The Universal Expressions of Love, Part 2: Compassion

Welcome friends to the Tara Brock podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Each week I share teachings and guided meditations to help us awaken our hearts and bring healing to our world. You can learn more or support this offering by visiting TaraBrock.com where you can also join our email list. Now let's explore together the many ways we can live from the love and presence that's our deepest essence. Namaste. Namaste and welcome. So I'd like to wish you a happy Valentine's Day and begin with a brief quiz. The first one is, what do squirrels give each other on Valentine's Day? Any guesses? Forget me not. Okay, one more, only one more. What does an octopus sing to his beloved on Valentine's Day? I want to hold your hand, hand, hand, hand, hand, hand, hand, hand. Okay, I gave it a good shot, right? So appropriately we're in the midst of a four-part series on Awakening the Present Heart. And this is the first one. The first one that we did was on Awakening Loving Kindness, which is the seeing the goodness and responding to the goodness in life. The second is compassion, which is what we'll be doing this class. And then we move on to joy and equanimity. And in the Buddhist tradition these four are called the Brahma Vaharas or the Divine Abodes because they really express the capacity and potential of our Awakening Heart. So in thinking about each one of them we look at, you know, really what's blocking this innate capacity we have and what cultivates it. So as we think of compassion tonight I'd like to invite you to bring to mind someone you know or if you don't know anyone, someone you know of, who you really consider as authentically compassionate. And just take a moment to sense that person and what are the qualities that come to mind? What is it that you feel in them? What lets you know that quality of heart is there? See if this description from Anre Nuan resonates. He says when we honestly ask ourselves which person our lives mean the most to us we often find it's those who instead of giving advice, solutions or cures have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, not fixing and face us with the reality of our powerlessness is a friend who cares. So we begin to sense so what does it really mean to be compassionate? I'd like to name three qualities and the first one is that compassion isn't something where you know I can feel compassionate and when I talk about compassion right now I'm talking about the full bloom of it where I can feel compassionate towards you but it shuts down here. Compassion is an all-pervading, wide-open state of heart that's really inclusive and one of the examples that struck me on this was a story of a Sikh master who gives his two main disciples each one of them a chicken and he says go where no one can see and kill the chicken. So the first one goes behind this hut, chops off the chicken's head. The second one's wandering around for hours and hours and he comes back and the master says what? You didn't kill the chicken and he said no it's because I can't find a place to kill the chicken where no one can see me everywhere I go the chicken sees. Right? So this is the heart that is so open and tuned that it senses the sentience in all beings. It doesn't exclude. And the truth is as we deepen our attention to our own consciousness and vulnerability we are more and more alert to how all beings are sentient, they hurt and they want to stay alive just like us. So that's one quality which is this wisdom of interdependence that the whole world is part of us and that our compassion is all inclusive. The second quality is that then when we see vulnerability or tenderness there is a natural arising in our heart of care. When we see that others are hurting there is that responsiveness of care and the third is really that there is an impulse to help. It's not a removed kind of empathy where I get it I can feel that but there is this urge to help. In one story about Zen master Rheakon a thief visits his hut at the base of a mountain where he lives and when he comes back the thief finds that there is nothing to steal and so Rheakon returns and catches him there. Here is what he says. You have come a long way to visit me he told the prowler and you should not return empty handed please take my clothes as a gift. The thief was bewildered he took the clothes and slunk away. Rheakon sat naked watching the moon. Poor fellow he mused. I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon. So you can feel a bit the freedom of compassion at heart. So like living kindness compassion often gets blocked and we are going to look at how so because I think deep down many of us judge ourselves as not really a compassionate person. We might feel like we hear headlines and there is a part of us that is appalled or horrified but our heart isn't really tenderized by it. We don't really feel it deep down. So it helps to see kind of in a bigger picture the kind of universal conditioning that we are subject to that has been impacting humans for millions of years that might cause us to be less than fully compassionate so we don't take it so personally. So a very brief romp through evolutionary history is just to say that four millions of years humans lived in small groups and the way they survived was that other groups were considered other and less than and they actually had names for themselves that usually had something to do with human and their names for the others other groups were epithets that really had to do with less than human. And so it was really part of social cohesion and to feel that we are the ones and others are not and if others are unreal and less than then you can attack them and you can be against them. So while they had the capacity for pro-social affiliate of emotions like compassion it was very very restricted. It was a very immature form of compassion. And then we see that about 70,000 years ago, so this is millions of years, and about 70,000 years ago there was this cognitive revolution that happened where all our brain started spurting all these different pathways and we began to communicate to each other and be able to collaborate in ways that have now led to our current capacity to really collaborate globally, you know, on economics and on law and there is actually less violence now than there has if you look at the broad span over time. But to know that for a thousand times as long as this last re-superdent history humans were living in small little bands and having others be bad, so there wasn't that inclusive heart. So we are catching up, so we have these evolutionary pulls, we have all that old conditioning to make others bad and not be a tune as that man was to the chicken to the sentient. And then we have this more recently evolved part of our brain that has the mirror neurons and the equipment to look at any being and sense that that which is looking back at us is the same awareness, the same beingness, that you are part of my heart, how could I hurt you? Those are the pulls we've got going. Our evolution is moving in the direction of this, the empathy, the compassion, the care. In fact one attachment scientist, Lewis Koseleina says that it's not the survival of the fittest, it's the survival of the nurtured. And you can kind of sense it in our individual lives that the more nurturing and the more we know how to self-nurture, actually the more integrated and mature we can become. So evolution favors that direction and yet as we know in a moment's notice we can have that override of our limbic system that has us become really into othering and not seeing who is here. I always have been drawn to a story told by Frant Peevee who is a social activist, describes being on the Stanford campus when they were doing some sort of experiment and there was this crowd of men that was gathered around a male chimp. And the male chimp was running loose and there was a female chimp on a chain and they were trying to get them to mate and the male of course didn't need much encouragement, he was going at it. But this female on the chain was whimpering and scared and so on and trying to avoid his advances. So this Frant Peevee describes this wave of carrying that went through her and then something happened she'd never forget. She said, suddenly the female chimp yanked her chain out of the male's grasp and to my amazement she walked through the crowd straight over to me and took my hand. Then she led me across the circle, it's the only other two women in the crowd and she joined hands with one of them. The three of us stood together in a circle. I remember the feeling of that rough palm against mine, the little chimp had recognized us and reached out across all the years of evolution to form our own women's support group. It's the beginning of me too. So but the question that I think is really interesting is what prevented the male onlookers to feel the compassion at that moment? I mean here's this female on a chain and upset. In those moments there was an override, Olympic override, there was a forgetting that came from the less evolved part of the psyche because they were seeking excitement, seeking engagement. It was a male bonding kind of thing, affiliation, dominance and that masked the suffering and a fellow being. It reinforced the much older conditioning of us versus them. Does that make sense? Just for those moments. It's a trance and it's a trance that happens to all of us when we're stressed, every one of us. So this isn't about women being empathetic, women tend to be because they're more biologically relational, but this is not a male versus female. We all go into trance, every one of us when we're stressed and it closes off our hearts. This is the way Einstein puts it. He says we have an optical delusion of separation when this happens. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. This optical delusion of separation when we're being run by our more primitive parts of our brain. So what I'd like to do is look more closely so we can in our lives catch on to, oh okay this is trance, I'm not fully here so we can wake up to it and just see where we get blocked. And we get blocked when we have unmet needs and in some way they get tripped off. And the first major area we close down our compassion is when we feel in some way endangered, right? There are so many ways that we feel threatened, we're going to in some way fail or our health is going down or we're going to lose esteem or lose possessions or money or whatever. As soon as that happens that survival brain kicks in and we become less attuned. Now the major one for most of us is when we're afraid of failure. I think that there is a lot, that there is a sense of how often we are anxiously preparing for something so we don't fail. How often we are trying to get to an appointment on time or trying to make sure our children or partners take care of whatever it is but there is that stress. And there is a deep fear, there is not enough time. And I can say for myself when I am feeling that, when I feel like I am trying to get to the next thing and check things off the list, I am not in an open-hearted place. I hear news and it is not like my heart becomes tender and resonant. Because when we are busy we tighten. One of the best examples and research on this that I think about often was the Good Samaritan study that was done at Princeton. How many are familiar with that? Can I say? Some, yeah. I found it so fascinating. So the seminarians were given a practice sermon and half of them were given the story of the Good Samaritan and the other half were given another random Bible story. And they are supposed to go to another building to give the sermon and be evaluated on it. But on the way to that other building there is a person in a doorway who is moaning and distressed. So the real question was would they stop? And whether the... and it was determined, and this is what they found out, how much time they thought they had before they had to give their sermon, determine whether or not they would stop to help this person. And if they believed they would be late they didn't stop to help. Even if the sermon was about the Good Samaritan. Isn't that amazing? That is how deep in our brain the fear of failure closes down our heart, the fear of being lady. So that is one area is when we feel endangered in some way. Another area is when we are fixated on seeking out satisfaction or pleasure. And there are times that are, you know, the mammalian brain where we are like a squirrel going after acorns and we just... our view does not include others, doesn't include anything else. We are not really attuned. It is like moments when you are watching an engaging show and your child asks you for something. You are aiming towards ending the evening with that rewarding bowl of ice cream but then you get a distressed call from a friend and it is like we are not as available in some way. Or somebody has a request for charity or time when we really want to spend money or time on ourselves. In this story one morning Sam wakes up at the start and she is... her partner asks what is the matter and she says, well I just had a dream that you gave me a pearl necklace for Valentine's Day. What do you think it means? You will know tonight, Tony said. That evening Tony comes home with a small package and gives it to her. Delighted Sam opens it only to find a book entitled The Meaning of Dreams. That didn't totally illustrate my point but I couldn't resist. So we have got the first two areas of name. We close down when we are endangered. We close down when we are riveted on seeking gratification. And the third way that we close down is when we are going... when we are trying to attach to another person. And that is when we have this agenda that we are trying to get someone to like us, not to leave us, to think certain things about us. Whenever we are with each other and there is some strong agenda of wanting something from each other, we actually aren't present to tune into vulnerability and be tender. The agenda gets in the way. It is like that story of the older woman in Miami sitting on a park bench and a very shuffled man in tattered clothing sits down next to her and she asks him, well, how are you doing? And he goes, well, I am just out of prison 25 years. Oh, what were you in for? Murdering my wife. And then she goes, oh, so you are single. You get the idea. Like our tension gets narrowed when we are going for something. We have an agenda. Again, not a perfect example. So these are the areas that when we are fearful of something, wanting something, trying to control relationships, and it happens a lot of the time, we are actually not available. And then even when we do extend to others, it is not wholehearted. It is self, you know, it is maybe out of duty, our obligation, or just to feel good about ourselves. So I am coming back to this as the reason we hear stories in the news. We even see things. More comes to us information-wise than ever in history. And because of stress in these three areas, our response is more mental than it is visceral and hard. Okay. So accessing an authentic quality of compassion isn't easy. It requires a real presence. And unless we are mindful, our stress conditioning continuously overrides the circuitry. I find it really interesting what the Dalai Lama said about this. He said, I don't know why people like me so much. It must be because I value bodhichitta, bodhichitta is the awakened heart mind. He says, I can't claim to practice it, but I value it. What he is saying in my understanding, because clearly he practices and emanates it, but he means that it is not across the board, he forgets to. But he says, he is saying, I care about caring. That is why people like me. And I heard this quote a long time ago, and it was one of those quotes that has just stayed with me, because I can really relate to that. Clearly I am not always sitting with this wide-open, tender, inclusive heart. But I care about the awakened heart. And that caring keeps drawing us, even though we go into trance and get over, you know, the Olympic hijack and all that, we keep on evolving because we care about caring. And you wouldn't be here, each one of you that is listening, unless there is something waking up in you and knowing that caring. That is what matters. So it gives us motivation when we sense that is where we are going. We are evolving towards that awakened heart mind and that matters to us. Because then we can begin to notice, without slamming ourselves, oh, okay, I have been in trance, but I care about caring. That was a bit of what happened for one woman who describes an experience with her mother I want to share with you. She was very dedicated in noticing and witnessing when she went under the line, you know, and she went into trance. And she describes being with her mother when her mom told her about having breast cancer. And she said, you know, immediately she went into sadness, guilt, anger, future-tripping regret. In other words, she is overwhelmed by the shock. Okay, so this is stress. She says, as it usually does, my mind immediately went into planning mode. She just tracked the story. So instead of like, oh, you know, the resonance, she is right there planning. That is a stress reaction. What needs to happen? What are your treatment options? How soon we can get the lump removed? So you get the idea. And she says, thank God for this work, because this work meaning training and mindfulness, noticing going into trance, because despite of a complete head spiral, I still have the presence enough to ask myself an important question. What am I noticing now? And in that moment I was able to see something I would have missed otherwise. My mother didn't want to talk about any of those things. As I was weighing her options, she sat in the high-top chair in my kitchen, staring blankly into a cup of coffee. I was trying to be strong for her sake in mind, but suddenly became clear that wasn't what she needed. She was scared and needed to be scared. I debated whether to give her a hug, which sounds terrible, I know, but I was barely holding it together and scurrying around making dinner, pouring over doctors' paperwork and staying busy was my way of avoiding total collapse. Being pressed allowed me to shift to her way. I took a breath, walked across the room and wrapped my arms around her. It was an awkward sideways hug, but it was also a long, necessary one. And then something happened. Slowly she started rocking side to side like a mother rocks a child, except the child was now the caretaker. It was a sweet, tiny moment I'll never forget and one that I surely would have missed if it were not for the power of mindfulness. This is Emily Bennington. I'd like to reflect here and invite you to reflect, because this is really us beginning to bear witness to these evolutionary polls. She began to see her pull towards getting busy, her pull towards moving away from where the pain was and was able to counter that conditioning. So let's just take a look at our own Licer moment. Well, close your eyes if you will, take a moment to reflect. So you might bring to mind someone who is dear to you and who is currently facing difficulty, someone you'd like to relate to with more compassion. And take a moment to remind you of what lets you know you care, that you want to be the friend or partner or sibling or whatever it is who truly listens, not fixing. Who has that kind presence. Just remind yourself that you care about caring. And then without judgment, you'll be able to see yourself in the eyes of the person and then without judging, notice how you go into trance with this person. Notice the pull of your stressed brain that might get lost in worrying or obsessing or getting things done or proving something or distracting, trying to control what's happening. Just notice your version of it. Sense what you want to look out for, what you want to be alert to next time. If you can witness this without judging, in other words, to keep feeling that sincerity that you care about caring, you will be more alert. That care will carry you to your future self, the more awake heart mind that's possible. So we're going to move now into how we can cultivate compassion. Because most of us, when we come into presence to be with another person for whatever is going on, what we're going to find first is that the first place we need to bring compassion is to our own hearts. Very often in many situations, there is discomfort, pain, suffering right here. And if we try to skip over it, our compassion will be abstract, it will not be authentic. So that's why it's often said in Buddhism that the heart of Buddhism is compassion and the heart of compassion is compassion for ourselves. So it's not selfish, it's just that if something is going on and you're having a reaction for it, first take care of yourself or you won't be able to open your heart to others. So there is a basic understanding that authentic healing requires self-compassion. So we have to have that capacity to attend to our own life with kindness. That wakes up those mirror neurons that can attune to others. I'm right now writing a book about the acronym RAIN which is to recognize, allow, investigate and nurture. And that nurture piece, there is no real freedom if we don't have a tenderness towards what's going on. It's absolutely essential. So the process of compassion and self-compassion is very simple. We have the courage to recognize, oh, suffering is right here. And if we really connect with it, this really is suffering. Ouch! The heart gets tender. But what happens usually? What happens when you're hurting, when you're having a hard time? How do you usually relate to yourself? It's really interesting to watch. For many of us, we relate to ourselves often how our caretakers related to us, which could have been anything from ignoring, or judging, you're too sensitive, or trying to fix or get rid of something, which is a big one. Are others have it worse? Why are you complaining? Others have it so much worse. Or we might tell ourselves, it's your fault, you got yourself into this. But do you see how each of those is something other than directly just going, oh, suffering, ouch! It's not until we stay and just get it that this hurts, that our hearts will start opening to ourselves. Any notion that we don't have it so bad, that others have it worse, takes us away from that. And again, if there is no self-compassion, those mirror neurons that need to be activated to be empathetic towards others are not there. So I'd like to give you an example of how it can work that we move from... Because when there is self-compassion, we naturally extend. And this is a story that really struck me because it was a man and a woman got married and their family became those two and her son. So who's a stepfather? And what came up, the child was eight years old, had a lot of tantrums, it was difficult, it was rude. And this guy is finding himself not liking his stepson, feeling anger, feeling rage. And, you know, so whenever there was outbursts and the child acted out and he felt a lot of aversion, he tried to hide it from his wife because she had her own challenges. And the last thing he wanted was her to feel like, you know, I don't like your kid, that kind of thing. But it was really corroding their relationship. So we decided to work with Rain. Rain is basically mindfulness and compassion. And the recognizing was recognizing and allowing his reactivity, okay? Angry, feeling judgmental, feeling rageful. And then making that U-turn rather than blaming the child, really deepening the eye of Rain is to investigate. And he found under the anger and under that I don't like you feeling, he found fear, you're ruining my life and you're going to ruin and you're ruining your mother's life and you're ruining our relationship. And then he also felt shame for that. So that's what he found underneath when he was investigating. And we talk some about how many parents, and this isn't just stepchildren, biological children at times don't like our children. You know, it's hard to name it but when things are really unpleasant, we react. And children can get in the way of us meeting our own needs for safety, for gratification. So through the eyes of his wisest self, his future self, he kind of witnessed the situation and saw the stuckness of here he is in a marriage where he's feeling like his… the way this child is is really threatening the relationship and so on. And rather than being harsh with himself, he said, okay, this is hard. Just this is hard. That's simple. You know, self-compassion can start with words like, you know, it can be as big as, I'm sorry and I love you, or it can be simply it's okay or it can be this is hard, but some kindness directed inwardly. And when he let himself acknowledge this is hard and soften towards himself, he was able to start talking to his wife. And it actually opened things up for her because she felt like she was failing and she was really miserable too. So they were able to be vulnerable together in it, hold each other which then allowed them to be a lot more creative and flexible and less reactive with the child. Obviously, if he was having tantrums and acting out, was having a hard time. So they had space for it. The reason I tell you this story is it wasn't until he was going, ah, this is hard, that his heart opened so he could be with his wife and be with his stepson in a way that allowed some tenderness and creativity and change. We have to start with what's going on inside him, ourselves. If he had instead said, wait a minute, I'm the adult, I shouldn't be feeling this, he would never have gotten to an authentic place of change. Does that make sense? Self-compassion first. If we can embrace our own suffering then we can begin to widen out. So the widening out, we are going to look at now how do we cultivate that compassion for others. And what I really want to look at in the last fifteen minutes that we have is how do we take compassion from a fleeting state that we sometimes experience, just a little tenderness, to being a trait, an enduring expression of our being. And there are three steps really to really installing. My friend Rick Hansen, who is a psychologist and many of you probably heard of him, is the one that really has gotten me inspired about this potential to really cultivate from a state to a trait, how we really install compassion. And the first is that, you know, when we witness vulnerability to really feel it and let ourselves be touched and when the tenderness comes, when the real, visceral tenderness comes, feel it for fifteen seconds, twenty seconds, but let yourself marinate in the feeling of tenderness. We don't pause, let yourself really feel it, and then in some way extend, whether it is through prayer or action but extend, because the completion of compassion is some extension of our being. The site that is correlated with compassion in the brain is right near the motor cortex. We are meant to reach out and help, it is very interesting. So let's look at those. The first step is to begin to see that there is suffering or vulnerability. We don't usually see. When we are in our stress trance, we don't look at each other and go oh, look, you are having a hard time. We typically don't see very deeply. What stops us? Well, either we are living in stereotyping people, a certain type, in which case we are just seeing the type but we are not seeing behind the mask, or else somebody is acting out in a way and we are seeing the way they are defensive or aggressive but we are not seeing what is behind it. We are not seeing how it is covering vulnerability. James Baldwin says, I imagine that one of the reasons that people cling to their hate and prejudice so stubbornly is because they sense that once hate is gone they will be forced to deal with their own pain. Now, when we run into someone who is acting hateful, do we look deeply enough to sense oh, there is pain behind that hate? Most of us don't. We recoil. Do you know what I mean? So it takes a commitment to really look and see what is going on. And then if we look we will feel tenderness and then we can extend ourselves in some way that is meaningful in that moment. One of the examples I love of this, of really the expression of compassion, I heard in a Krista Tippett interview with Ruby Sales and Ruby Sales is an African-American activist, older woman now, very active in civil rights. So here is what she says. She describes getting her locks washed and she says, my locker's daughter came in one morning and she had been hustling all night and she had sores on her body and she was just in a state drug. So something said to me, ask her where does it hurt? And I said, Shelly, where does it hurt? And just that simple question unleashed territory in her that she had never shared with her mother. And she talked about having been incestuous. She talked about all the things that had happened to her as a child and she literally shared the source of her pain. And I realized in that moment listening to her and talking with her that I needed a larger way to do this work. What Ruby Sales is talking about in a larger way is cultivating this capacity to see the vulnerability, let ourselves be touched and reach out. Where does it hurt? Where does it hurt? Such a beautiful question. As we begin to get more tender and to look and to respond, it's contagious. The people around us, they get touched and then they act that way more. You know, just the way there's limbic contagion, you know, when people are angry or upset, there's compassion contagion. I remember experiencing a bit of it, it was 2008, during that recession period. And I was going up to New York to give a talk on something. And one of my great fears in the world is getting lost. I was driving to Union Station and somehow rather 395 got all botched up, got completely lost, afraid I would be late for my train. I went to a gas station in Parkton, was trying to find someone to give me instructions. And an elderly gentleman was kind of overheard me and could sense all my angst. And he interrupted the guy that was trying to explain to me, he said, Come on, Han, you just follow me. And he just drove and I followed him right to Union Station. And in those moments I felt this sense of the world being a friendly place. Now it's not always friendly on some levels, but deep down there is love. People have that capacity and I just felt the field of loving. I get on the train and I was really excited, I was reading, I don't even know what I was reading, but I was reading something I was excited about. And this young man next to me started talking to me and it turned out he had lost his job because of the recession and so on. And he talked a long time and there was something about just dropping the thing of wanting to read and just being there and I figure he probably went back to his wife and his kids and he was probably more open. It goes on and on and it's so much of a happier way to live. And what's interesting with the science is that although with compassion we are training ourselves to look at where the suffering and vulnerability is, the actual experience of compassion lights up the parts of the brain that are related to positive emotion, it actually feels good because it has to do with belonging and connection. It's the world we want to live in. We care about caring. There's a little saying that to be kind you must swerve regularly from your path. So whatever this conditioned path of I want to get this done and I want more of this and I want this is my agenda with you to swerve and pause and look and see who's here. Really look and see. What's it like for you right now? To let ourselves be touched by vulnerability. To feel that tenderness and feel it. Really feel it. I invite you next time you have a taste of that tender caring to literally 15 to 30 seconds get to know it. As it's described by neuroscience, our negative experiences that we have go deeply into our implicit memory. We can recall them. It's just the negativity bias. It's evolutionary, right? The positive ones like tenderness and caring, you know, like feeling creative, like feeling happy. We get whiffs of them but they don't have the stickiness. They don't go into our implicit memory. So there are states that come and go. What makes a state into a trait is when it arises, pause and really take it in. Oh, this is the tenderness of compassion. Really feel it. Feel it in your body and your cells. And then it gets stickier. It goes into your implicit memory. And if you keep repeating that, over time the state of compassion becomes a trait. You really sense it as who you are. So that's the invitation and we'll practice a little bit right now with that, if you will. I'm going to just adjust how you're sitting and close your eyes for the last few minutes. When we talk about a state to a trait, when we talk about cultivating compassion, really talking about a shift in identity, a shift from a sense of a self that's very self-centered and really operating off a fear, grasping, to a sense of enlarged beingness where the world is part of our heart and our actions are on behalf of the world. And the Dalai Lama described this shift in identity as really the hope of the world. And so we practice and you might bring to mind again, as you did earlier, the person you'd like to feel some more compassion towards. That you'd like to be less entranced, more there. And feel your intention towards compassion, towards awakening into your future self, your awakened heart-mind really manifesting that compassion, who you can be. And bring this person to mind in a close in way so that you can deepen your attention and sensual what's it like for this person right now? You might imagine if you could really step inside this person for the next minute or two. You know, looking out from this person's eyes, what's the world like right now? What are they believing about the world? About themselves? About what's disappointing or what feels threatening? What feels hurtful for this person? Where does it hurt for this person? Feel you have their body, their face, their experience. Just that feeling inside the vulnerability that this person might be feeling and really what the most vulnerable place in them needs. What does this person need? What will you most heal in? As you sense yourself now just widen back out and sense this person's a part of your heart but feel your own vastness, feel the presence that's here and really calling on your most awake heart and sense that you could in some way give this person right this moment what's most needed energetically. So if you could put a hand on their cheek or their heart or hug them and really send the message that would most be healing to hear, it might be simply the message of I am sorry and I love you but you might mentally whisper their name and send that message. Our tick-naut Hanh says, I care about your suffering, darling I care about your suffering. You might imagine this person really being able to receive and feel that tenderness. Let it fill you. Really let the sense of tenderness for this person fill you. Get familiar with it, what it's like, the caring. This is your deepest, most awake heart. You might sense this heart space is wide open that it's including all the beings that struggle just the way this person that's dear to you struggle. All the beings from different countries, different ages, races, religions, perhaps species that might struggle with the same kind of suffering. So you're feeling that tenderness really includes them all and us all. You might listen to the words of this poem just like you. Walk gently on this earth with purposeful steps you share this space with seven billion human beings and countless other precious life forms. Just like you they all want to be happy. Just like you they all need love. We're not going to survive unless we walk gently on this earth together until we touch something in others that feels just like the shards of our own pain the fluttering warmth of our own joy until we sew their wounds into our hearts and seal it with our own skin. Walk gently on this earth. Walk gently on this earth. Walk gently on this earth. Thank you. Namaste and thank you for your attention.