Good morning. Welcome here. So some while ago, we started a series looking at different meditative approaches in Buddhism, loosely divided it into three buckets. There's samatha, vipassanā, and the heart cultivations. Samatha being concentration practices, vipassanā being insight practices. And then there's these ways that we cultivate the heart, largely drawing upon this very central and classic teaching on the brahmavihāras and the four brahmavihāras are loving kindness compassion appreciative joy and equanimity so these are four qualities really emphasized in the buddhist tradition that we nurture we cultivate we grow into we've spent some while on loving kindness which is this basic goodwill that we see another being and We can train our first reaction to be, dear being, I wish you well, to live with good vibes.

And so it's said that really these Brahmavihāras, they're, I like how Gil talks about it, Gil Fronsdal, he says, they're four faces of love. And that when we encounter just any being, that first instinct is goodwill, loving kindness. And if it seems that that being is in a place of suffering, well, that becomes compassion. the wish for them to be free from that pain and suffering.

If it happens that that being appears to be experiencing good fortune, well, the love takes the form of appreciative joy, to take delight in their delight.

And equanimity could be looked at a number of ways. One is if we just see someone caught in a rut or caught in unskillful behavior, we have a quality of non-reactivity to that.

Equanimity is also to really tune into in the Brahmavihāra sense that someone isn't going to be freed from suffering because we want them to. Someone isn't going to become happy and peaceful because we want them to. Everyone is a subject to their own stream of conditioning. And so it's to really recognize equanimity as a moderator for all the others is I can have a heart of care and a heart of compassion, but ultimately I can't solve your problems for you.

I can't wave my magic wand. So equanimity keeps us balanced in that sense. Brahmavihāra, I like just leaving it untranslated, but a vihāra is an abode or dwelling in Pāli, and Brahma is the highest heavenly being in Buddhist cosmology. So literally it's something like the highest dwelling. It's not a big mansion in Beverly Hills overlooking the ocean, always 70 degrees with a nice breeze. That's a nice abode, but the Buddha says, no, no, no.

A much better abode is loving kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity. And it said these are the abodes of enlightened beings where they live their life, kind of oscillating between these four. So some translations, the four immeasurables, the sublime abidings, the divine abodes, like Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, as he calls them, the sublime attitudes. And so anyhow, we've spent some time in this heart cultivation series on loving kindness.

So now moving on to compassion. Simply put, compassion is the heart's wish for beings to be free from suffering. And the proximate cause is to see the helplessness of beings who are overwhelmed by suffering. And I think that babies are the best compassion training. I was just sitting in my yard yesterday and I heard a baby crying in one of the neighbor's babies. And my heart immediately or the immediate response of my being was, oh baby, I hope you're okay.

This is the instinctive response of compassion. And those of you who've spent much time with babies or currently are around babies, your grandkids, your own kids, your friend's kids, or even just random babies. Babies are thrust into this world without a real clear sense of what's going on. Don't have a clear perceptual faculty of like, oh, this is just an ear infection. This will pass temporarily. Just meet it with equanimity and awareness.

I mean, maybe they do, but in the time I've sent around babies, the feelings fluctuate a lot. And my understanding is there can be a state of real overwhelm. So to see, oh, here's this being who in a lot of ways is helpless. Like if they didn't have an adult caring for them, they would die. They wouldn't be able to feed themselves. And so to really see that circumstance with the heart of great care, one kind of neutral-ish, fun baby compassion training is on the airplane.

And it's interesting to look at how our instinctive response is to a baby crying on an airplane. And maybe it's not always the same. Maybe sometimes your heart has that, oh baby, I feel for you. I hope for you to be well. Or maybe, oh my goodness, that poor mother, that must be stressful to have a baby losing it on the airplane. Or perhaps we go to what we could consider a form of cruelty.

When this baby and this mother or father are already down, already in suffering, internally, we add more suffering to the mix. Be like, what's wrong with you? Get your act together. Shut your baby up, which is a form of cruelty, if you really think about it. Of course, then I could say this, and then you get mean to yourself for being in that, and then we get down those side roads.

I think also something that the modern world particularly conditions us for is just numbness, ignoring it. Like, meh, put on my headphones, not my problem. And so we're going to really flesh a lot of this out over the coming, however long it ends up being. But one step of compassion is just to notice how we respond when we see suffering, not with judgment, but with curiosity. Oh, that's interesting.

This is how my system responds to suffering. And what we can begin to do, regardless of our first response or our first reaction, is we can train in compassion. We train with even just bringing in maybe a simple sentiment of, oh dear one, I see your pain. I wish for you to be well. I hold you with care and compassion.

And you can let yourself just marinate in that sentiment and something starts to shift within us. I love these proximate causes of the heart qualities. And again, the proximate cause is to see the helplessness of beings overwhelmed by suffering.

And so for it to say, to see, it's a perception. It's a way of looking. It's like we're putting on those compassion goggles. I'm attuning to your suffering and also the fact that you're not choosing this. Like no one goes around and says, I really want to experience a lot of pain today. And even when we think we see someone and we see the choices they're making, and from our vantage point, it kind of feels like they are choosing suffering.

Like, well, you just sat down and watched TV for four hours and drank two liters of soda and had three pints of ice cream, and then you come out the other side and you feel bad. Well, you made that choice. But it's like, well, people make choices because they want to be happy. From whatever their stream of conditioning is, whatever pain and suffering is going on in their heart, whatever their role models in societal or familial conditioning was, they're making the choices in any given moment that feel most accessible for them to get relief, ease, comfort, well-being.

And so to see, oh, people don't choose to be in pain. We all want to be happy. We all want to experience ease. And all of life is just a big puzzle of trying to figure out how to do that amidst various challenges. So when we see that, we see, wait a minute, everyone actually wants to be happy.

And then when we meet suffering, it's like, oh my goodness, this person is in a place they don't want to be in. Deep down, they don't want to be in this. What can again be evoked is, I see your pain. I hold you with care and compassion. I wish for you to be well. And we can see this pain and suffering in others in big ways. The baby screaming, someone going through a separation, losing a job, having a relational tension, their kid won't talk to them, cancer diagnosis.

You know, we can see these big forms of suffering. And it's very clear these are often the starting point for training compassion because they're so obvious. But we also can attune to, especially the more we meditate, just how much subtle suffering there is. And you can start to see the signs of it. You're in a waiting room and someone's just shaking their leg. It's like, oh, I know that one.

That's restlessness. You see someone with a sunken demeanor. It's like, oh yeah, I've tasted depression, despair, low energy, grumpiness. And even when people present as okay, just fine, we've seen enough of our own mind to know just how much intrusive thoughts, continual grasping and resisting, to just see how much that plays out in a human heart and a human mind to see how often we don't get what we want.

We're associated with what's disagreeable and we really get, wait a minute, yeah, there's a lot of that in this human life and no one's choosing it and yet here it is. Like, oh, my fellow living being, dear one, I see your pain. I wish for you to be well. I hold you with care and compassion. So today in the meditation, if you want to touch in even a little bit to this terrain of compassion.

Maybe it's pretty in your face today. Maybe you're in your own stream of suffering. It's kind of obvious and overt. Maybe there's someone in your life, maybe a community or someone you know, and you could just bring someone to mind and it could be yourself and just attune to this pain that they're going through and that they're not choosing it. And in that, I see your pain.

I wish for you to be well. I hold you with care and compassion, Maybe even just for a minute or two, hang out in that energy.

See that this isn't depressing, but this is actually connective, heart opening. And from there, the meditation will unfold. So we'll see you all in a little bit.