Good morning. Welcome here. The last couple weeks, we've been exploring compassion. And as compassion is the heart's response to pain, stress, suffering, we could get the idea that compassion is, you know, it's pretty heavy. Compassion, a little bit of a downer. When do we get to the warm, bubbly stuff? However, even though we talk about suffering a lot, because compassion is the heart's response to suffering. For the Buddha, compassion is an uplifting state, joyful, not tiring, not oppressive.

And that's interesting. So I want to unpack that a little bit today. How is it that compassion could not be depressing, but actually uplifting?

Yesterday, I got news that a good friend of mine, who I lived with for a number of years, She is 40 and was pregnant with her first child, eight months in, and had a miscarriage.

Yeah, and as I heard that news, kind of a mutual friend, someone really close to both of us told me, I firstly just noted my own internal reaction. And I tend to be a person who usually doesn't feel very intensely. I'm not prone to really big waves of emotion, but it doesn't mean I'm not a human, so there our feelings in this system. And I noticed this small quiver of the heart, kind of subtle.

You know, 20 years ago when I had no mindfulness skills, I might not have even noticed it. But yeah, this little quiver of the heart, you know, some simple recognition of like, oh, that's hard. It's disappointing. Like I feel for her. Likewise, in that current of care, I noticed some kind of subtle urge or impulse to reach out or lend support. And though curiously, I didn't follow that quite yet, as it's very fresh and she didn't actually tell me herself.

So give her a chance to digest it with her close friends. And this is a little bit of an aside, but when talking of compassionate action, something to really consider is our compassionate response for me to deal with my own suffering or for the person in the suffering. So do I reach out because I feel bad and I want to get rid of this bad feeling? Or do I reach out because I think it will be helpful for her at this moment in time?

And so that aside, I heard this disappointing news. I feel this little quiver and this quality of care. And what I was noticing yesterday is this, the memory came up a few times throughout the day, that being able to respond in this way with this kind of care, it actually felt good. And that's interesting. You hear some really hard news, and there's this feeling of care that comes up in response.

And it's like, oh, this is energizing. This is enlivening. So to look at that more closely, I firstly see that mindfulness skills come in quite a lot of handy in a situation like this to see that there are different parts of an experience. It's not a singularity. So there's suffering and there's the response to suffering. Those are two different things. Before I began meditating, it did feel more like just a singularity.

Like either I was pulled in by the suffering and I was in it too, or I was numb and disconnected from it. and those were the two options. But with some kind of mindfulness skills, we see the distinction, oh, there's the suffering, and there's how I respond to it. Well, in a situation like this, there can just be this conditioned quiver of the heart, like, oh, this empathetic quiver, this arises.

In the experience of it, that quiver of the heart, it's tough to put into words exactly, but it's like there was this little bit of tender, undulating pain is the word that's coming to me, but it doesn't feel quite right. So there's this little bit of tender pain, but the experience was that I was not in pain. I was not swirled by the pain. I wasn't identified with the pain.

I wasn't being dragged around by the pain. It's just some sensation being known, a sensation being felt. There's that line I've shared from the Visuddhimagga that I really love. There can be suffering, but no one who suffers. It's kind of like that. Awareness sees it, and it's felt, but there's not a me taking an ownership of it that needs to get rid of it. And so in that space that's created, there's a feeling like, oh, here's this quiver of the heart, this empathetic response, this sense of, wow, that's disappointing.

Like a genuine, sincere sense of, hmm, I feel for her. That little bit of space from not being swallowed by the suffering creates that movement of intimacy, that movement of care, where there can be this perception, hey, this is another feeling being, having a moment of suffering. I can wish peace and ease for them without needing it to be so. So in doing this, having this little bit of space, the empathetic quiver, the pain, but not being swallowed by it.

And maybe the empathetic quiver would have been quite large, more intense, But still, it could be intense without taking ownership of it. And so in doing this, having this space around it, this capacity to say, oh, there's this suffering this other person's having, there's this empathetic quiver in my own heart, there's this space around it, not needing anything to go away or be fixed. The feeling that I was left with is a feeling of connection, a feeling of care, a feeling a sort of vital aliveness, a feeling of my humanity.

it's like, oh, this is the energy of compassion. This is energizing. This is uplifting. This actually feels good. And sure, the suffering is in the air. So it's the ability to see multiple things can be happening at once. The suffering can be in the air and there can be a response of care without needing an outcome, care without assigning blame. It's just, oh, in that currency or that current.

And so when we think about compassion in this way, there's something very uplifting and energizing. The commonly used phrase compassion fatigue for the Buddha is a non sequitur. It just doesn't exist. But it is pointing to a real phenomena. And so what we might say is it's something like empathy fatigue, where you hang out around a lot of suffering. You commonly hear this with people who work with folks in a lot of suffering.

You know, maybe social workers, therapists, activists, any number of related things. And in that empathy fatigue, we start to get pulled into the suffering, and we take it on ourself, and we're swirled in it. And that does get really tiring, exhausting. But for the Buddha, he said, oh, that's not exactly compassion. Compassion requires that equanimity that can see it without getting pulled by it. And so as a practice instruction, you can actually watch yourself oscillate.

It's kind of interesting to do, especially when it's your own suffering going on. There's more of a tendency to get really pulled into it. And so you can notice that moment when there is a little bit of space. It's like, I feel it, but I'm not consumed by it. And there is that sense of real care coming up in response. And then a subtle pivot could just be even a moment you're in the suffering.

Like, ah, why is this still going on. This isn't fair. What happened? It's like, oh, I got pulled into the suffering. Okay, suffering is happening. It's being known. Just breathe. Oh, wow. Okay, now in this moment, there's still suffering, but no one who suffers. And in that experience, well, now the caring heart really shines. The caring heart strengthens and grows. I've been describing compassion like aloe vera on a burn.

It has a soothing quality. So you feel that. You're like, oh, this is soothing. Even though this hard experience is here, there's something that's being soothed by this caring response. A question came up recently here. Well, okay, so I get that side about not getting pulled in by the suffering, but what about the other side? How do you know you're not just numb to it, just disconnected?

In a case like this, having someone share some news like I got yesterday is a good litmus test. You hear about this miscarriage. Is the inner reaction pure neutrality? No thoughts, no feelings, no urges, just blankness. And your response might as well be, well, what's for lunch?

You know, that's a response that's completely numb and disconnected. Or is there even some kind of registering? Like, hey, that's hard. Maybe it doesn't come with a big feeling, but some sincere sense of, oh, yeah, that's unfortunate. Like, I see you and I care for you. It doesn't need to be a big show. Maybe it's even wordless.

but some registering of the suffering in some part of you that says, hey, I care. And if you can even notice a little bit of that, well, that's not numbness. That's not disconnection. There's some care in there. And even if we notice the numbness, we notice the what's for lunch response coming out. The really exciting news is that compassion is trainable. By doing things like compassion meditation or putting ourselves into service roles where it evokes compassion, we can nurture along that compassionate response.

We can train ourselves to have a movement of care in the face of suffering. So I want to begin to wrap up here, but yeah, the main thing I wanted to share with you today is just that compassion, even though it's working with suffering, is not an oppressive or depressing force. It's energizing and uplifting. It's a way to feel this deep sense of connection, care, soothing energy amidst the floods of life.

And as we've been doing self-compassion for ourselves this week, some of the pointers I've been giving, if you want to do a self-compassion meditation, or an other compassion meditation today, even for a couple minutes at the start of your practice, you could just work with similar phrases that we did for ourselves. You might bring someone to mind who's in a hard spot, Just say, I see your suffering.

It's part of being human. We all go through it. I hold you with care and compassion. Let yourself be in that place where you're not consumed by the suffering, but there's a sense of care that's evoked. I see your suffering. It's part of being human. We all go through it. I hold you with care and compassion. So we'll pause here. We'll see you in a bit.