Welcome everyone. Today we're going to continue our exploration of compassion. I want to share a story that I shared here I think once before some while ago and it's a story of compassion.

So when I was living at the Upaya Zen Center 2012, I had only been there for maybe two or three months at this point and the way that this is quite a big grounds, this Zen Center, have a big property and a number of different buildings where people stay and different things happen. And for whatever reason, I was the only person whose room was in the main building up front, which was also where the dining hall was and the office and the kind of welcome building from the parking lot.

And so one day in the middle of the night, all of a sudden I hear this banging on the front door and I just ignored it for a while because it's like two or three in the morning, half asleep. And it's the banging continues. So I figure I should go check this out. So I get out of my bed, kind of groggy, walk down the stairs, come to the front door.

And then there's a man standing there, maybe 30 something. And mind you, this is the middle of the night and it's freezing outside. There's snow. It's probably sub 20 degrees. It's very cold, windy. And this man is there and he shouts out something like, is this the Buddhist temple? And I said, yes, this is the Buddhist temple. And then he has some look on his face or he says something.

I say, hey, it's pretty cold out there. Why don't you come in? So he steps inside. Immediately, I can sense he reeks of alcohol. And then he just starts talking, just somewhat frantic or distressed and says his baby just died. And just, I can't remember all the details of his story, but just a lot of pain was very clear. I listened for a while and I really just felt a lot of care and I had no idea what to do.

I didn't really have the skills I have now back then. And even now it's like, well, what do you do? And that question was very pulling at me in that moment. What do I do? And I had no idea. So I just was like, well, I'll just listen and heard him. And I said, you know, I'm so sorry. It sounds really hard. I said, hey, do you want a cup of tea?

And he said, yeah. I said, okay, why don't you grab a seat? I'll make you a tea. And then I said to him, you know, let me also just call someone over who I think might be more suited to speak with you. So he said, okay. And I tried the, I called over some of the more senior people at Upaya, head monk and so on. One of them came by and talked to him for a while and I went to bed.

And then the next day, I debriefed with the teacher. And I shared that I was just really feeling a lot of pain from that interaction. And I felt so inadequate in my responding to him. And I was really feeling the suffering as well. And I said to the teacher, I was like, you know, I just really don't feel like I did enough. And the teacher asked me, said, well, what would have been enough?

And I thought about it. And I said, to make all his pain and suffering go away. And they said, that's a pretty tall order you put on yourself. And I kind of landed in, oh, yeah, maybe that's an unreasonable expectation. And then what the teacher said to me really, really stuck with me. He said, you know, from my vantage point, it actually sounds like you did quite a lot.

You opened the door for someone in the middle of the night. You welcomed him in. You didn't respond with hostility. What are you doing here? Why are you? What's wrong with you? He just let them in. He listened, got him a tea, found someone who could speak to him. He said, that sounds pretty good to me. And I could really take that in and it left quite an impact on me.

And yet there still was that feeling of my actions were inconsequential. I'm like, well, yeah, I get it. And one thing I've thought about in the aftermath of that was, well, okay, Maybe that feeling was there. But what if every single person on the planet met people suffering in that way? I suspect we'd be a much more healed planet. I suspect we would have a culture where people are allowed to meet that and to move through it and to process it with care rather than continual voices of power through, get over it, deal with it already, stuff it down, be productive.

And so in that is really some lessons that I've learned on compassion. And the first one that I've already named is compassion does not mean fixing the problem. Like you really can't. With this guy, I could not just take his pain away. I mean, his baby just died. Some random person who talks to you for 10 minutes is, you can help, you can lend your care, but you can't actually solve that problem.

Even take the example of, say, you have someone who's feeling really just lonely. You could hang out with them for a bit, and that helps. It makes a difference, but you can't deeply eradicate loneliness from their heart. That's not your job. And so it's really to start to see, with compassion, my job is not to fix the problem. My job is just to do what I can based upon the resources that I have, the level of inner stability I have, the space, the time, the energy I have, yeah, we help out.

And it's asymmetric. We just go into the world with whatever level of resources we bring and we help out where we can. And another part of that story is worth naming is that I just jumped in the suffering with him. When the teacher came and spoke with him in the middle of the night, they had a very compassionate conversation. I peeked from around the corner for a little bit to see what was going on over there.

And you could tell they were very balanced and very steady, and it's what they reported. And so it's like, oh, it was possible to have a compassionate conversation without taking on the suffering, without being in it and dragged down with him, without leaving the conversation feeling inadequate. And really with both of these things, learning the lesson of compassion doesn't mean fixing, and compassion doesn't mean jumping in the suffering with them.

What we come to is equanimity, and this is really a necessary companion of compassion equanimity is the balance of minds the sense of groundedness the thing that keeps us steady in the face of suffering the thing that allows us to remain centered without fixing the problem one way this is trained traditionally with the in these brahma vihāras that we're going through is really the reflection that i can't take people suffering away from them.

One of the phrases that's used to practice with and actually use as a meditation is something like, I care for you, but I can't control your happiness or unhappiness. Or you are the owner of your actions. Your well-being depends on your actions, not on my wishes for you. Really internalizing that teaching that I can help out, but I can't make someone happy. I can't take their pain away.

That's not my job. It's not my responsibility. And I reflect on this, as I'm sure all of us could, of a number of just friends, people who are actually have been close to me over the years who've been in places of suffering. And I've wanted to just kind of shake them out of it, be happy already. And one friend in my early 20s, post-college, who descended into alcoholism and drug use.

And I, at that point, I really wanted to shake them out of it. So I tried all sorts of things, tough love, tender love, stern advice giving, boundary setting, doing things for him, hanging out. And I, at that time I got really quite frustrated because none of it was working. It's like, stop it already. And it wasn't my job, but maybe if I could just be a steady, compassionate presence in his life, modeling a different way that does add up to something as what I did didn't work.

I didn't snap him out of it, but he eventually did snap out of it on his own journey, in his own path, and he had to learn his own lessons, probably with the support of people around him who could just keep showing up in a caring, compassionate way. I've had other friends who stay in unhappy romantic relationships for years, complain a lot, and to really reflect, well, wait a minute, my job isn't to continually chastise you about why you're in this relationship.

I can't do that for you. You have to come to whatever realization on your own terms, either stay in the relationship and find a different way of orienting to it or leave it, like not staying in this place where you're miserable all the time. But that's not my job. My job is to be a compassionate presence in your life, a caring person who's just here for you.

I also think I'm sure a lot of us who, when we really get some of these fruits of meditation, we want to share it with everyone. And we think of all the people, oh, wow, they could really use some mindfulness and we want to go just tell them, yeah, yeah, this is going to solve your problem. Well, it's not our job. Sure, we can model it. We could put the idea out there.

But when we really try to get someone else to meditate, well, usually doesn't work out. And so in these cases with these different people I'm mentioning, what the Buddhist path is pointing to, when we realize we can't fix the problems, it's not like we disappear or we stop caring or we somehow get callous. We just drop that responsibility of being the fixer. And we can start to show up in a compassionate way and do what we can.

Kind of like in that moment with the man who came to the door in the middle of the night. Well, I did what I can. I love how the Buddha says this is a path of mutual benefit, beneficial for oneself, beneficial for others, beneficial for both. And we really realize that being compassionate and caring is actually very beneficial to us. It feels uplifting. It feels good. When we learn to bring the equanimity to it that keeps us balanced, it really awakens and enlivens our heart to be steady with other people amidst their pain.

And it's obviously beneficial for them, but it has to have this mutual benefit. And something I see in the world of people who are very well-intentioned, they overextend themselves and they get burnt out and they run themselves into the ground in service of others. And eventually then your actual ability to help out runs its course. It's like, how can we have this mutual benefit where we stay steady and we're able to help?

I want to wrap up here, but I guess I'll just say very briefly, the other big part of equanimity training for me has just been the vipassanā practice, the mindfulness meditation that really gives us that ability to sit in the center of the present moment, to see the urge to jump in, to be the savior, to fix the thing, the urge to run away, to disappear, to get frustrated, and to just say, no, thank you, I'm just here.

I'm here and I care and I'm gonna continue to be here and I'm just, okay, I see those tendencies and I'm here to have that steadiness and balance.

So going into the meditation today, just this reflection, may it rest on the heart and mind in whatever way it needs to, knowing that amidst a world of suffering, it's possible to balance our care and our steadiness. We'll see you in a little bit.