We've been speaking about compassion for some while. I spent just a few more days marinating this terrain. At some point, I talked about hidden suffering. When someone presents, says everything's fine, everything's good, but beneath the surface, there's some real suffering there, whether they consciously recognize it or not. Even just the fact that we're all aging, subject to illness, subject to loss, to death.

And so there's hidden suffering, but there are also hidden obstacles to compassion. So I wanted to look at some of these hidden obstacles, ones that maybe aren't so obvious.

And a lot of these obstacles really just relate to our conditioning. We have all been conditioned to act a certain way in life, conditioned to think a certain way.

We've all come up in a certain set of societal, cultural conditioning. as much the country or town we were raised in, the family and the different things our parents or caretakers brought to the table. And so in this layer of conditioning, I wanted to look a little bit at some of the views we hold. And one view I see really prominent in our society, even if intellectually we can hear it and say, oh, I don't agree with that.

Emotionally, it can really still have some pull because it's so much what we see modeled around us. And it's something like one's outcomes in life mostly track one's effort or character, which assumes that life is basically fair and we're all playing the same tough game. So if someone's in a hard spot, well, they should have worked harder. It's some failing of theirs personally that they're not in a better spot and they should get over it or toughen up because everyone has to deal with it.

So a story I read over the weekend, there's this local periodical put out for the homeless community, by the homeless community, for the homeless community called Street Roots. And they profile a member at the end of every periodical. They profiled one this week who lived a relatively normal American middle-class life. Parents together, went to school, made it to 18 in one piece, did a variety of things.

And at one point started some sort of business, kind of like landscaping or tree maintenance or something to that effect. Had a good put-together life, married, kids, housing. And one day a tree branch fell on him. I believe it said he got a concussion, pretty badly injured. And then because it was quite painful, they prescribed him Oxycontin and very quickly got addicted. The addiction quickly spiraled into heroin and kind of just skipped a lot of steps.

It got out of control really fast, lost family, business, housing, and homeless. And so we just focus on the outcome. We see, oh, there's some drug addict on the side of the road? What's wrong with them? And it's like, oh, this isn't someone who set out to be like, I really want to be a heroin addict. It's like, oh, just a kind of everyday person, got a real injury, got an addiction.

It really brought up a lot more compassion. A really good friend of mine, his older brother, when we were younger, kind of late teens, had a pretty severe fall and injury and broke most his body, his back, was in severe pain and wasn't taking the medication. And I asked him, why aren't you taking the meds? It's like, he's kind of a grouch to be around. He said, well, if the choice is serious opiate addiction or serious pain, I'll take the pain.

And so it's like, whew, just so much more compassion for him and also so much more compassion for the flip side. I saw how bad the pain was. Like, yeah, I wouldn't want all that pain. And so anyhow, with a person like this, say the person who is addicted to the drugs, when we just look out, well, you shouldn't be here. You should have figured this out.

You should have got over it. It's a just world. You should be able to pull yourself up. Well, what's blocked is compassion. It's just kind of a numbness. Another story came to me reflecting on this. I knew a guy in my 20s who had recently finished college in debt, something like a quarter million dollars, went to some kind of fancy school. And I had a lot of judgment towards him.

It was quite critical at the time because he would complain about it a lot. And I'd be like, why are you complaining about this? You did this to yourself. And he would go on about how student loans should be abolished. And at that point in my life, I thought, well, you shouldn't have taken it on. It's your fault. And later in life, it struck me of some of the privilege I wasn't able to see is that I grew up in a financially literate home with parents who taught me from a very young age how to handle finances.

And he was the first of his family to go to college, person of color, didn't get that kind of financial literacy, wasn't even expected of him to go to college. And so he found some pathway in that he was interested in and didn't think about the finances until he wakes up in his mid-20s. And he's like, wait a minute, this is absurd. And so nowadays I can look back.

It's like, oh, I had this view. The world is basically fair. We basically all have the same skill set, the same education, the same background. We're all making choices from the same vantage point. So you should have made a better choice. What's wrong with you? Deal with your consequences. And again, where's the compassion in that? There's no compassion. The compassionate lens, you see like, oh, wow, yeah, I don't even need to know the background.

It's enough to know that this stuff doesn't happen randomly. There is a background. And to just see, oh, wow, yeah, that's really hard. If I had a quarter million in debt, that would feel like a struggle i get that that sounds difficult just can i lend you my care can i help out i had another friend when i was younger yeah still a friend of mine but we were really close in college our early 20s and is a black guy and he sort of dressed like me and talked like me basically like a mainstream white guy and then i went and met his family once and they all dressed very different and talked very different, kind of like culturally black folks.

And I asked him, why is there like, why the discrepancy? It's like pretty obvious. And he said he'd just seen over his life how much his family had been discriminated against, overtly, subtly, opportunities denied them, overt racism, subtle racism. And even as a young man, a teenager, essentially, he thought, well, the only chance I have to minimize that is to make myself assimilate to white culture. And you fast forward that experiment 20 years, in a worldly sense, he's quite a successful guy.

And I'm still in touch with him and know his family is all still struggling, his siblings, his parents. And it's like there's a lot of layers of compassion there. When I just look at face value and I apply this view, well, we should all just figure it out. Racism ended back in the 60s. It's over. We're all equal now. Some of these mainstream views you hear.

Well, then I look at that whole situation and it's like, well, this is just what it is. But when I have a compassionate lens, one I can see for him, like, well, that's got to be kind of hard to really break from your family culture. I'm sure that puts some divide between your interactions with them. Also, how difficult just to be kind of the way you were raised and have that be oppressed and discriminated against by your society.

And these are things we don't really see if we just have kind of our, well, life is pretty fair and chill for me. I'm sure it's the same for everyone else. When we expand our perspective, we see the hidden suffering. We see our views and blocks that inhibit compassion. You know, I could have a whole slew more of these kind of stories from people with concussion history, people who are immigrants who lack language skills.

The list could go on and on and on. And in some ways, this feels like such an underwhelming talk and just doesn't do it justice. But on some level, to start with, any task that's easy for you, that you just take for granted, cooking dinner, driving, showering, navigating a smartphone, navigating the financial system, filling out a job application, saying your name, and expecting that someone will pronounce it back to you correctly.

these are things not everyone lives with. These could be a source of suffering. And when we just go around like, oh, all this modern society, yeah, it's not so bad. Well, yeah, for you with your conditioning. And just the more we can open ourselves to how much struggle there is around us, how much privilege we carry. Everyone carries privilege in some form or another. Maybe you, for the most part, are an underprivileged person, but maybe you still have a sufficient ability level.

Your body works pretty well. We all have some way that we are underprivileged. And of course, I don't mean to minimize the fact that some of us, a lot of us have different forms of lack of privilege that are more overtly oppressed and discriminated against. And basically just the more we see these, the more our heart of compassion opens. So in a nutshell, what I hope to share today is the more we can expose our privilege, the way that our different identities allow us life to seem more easeful for us.

The more we can see that, the more we can see how now everyone has those privileges and more compassion flows. Likewise, the more we hold these views, life should be fair. Outcomes depend on just how much effort you put in or your character. Well, when you hold that view, compassion is blocked. And so just coming back to some of the punchline of compassion, one, we build sensitivity to suffering.

The more we see it, the more compassion flows. And even if we don't know the particulars of someone's suffering or their lack of privilege or their struggle or their challenge, we can even just come back to this simple acknowledgement that everyone has a story.

It is hard to be a person. We are all aging. We all experience loss. And we all are subject to death. And whatever the particular thing is that's blocking our compassion to another human being, can we just see that for what it is? This is just a block in my own view, in my own heart. Okay, see, okay, that block, and here's a person. And can I care for them, whatever my conditioned thinking says?

So these are some thoughts for today. May this rest on the heart, whatever way it needs to. We enjoy the silence, and we'll see each other in a half hour.