Good morning. Welcome here, everyone. Over the weekend, I had the chance to go to the Olympic Peninsula, do a backpacking trip on a somewhat obscure trail. And there is a number of these moments, but one in particular, just sitting alongside this big river, surrounded by a bunch of trees, very still and quiet, no other people anywhere in sight, save my friend to my right, night setting in, the starry sky above, just sitting there amidst the stillness, this quiet, natural landscape, the vastness of it all really was sinking in, really attuning to one just how fragile I am as a human, the littlest turn of the weather, and all of a sudden, how too cold, too hot, the littlest turn of my ankle, the whole trip ruined, two months ruined, how susceptible my feet are to blistering.

My shoulders are to tiring of carrying a 40-pound pack. How susceptible my body is to getting hungry, dehydrated. Apparently there were some cougars on this trail, so how susceptible I am to danger. And so sitting there, just attuning to my fragility, I started to think in terms of tree time. Trees, they sit there for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. Just sit there. And I started thinking in terms of star time.

Wow, those stars just sit there. Millions, maybe billions of years just sitting there. And then here I am, little old me, in terms of my decades in this planet. Kind of like just a little speck of dust in the scope of the cosmos. And there's something very humbling about this. At least that's what I find. Just to really sit with our cosmic insignificance. Wow, I am a speck of dust amidst these trees, these stars, this unfolding world.

And to sit with that recognition in a visceral way, as the wind slaps against my cheeks, can't quite get the chair comfortable because I'm on a gravel bar. Sitting with that, there's a way that this contemplation of my cosmic insignificance could evoke all sorts of second arrows. I could get depressed and I feel some kind of despair. Like, oh my goodness, what's the point of it all anyway?

Time is so fleeting. There's a way I could feel anxiety. Like, oh my goodness, I'm going to die. What am I going to do with my life? Am I going to make it count? There's a way I could feel shame. I haven't done enough. I'm wasting my life. You know, all of these second arrows could come in. There's also a way that this scene really taking in our cosmic insignificance could prompt awe, could prompt wonder, could prompt gratitude.

Like, wow, what a gift. Like how special it is to be somewhere where I just get out of my thinking brain who convinces itself all the time that it has it all figured out and is really put together and just takes in, wow, I don't understand what's going on here. This is pretty incomprehensible and somehow it's all stitched together. Pretty cool. So we could go that direction.

There's also a way sitting amidst this kind of contemplation could invoke a kind of spiritual urgency, a saṃvega in the Buddhist terms. Let's get to what's important.

There's a way it could invoke humility, as I described, a way it could invoke wisdom to really understand more deeply my nature, the nature of things. And kind of walking out all of these options, there is a way, as we've been talking about in recent weeks, that this can invoke compassion.

And some of how I'm presenting the Brahmavihāras and the way the Buddha presented them is compassion is a training. It is a capacity that lives within all of us, and yet we can strengthen and invoke it. We can train ourselves in having the pathway to compassion more ready at hand and more accessible.

And historically, sitting amidst cosmic insignificance, I wouldn't say that compassion for my conditioning has been the go-to. For me, it's usually more the kind of wonder and humility, just the stilling of mind. But as we've been exploring compassion, I thought it would be fun to play with that training. So I was sitting there and just firstly taking in that insignificance. And then there's just the slightest turn of the mind to care, to attune to care for myself, care for my friend, care for the birds and the squirrels and the cougars, care for the trees and the stars.

to attune to that how myself and others may be insignificant on a cosmic level on the level of beings, our suffering and well-being matters. And that as long as I and you are here, well, I might as well be kind. I might as well lean into care. I like the exercise we did a month or two ago of kind eyes to not have this turn into a big thinking project, but just bring a tenderness to the eye sockets, to really gaze upon oneself in this moment with care, like that knowing glance you give someone going through a hard time.

Like, I get it, not with a quality of heaviness to it, but just a sense, I get it and I care. And so this is a pathway, a training to respond to really anything with a quality of care and compassion. And I reflect that this cosmic smallness is really always present. And yet we're so quick to miss it. Our contemporary world tries to get us to feel invincible and big and strong and smart and competent and successful as if we're supposed to live forever and become some perfected version of ourself ad infinitum.

I mean, it's really all very absurd when you think about it. And yet that's some of the messaging we get. And so the Buddha had a remedy for this. He called it the five subjects for daily recollection. I've liked Thich Nhat Hanh's rendition. He calls it the five remembrances. These things that we're invited to frequently think and ponder upon daily, perhaps, that you really take in. I am of the nature to grow old.

I'm of the nature to become ill. I'm of the nature to die. That all that is dear to me and everything I love is of the nature to be separated from. It's not just me, everyone is subject to those things, to aging, illness, death, loss, and that also my actions are the ground upon which I stand, that I inherit the consequences of my actions, that what I do matters.

And so we can hear this list, the Buddha saying, okay, frequently think and ponder upon these things, aging, illness, death, loss, you might hear it and think, well, those aren't so bad. It's just part of nature. I can be grateful for what I have. Or maybe you go down the second arrows, you're despairing and sad. And firstly, whatever the conditioned reaction is, that's part of the point.

You see that like, oh, this is the conditioning of this mind-body process. Let me meet that. Let me be with that. But we can see how these different responses to the fact of aging, illness, death, and loss are conditioned. And so we might have become conditioned to respond with gratitude or respond with despair. Through dharma training, we are cultivating our capacity to be multifaceted.

And so to have gratitude for what we have experienced is a beautiful thing. And also, I think if we're honest with ourselves and we look closely, we can see some facet of aging, illness, death, and loss is stressful. That everyone is going through it, not just me or you or the people on hospice or the unfortunate souls who haven't found the fountain of youth. We're all in it.

This becomes a lens you can start to see reality through. And you don't need to vocalize it. You don't need to go up to someone and say, hey, I'm so sorry. Even though you're 20 and full of life, you're actually dying. And I really feel for you. No, it's silly, but you can take on those kind eyes. Like, oh yeah, I get it. You're of the same nature as I am, as all living beings.

I see you and I care. And so this is specifically, we're talking of this training of compassion, where compassion being to see the suffering of beings and respond with care and the wish for them to be well, at ease, safe, peaceful. And so just to take in these things like cosmic insignificance, aging, illness, death, loss, that may be invisible at times, and yet they're there. We're all of the nature to experience these things.

So this particular teaching on the five remembrances, this is kind of easy access into the field of compassion. Because even if someone seems like they've got it all figured out or whatever the thing is, you can just, oh yeah, them too, they're of that same nature. And the pathway between recognizing the reality of we're all going to pass away and be separated from what we love, that can start to invoke compassion.

Like, oh yeah, I get it. I see you. I'm going to put in the chat a link to a guided meditation on the five remembrances if you're interested in playing with that today. But more broadly, just attuning to how the pathways to compassion are always hiding in plain sight. There are things that we all share. We're all of the same nature. And when we can attune in to some of those more invisible truths, compassion can be a rizzle.

So, we'll pause here, I'll see you in a bit.