, many, many levels and types of suffering to Keep cultivating, working with our mind, familiarizing ourselves with these attitudes of mind. It would be wonderful if you didn’t have this problem. May you not have this problem. I’m going to help you with this problem. See if we can actually begin to generate.
You know, meditation is simply the process of familiarization, cultivating, you know, becoming accustomed to and paying attention. What we pay attention to becomes our reality. Now, otherwise, we become like the person, you know, who says, oh, I feel compassion for humanity. I just don’t like people. We have to build up we have people, you know, we a real compassion is built up in dependence upon many, many specific instances of compassion.
Not compassion which is directed some towards some vague abstract notion about the suffering that’s out there somewhere in the world, but not not here, not there, not there, not there, not there. And that’s not with great compassion. So we compassion means simply we begin to pay attention to others’ pain. Simply we begin to pay attention to others’ pain in a way that it matters to us. It it will allow to affect us, and we develop the willingness to do something.
Normally, you know, our compassion is limited, usually only extended only to those who are close to us, and even then only on specific instances when they’re undergoing greater difficulty than normal. But at the same time, you know, we might we might we might be willing to develop compassion for toward gross gross suffering, you know, the the homeless in India or the the starving in Africa and, you know, or or somebody who’s going through a a broken relationship or somebody that just had a terrible accident or something like that. But when people are laughing or people seem satisfied or when they’re they’re rich, or, you know, we might even experience jealousy. You know, we might, you know, it’s difficult for us to arouse any compassion toward them. It’s because we don’t understand the actual nature of suffering, what it really means to be an ordinary being.
You know, So great compassion truly understands the pervasive nature of suffering, what it really means to be an ordinary being. As long as an individual is under the control of karma and afflictive emotions, he or she is suffering. It is only a matter of kind and degree. So great compassion understands this and extends itself to all sentient beings at all times. And that’s why it’s called great compassion.
But we have to begin to develop that great compassion in in in, like, you know, a few people, you know, begin somewhere in cultivating it. So I’m sorry. I I went over time. So this is the sixth of the six this is the fifth of the six causes and next week we’ll talk about exceptional resolve okay If you’d like to get a cup of tea, there might even be a piece of cake if you’re are lucky. Come back, we will have a discussion otherwise.
Thank you. Good night.