2023-08-21 Joy of Compassion (1 of 5) Joy From Awareness

11:04PM Aug 21, 2023

Speakers:

Gil Fronsdal

Keywords:

compassion

awareness

joy

sense

practice

concern

aware

compassionate

knowing

suffering

maui

world

self preoccupation

happiness

freedom

identified

attachment

evaluations

adding

judgments

So I returned here too, after being away for a couple of weeks with many momentous events happening in this country and around the world and, and the earthquakes that the fire in Maui, and it just the tragedy of it, it keeps growing and more we learn about it. And for anybody who lives in Hawaii and Maui, I send my condolences and my love and and and people who are maybe here in California are dealing with the flooding in Southern California and and the word are there in your in our hearts. So

that I hope that this practice that we do is really for the benefit of this world. And that the ways the way, the way in which had benefited ourselves makes it possible for us to be to offer the right attention, support, love, compassion care for this world around us. And maybe it's just the very local world of a few people around us. Maybe it's broader worlds. But that this practice does orient us to live in a way that doesn't add to the harm of the world, but actually adds to ways in which we can benefit this world. So in the last, I don't know, a few months when I've been teaching here, I've been teaching about compassion. And I kind of wondered if I had been finished with this series. But in thinking about it these last couple of weeks, I wanted to do one more week, maybe a concluding week on compassion, it felt important to actually spend a whole week on the joy of compassion, the happiness of compassion. And, and perhaps, for those, you've been listening to this series on compassion, that as you start to understanding the ecology of all the different pieces of compassion, and how they come together, that we can understand and appreciate that there there is the potential for our compassionate relationship to the world, to be one that brings joy and happiness, or a sense of lightness or sense of sweetness, or something that feels quite right, that sense of rightness, that lightens us perhaps or makes the suffering of the world not so heavy and oppressive for us to live with. And this is one of the great aspects of compassion is when compassion is free of any kind of attachment, any kind of self preoccupation, any kind of way in which we get caught in, identified with the suffering, or any way in which we are the suffering of the world somehow gets gets doesn't move through us in a way that feels free and doesn't move through us in a free and liked way. That really doesn't that the full potential of compassion and how beautiful and profound and important it is to have it Islam is limited. So I want to talk about that this week, the joy of compassion. And I like to do it by trying to evoke or point to the joy have the four different supports or foundations or elements that that are there as part of compassion if compassion is really going to fulfill its full potential. And many times when we have compassion and it can be genuine, but it hasn't really moved into its full potential and maybe even feels overwhelming and way you know, overwhelming and difficult to have compassion and there's compassion fatigue for example. that it seems to different elements haven't really come to fulfillment. So I've talked about how the four aspects that come together to really benefit or show compassion is awareness, attunement, appreciation, Asper, aspiration, and then action. And each of those are associated with a kind of joy, that kind of delight and happiness. And so for the first, healthy compassion comes with a well developed sense capacity to really being aware. And, and to learn the art of being aware, without identification or being aware without adding into the awareness, judgments and evaluations of me, myself and mine. And this is where kind of the, the knowing the awareness, the recognition, the mindfulness, can operate with a kind of a certain kind of effortlessness. Because to apply effort to being aware, is all too easy. The idea of I'm the one who's applying effort. And because of that, all these associated ideas of my life, who I am and why I'm doing this, and, and judgments about my capacity, and all kinds of things come along, independent of that, just many people go around with a lot of self concern. Everything is measured. What how this, what this says about me, or what this how this is for me, or how this is against me, or I'm a victim of this or how a consumer of it, and I just want to have more or, and, and, and some of this, of course is not wrong. But when it limits us when it actually contributes to further suffering and more attachments and limits our capacity to serve the world in a freer way, then there is another way. And the other way is to learn how there's certain kinds of ways to be mindful, that has a certain quality of effortlessness a certain quality of it, just awareness to just there, that just arises. And, and to kind of enter into or return to a clear sense of attention to the present moment that has no self efforting making oneself do something. But rather, it's an allowing, it's an opening. It's a relaxing into the awareness into the knowing this is where knowing or awareness can start providing feelings of joy or happiness, that are lightening up. Because Because so much of the self concern and self preoccupation that we live our lives with, dampens down the joy dampens down the freedom we have delimited quite a bit. And some of the idea of joy that people have and happy to pursuit of happiness is the pursuit of happiness, where we build up the sense of self, where the self gets praised, or the self gets aggrandized with self gets, you know, proves itself as being somehow wonderful in the eyes of others or something. And some of that unhappiness as people have, is also connected to the sense of self and the failure and not good enough and, and feeling that somehow, we're wrong. And, and the radicalness of this awareness practice, is how it points to the possibility of being alive of being aware and present, outside of the limitations of these judgments and evaluations of ourselves that we live with. So the simplicity of awareness, maybe even the effortless quality of it is or some kind of way in which it's not really self doing it. Maybe there is a kind of activity of being aware. But there's not a sense that I'm the one who's doing it or it's about me. And so the freedom from self preoccupation, the freedom from this, constantly be concerned with ourselves, is why some Buddhist teachers will say that if you want to be happy, have compassion for others, live for others. And it's not exactly because of living For others, that the joy comes. But sometimes the reason they say this is because the joy comes from not having the tight, contracted agitated, painful ways in which we live when we're self concerned. And so we're kind of loosening up that and stepping out of it. And forgetting it, this is self forgetting, that compassionate service can provide, and is maybe why some people do it. And, and but if you only do compassion, compassionate work in the world, to forget the self, but haven't really addressed, you know, it's almost like can be a distraction from self. And they certainly can be it can be a lightning and easy gossip that happens when we kind of forget about ourselves or forget about her. We were distracted from all this healthy awareness practice. learns how to be to honestly be present here for ourselves. What the for all the different kind of

ways in which this mind works in the set, even the self preoccupation, self concern and evaluations we make, but to see it, to know it, to be aware of it, without identifying with it without adding on top of it, more attachment, more self on top of it. It's almost as it were beginning to hold who we are, who how we mind works and identifications we have in lot with lots of expensive space. And we identified Obon more with the largeness of space than we do with the smallness of self identity. And so to cultivate and develop awareness, practice, and have that awareness, be ready to encounter the suffering of the world, this kind of free awareness, light awareness, open awareness, spacious awareness, non self non self concerned, non self referenced awareness, where we know ourselves well, and we start knowing the world around us others, then compassion has a chance to be present, and to share the joy of freedom, the joy of awareness, which is free that just the joy of being aware. And the final joy of awareness of mindfulness practice, that I want to emphasize is that is that

the joy of having an awareness practice that, to have the joy of the faith, the joy of the appreciation, of knowing we have a practice that can meet our own suffering and meet our own selfing our own self kind of challenges that we live with. And aren't we lucky to have a practice that helps us to work with this, to work through it, to find a way with it, to find freedom with it is not always easy. It takes time. But there's a joy of knowing that you have a practice that's as springy so much good to oneself and to others. So the joy of awareness as we get a sense of that possibility, the sweetness of awareness that then we can find then we're in a better place and ready to experience the joy of compassion. So then we'll continue on this theme, and I'm happy to be sharing it with you. Thank you