We've begun looking at compassion, and to speak of compassion, we really are speaking about dukkha, this central term in Buddhism right there in the Four Noble Truths, this first teaching the Buddha gave, where he said, there is suffering, there's a cause to suffering, there's an end to suffering, and there is a path to the end of suffering. This word dukkha, a lot of people in the English translation of suffering have a hard time connecting with it.

You could think of dukkha, du meaning bad, and ka being the center of an axle wheel. And so it's a not very circular axle wheel, as if to say, if you were cruising around town in a chariot and you had a bad axle wheel, you're going to have a lumpy ride. And so we could think of dukkha, we use this word suffering, but it basically points to, in life, sometimes it's a lumpy ride.

Sometimes there's tension, there's friction, there's disappointment, there's pain, there's agitation. And of course, there's total heartbreak, there's loss, there's death, there's injustice. Like all of these are in this territory of dukkha. So call it suffering. I just use that because it's the most common one. No need to reinvent the wheel. However we think of it, a lot of the Buddhist path is learning to become more and more sensitive to suffering.

start to notice it more frequently. Notice it more subtly. Notice just how much it's all around us. I was on a morning walk today. I woke up kind of groggy, mind a little restless. I didn't sleep the best. So I wake up and go out the door. I do a little walk. And on the walk, just kind of going along, I didn't feel any aversion. It's just, well, it's like this.

And then at some point on the walk, it dawned on me, oh, this is suffering. Not really big grand dramatic suffering, but oh, this is suffering, a groggy, heavy, restless mind. And the movement of compassion essentially sees that and says, I care. I'm willing to see the suffering to meet it and to say, I care. Buddhism is often talked about as a wisdom tradition, but I like how in Mahayana Buddhism, this is a little more explicit.

Mahayana being North Asia, East Asia, forms of Buddhism like Zen Buddhism, Tibetan pure land. And they describe Buddhism as like a two-winged bird where one wing is wisdom and the other wing is compassion. And if you just have one wing, well, the bird doesn't fly very well.

And so this wing of compassion, it's this direct response to suffering embedded right in at the beginning of the tradition, the Four Noble Truths, in these moments of suffering, can I just be with it? And to say, hey, I'm here and I care. And of course, if we look at our life when we really care about things, if a loved one is going through a hard time and we can see that and say, hey, I see you and I care.

What tends to sprout from that are various words, thoughts, actions. But the core of it is the care, this wish for beings to be free from suffering, to care about beings' well-being, their ease, their peace, their emergence from pain, to just, I care. A really powerful part of this exploration is to look at our relationship to suffering. Like, how do we respond to it or react to it?

And this is largely just our conditioning. As a somewhat silly example, imagine you're walking around the neighborhood and there's a pit of quicksand. And imagine there was someone in the quicksand. What are the different ways you could respond to this person in very overt suffering? Well, firstly, what you could do is you could go get some rocks and throw them at them. You could taunt them, tell them how stupid they are for going in the quicksand, or even silently in your mind, you could throw rocks at them, criticizing them.

I can't believe they fell into that pit. It was so obvious. What's wrong with them? And all of these are considered the far enemy of compassion, the opposite, outright cruelty, whether it's external or internal.

And curiously, what is considered the near enemy of compassion, the thing that we mistake for it would be something like jumping in the quicksand with them. Like, wow, you're in so much suffering. oh my goodness, let me come join you in that. And now you have two people in quicksand.

And essentially it's to be overwhelmed by their suffering with them. And maybe you literally jump in. Maybe you collapse at the side of the pit of quicksand in a puddle of grief and you can't really help out. You're immobilized in your own suffering. But there are a whole slew of other ways beyond this far enemy, near enemy that we could respond to suffering. One is we just are kind of numb to it like that not my problem keep walking along or maybe you see it and it's not so much a numbness it's like oh I don't want to deal with that it's like active aversion or maybe you're just so caught in your own inner narrative you don't even notice it you literally walk right past it oblivious to the fact that it's happening or maybe you want to fix it okay I got to fix the problem there's not really the movement of care and you can see this sometimes where maybe someone tries to help out, but they don't actually see the human.

That's just, okay, stop talking. Stop giving me feedback. I'm trying to help you already. Can't you see it? And there's something that's a little off when we try to help out without a basis of seeing the human. We could also, in seeing this person in the pit of quicksand, slip into pity, feeling bad for them. And pity here, as I'm speaking to it, is a sense of othering.

Like me on my high ground, in my clear mindfulness that noticed the pit and you over there who don't have quite the same degree of mindfulness I do and fell in. Oh, that's really unfortunate for you. One I've also noticed come out in myself at times over the years, a product of too much slapstick comedy as a young person is this movement of humor. Like, oh, that's funny.

This person got stuck in the quicksand. And so all of these, the mindfulness approach, and this is something I find really quite relieving, is that it's not like any of these reactions we have are bad or are a sign that we're a terrible person. These are all just different forms of conditioning to be noticed. Oh, this is how my system has been conditioned to respond to suffering.

And in that act of mindfulness, we see, oh, and there's this possibility to say, okay, that's the conditioning and I care. To see that person in the quicksand and to say, hey, fellow being, you're in a rough place. I care about you. And that's the movement of compassion. And curiously, no action is compulsory, but chances are if you really see that person and you see them in their predicament and you have this heart of care, well, you're going to try to help out in some way.

Maybe if you have the time, the energy, the space, the skill set, the strength, you'll try to grab a big stick and pull them out. Maybe you don't have those things and you try to call someone who can help out. Curiously, compassion does not just mean I pulled them out of their mess. Because you could go grab the stick and like the fix-it example I shared earlier, you could also be cruel to them the whole time you're pulling them out, giving them a big lecture on how dumb they were, how they need to get over themselves and they need to change their ways so it doesn't happen again.

And so you could help out in a way that actually is uncompassionate, which is kind of odd. Something I've reflected on a bit myself, and I consider this something of a koan, a little riddle to sit with that doesn't lend itself to an easy answer, in that there's so much suffering out in the world. And why is it that we blunt ourselves to suffering. And certainly I've seen this in myself, that numbing effect.

And one is just a sense of overwhelm of how much suffering is out there. Even in myself across a single day, if I just sit by myself in a cabin, there's so much suffering. I'm really paying attention. And then I go out into the world and not just people's internal suffering, but their actual overt life suffering, the societal suffering from unjust, unfair, or just difficult systems, the suffering of aging, illness, death.

And so one is contending with that force of overwhelm, like it's just too much. And to just see that, okay, that's there. And I care. I care for beings. I think also there can be this sense that, well, if I really open to see all this suffering, there's a part of me that feels like I have to take action and I can't possibly help out all the thousand people in the pits of quicksand.

So it's easier to just kind of ignore all of it. And what I've come to trust over the years is that the more we go on the path, the more sense of inner balance we cultivate, the more suffering we notice internally and externally, and the more we have a sense of what we can actually hold. And we can see, oh, I don't have to limit how much I care.

I help where I can. And I trust that that capacity will grow as I proceed with life. I may not be able to help all the thousand people in the quicksand pits, but I could help some.

And that counts for something. And so really what we're opening ourselves to is being more and more open to suffering, how it's here, to be in that place of care where I can see it and I can be with it. And I can help where I can.

And even where I don't have the time, the energy, the space, the skills, I can still care. And we can start to see this not as something that's oppressive or weighs us down, but as something that's actually uplifting. You know, for the Buddha, compassion fatigue doesn't exist. And we'll probably talk about that another day, the phenomena that is being pointed to. But the compassion the Buddha is talking about is a compassion that's uplifting, a compassion that's recharging, that's nourishing.

When we learn to access our care without all the other noise we add to it. And so I just want to leave with that simple teaching that the heart of compassion is just being willing to see the suffering and to sit in the space of I care. Clean, at ease, present, I care.

So we'll pause here. We'll see you in a little bit.