So thank you for that. Those of you who put chats and Red's good amount of them, but I'll, when we finish, I'll read them all. I appreciate it. So now to give some context for that. So this week, I'm going to continue with the topic of general topic of compassion that I've done last number of weeks that have been here and kind of fill in some of the gaps from before. So I did. And some weeks ago, I talked about five building blocks for compassion. And that all the building blocks, ideally would be there when we act in the world compassionately, or when we feel compassion. And so those are, you know, five A's. So awareness, attunement, appreciation, aspiration, and action. And I did spend earlier the week before all that, a whole week on awareness, different ways of being aware, in preparation for looking at compassion. Today, I'd like to talk about the second building block, which is attunement. And, and as an introduction to this topic of compassionate and attunement, I'd like to repeat something I've tried to say before, is that if we have just one mode of being compassionate, it's easy to be overwhelmed, it's easy, easy to for that mode, to not be them the appropriate mode, for some situations we find ourselves in. Some people have never kind of considered what compassion is never considered different modes and ways of being with suffering. Some people have only one mode of being massaged, for suffering, there's suffering oneself suffering and others, and it's overwhelming, or it just kind of awakens all kinds of feelings of soreness of overwhelm of, of didn't, life is difficult, or I'm a victim, you know, it's so hard for me, I don't know what to do. And this is too much don't feel safe. There's many kinds of ways that people can be impacted by the presence of suffering. Some people rush to fix it. Sometimes they rush to fix the suffering in the world suffering of others, is not really caring for others, as it is trying to stop being uncomfortable oneself. We're trying to fix oneself by fixing others. And so there's many ways in which we can find ourselves in relationship to suffering. Some of them are not very healthy, and some of them are. Some of them we identify too much with a suffering or we receive it or take it in in such a way that we feel challenged by it or feel like now we have even more suffering of our own. Especially if empathy is understood to be a plain and simple feeling what other people feel, then. And it somehow ties into some previous suffering that we carry with ourselves. Feeling of suffering of others can trigger our own background, and just cause everything to be so much more difficult. So the idea and understanding the different building blocks of compassion, the different quality aspects of compassion, is start having some agency in working with our minds or hearts in such a way that we can be with suffering in a useful way in a healthy way for ourselves and for others. And one of those ways is attunement, to take time to attune ourselves to the suffering that we're encountering suffering in ourselves or suffering in others. And as soon as we have the notion of we're doing something attunement, there's a number of things that can happen. One is what is attunement, the other is now we're bringing some ideas and practice, to bear to address to meet the suffering, which is just not just feeling the suffering in some kind of unmitigated way or feeling of suffering in the old way in which we identify strongly with it, or the suffering touches our own wounds that we may be carrying Now we're beginning to engage in an agency that Oh, I have some ability to do something here to question to wonder to look at. And this kind of a rising to the occasion, rising, kind of rising to the occasion to meet it will start bringing a kind of kind of personal, keep using the word agency, personal wherewithal a personal involvement, that's something different than just being impacted by the suffering, or fixing the suffering. So just asking the question, what is attunement? So for this week, I'd like to offer five different aspects of that I think are important for this attunement, coming into harmony with the suffering coming into healthy balance in relationship to the suffering. And I have the acronym for a touch for this. And it begins with thinking, and then openness, to suffering, and then a uprightness in relationship to suffering. And then communicating, that actually talking and communicating is extremely important part of attunement. And then the last one is helping, you know, that part of attunement is to figure out how we can be helpful or how we can serve the situation the best we can. And so the first one involves thinking. So, again, this use of agency like, okay, the hears I'm encountering suffering, may be I feel that they've deeply maybe I feel it in a moderate way, are aware of it some way. Now, let me think about a little bit, how is this impacting me? What's a useful stance to be present for it? What background do I have, that influences how I experienced it, and how I think I should address it and do something with it. Maybe I carry with me a sense of responsibility for everyone in my family, or everyone in my neighborhood. And so when I encounter difficulty, it's automatically means I have to do something to fix it, I have to solve the problem. And so begin thinking about this is this really the case? Is there another way of being with this? Is there another way of experiencing it or understanding it? And what like, for example, I'd like to propose that compassion has a very different can have a very different quality. If, if we read about suffering in the news, or hear about suffering from the news, where it's far away, unconnected to us, versus being present for someone close to us who's suffering in some way we can feel and read them and know what's going on know the context in the situation. In the news, we know so little about the context, we know so little about at all, that there's a rush to relying on our thinking mind, of what it means and when, what the opinions we have, and the imagination about what this affects people and, and so it's a kind of cognitive explosion, that might not be the best source for compassion, and might be the best source for alarm. It might be a best source for anger, for distress. But, and those emotions can then get confused for compassion, or feel like of course, this is part of compassion, to have those. But to, to spend some time not just being mindful of the impact and how we're feeling. But to actually think it out. That because in our mindfulness tradition, we don't talk much about actively thinking, having critical thinking skills that are easy to imagine that this practice of ours does not involve wise thinking. There's there's wise mindfulness, this wise concentration, that often is presented as a letting go of the thinking mind. And that can be do us a disservice. If we think that we're not supposed to think or we don't kind of we become kind of lazy, with the thinking mind. Thinking is a rich part of our life. It gets us in trouble into big trouble at times, but thinking also is very helpful. If we can think out what does it mean to be a tune? Oh dear, what is a certain kind of balanced way of being present for suffering? What is the way of being in harmony with rushing to judgment is not harmony, rushing to fixing is not harmony
immediately kind of feeling and getting preoccupied with the impact that the suffering has on us is not really in harmony. So what is what is it to be harmonious? Even just that question begins creating space, create a little bit of healthy distance maybe, and healthy receptivity. And, and so partly they're part of this kind of ability to think about situations where sufferings involved is to think about the common responses to that we have, think a question that misses really the best way? Is this really wise? Is this really coming from some place of love? Or care? Or is it? Is it appropriate for the situation? To think about a situation where they're suffering? These are think about what's the context of this suffering? What's my role in it? And what's the role of other people? Given the context, given the people who are suffering? Do I understand them? Well? Or am I projecting my own assumptions on them, I've sometimes have compassion for people suffering, who were not suffering. But I've been in similar situations they were in. And, and so I was kind of thinking, of course, they're going to have the bad experiences. One of the places I saw that was with my kids, when I had challenges in elementary school, and, and often when I've always started a lot of different schools growing up, so changed schools a lot, so kind of a new kid in the school and, and the questions for example of being accepted or being bullied or different things that were kind of a concern. And so simplistically to say, like, my sons went into this, and I knew they were going to go into the playground, I had this concern for their well being, oh, they're going to certainly going to suffer, they're going to get the same experience. And so I tried to want to intervene or say something. But it was all based on my own history and my own idea, there was no compassion needed, in some of the situations where I was so concerned, and was more kind of legacy of my own challenges. So there's something about using the thinking mind to think out, some people like to journal journal out, and really think what's going on here in some deeper, fuller way. That might not happen if we simply allow, simply rely on our capacity to be mindful, to be aware, just always just be aware here. Let me wait be aware. But so to be attuned, the first element of attunement is thinking, don't overthink but don't under think. So what I'd like to suggest for you is that you experiment today with this thinking aspect of attunement. If you find yourself in a situation where there's some suffering your own or others, or something of challenge, don't rush to do something don't shut down. But go get a cup of coffee, coffee, go get get a cup of tea or water or, you know, go for a little walk sit quietly for if you can excuse yourself to go to the bathroom to breathe for a little bit. And think it out what's going on here and what just have been and and what are some of the elements contexts and what does it mean to be attuned here. If in one one reference point for this attunement, how to be attune is ask yourself kind of the exercise. How would you like other people to be attuned to you? Maybe then you can get some sense of what attunement means, what you can bring to others and then have conversations with people today about what is attunement for you it's not a common word. So maybe you're discovering together, what is it to be attuned to the suffering we encounter. So thank you very much.
