The Nature Of Mind: Intrinsically empty, Naturally radiant, Ceaselessly responsive

0:02 There's a word in Pāli and Sanskrit that has a lot of meaning for our practice. That word is bodhijitta. And literally, we could translate it as the heart -mind jitta of awakening, bodhi. Suggest a fix for the passage at 0:02

0:26 On the relative level, bodhijitta refers to compassion. and particularly to the aspiration that we're not practicing For ourselves alone, but we can practice with the aspiration that our own awakening be for the benefit of all beings. And by cultivating this aspiration right from the beginning of our practice, it gives a lot of energy. As you're going through different difficulties, realizing that we're going through these not just for ourselves, but our own growing understanding. Will also benefit everyone else. Suggest a fix for the passage at 0:26

1:16 And in one way or another we find this compassionate aspiration expressed in many of the Buddhist traditions. Of course it's central to the Dalai Lama's way of understanding his life and his practice. And he wrote something about himself which I find, what Suggest a fix for the passage at 1:16

1:46 do I find it? It's particularly endearing. So he said, speaking of my own experience, I sometimes wonder why a lot of people like me. When I think about it, I cannot find in myself any specially good quality except for one small thing. That is the kind heart which I try to explain to others and which I do my best to develop myself. Of course, there are moments when I do get angry, but in the depth of my heart, I do not hold a grudge against anyone. I cannot pretend that I am really able to practice bodhijitta, but it does give me tremendous inspiration. Deep inside me, I realize how valuable and beneficial it is. That is all. It is endearing. You know, the Dalai Lama who manifests so much compassion, he Suggest a fix for the passage at 1:46

2:58 wonders why a lot of people like him. Well, it's that kind heart, you know, living with that aspiration to benefit all. And the same understanding is found in the Pāli Canon. You know, after the Buddha began teaching and when the first 60 disciples had become Ahans, He sent them forth with this exhortation. He said, Go forth, O bhikkhus. These are monks who had become fully enlightened. Go forth for the good of the many, for the happiness of the many, out of compassion for the world, for the good, benefit, and happiness of people and devas. Let not two go by one way. Teach the dharma, excellent in the beginning, excellent in the middle, excellent in the end. Proclaim the noble life, altogether perfect and pure. Work for the good of others, you who have done your duty. So again, it's in all the traditions, the sense that our practice can be motivated by this aspiration to benefit all others. Suggest a fix for the passage at 2:58

4:25 So the relative level of bodhicitta is compassion. On the more ultimate level, it's said that bodhicitta... Refers to the empty nature of the mind itself. And as one teacher expressed it, when compassion and emptiness are both present, enlightenment is unavoidable. So these are the two aspects, you know, in our practice that we need to cultivate and to realize. Suggest a fix for the passage at 4:25

5:01 One of the great realizations, transforming realizations for me in my own practice, Was at a certain point realizing that compassion and emptiness or compassion and wisdom are not polarities but they are expressions of each other. Suggest a fix for the passage at 5:01

5:28 And this is our challenge as people to see how we can integrate the wisdom of emptiness into compassionate responsiveness. So there's one teaching by the Tibetan master Shabkar. I think it was an 18th century Zhou Chen master. Beautiful teachings that have been passed down. There's one verse which he wrote which expresses the unification of relative and ultimate bodhicitta, of compassion and emptiness. He wrote, the mind's nature is as vivid As a flawless piece of crystal. Intrinsically empty. Naturally radiant. And ceaselessly responsive. He's talking about the nature of mind. The nature of our minds. Vivid as a flawless piece of crystal. Intrinsically empty. Naturally radiant. Ceaselessly responsive. So tonight I'd like to talk about these three aspects and how we can actually experience them. So how do we understand the term intrinsically empty? In English, the term empty or emptiness is really not that all appealing. You know, sometimes we hear the word empty and we might think of it kind of as a blank nothingness or a grave acuity. It doesn't necessarily inspire us. Or invite us. But in Pāli, in Sanskrit, the word for emptiness is shunyata. And shunyata has many profound meanings in Buddhism. So it's a word with tremendous wealth and depth of meaning. So how can we understand shunyata or emptiness? There are many, many ways to approach the experience of it. On the very simplest level, We can understand emptiness to mean lack of self -centeredness. Now, usually when we hear the word self -centered, we think of it as being a personality problem. You know, somebody is self -centered and maybe they should go see a therapist about it. But there's a deeper meaning to that term. It's when we create a felt sense of self. To be at the very center of our lives. Self -centered. You know, where our whole lives revolve around this center of I and me and mine. It becomes the reference point for everything that we think, everything that we feel, everything that we sense. It is the felt sense or the idea, the view. That there is someone behind experience to whom all experience is happening. That's the deepest meaning of self -centered. Suggest a fix for the passage at 5:28

9:26 And this is our common experience. We view things, my body, my thoughts, my feelings. I'm doing, I'm acting, I'm going. Just our normal way of being in the world all centers around this view. Suggest a fix for the passage at 9:26

9:49 So in that way, to the extent that we do that, we are all self -centered. We're living in this gravitational field of the self -center. And just think about your normal experiences in life. You know, all the hopes and the fears and the worries and the plans. Suggest a fix for the passage at 9:49

10:16 What are they revolving around? They're revolving around some sense of I. Some sense of mind. Also in our meditation practice. I spoke about this last week. How often our meditation practice itself is fueled by a desire for becoming something. So it's a very strongly rooted habitual conditioning. And it's just so interesting. We revolve around these desires for ever new experiences. Even when we know that these experiences are continually changing. So it's something we know. It's not a hidden mystery. And it's amazing that we continue to do this throughout our lives, relying on some next experience to finally fulfill us. All the time knowing that it won't and that it can't. So isn't this strange? It really points to the power, the great, great power of delusion. Because it's something we know, and yet we keep acting on the belief, on the view of just the next thing, the next meditation experience, the next whatever. However, the Buddha offered us some hope out of all this through a sustained wise attention, which is what you're all cultivating here. Through the growing strength and power of mindfulness, of concentration, of wisdom, we begin to pull away from this self -referential orbit. And we are gradually drawn in to the gravitational field of the dharma, the zero center of the dharma, rather than the self -center of I and mine. Suggest a fix for the passage at 10:16

12:35 So this was expressed very succinctly by the... By the Sufi poet Rumi when he wrote, live in the nowhere that you come from even though you have an address here. So we're all here and we have an address and that's the conventional world of self and I and other. So we live in that world and it's not to deny that. But even though we have an address here, can we really live in the nowhere that we come from? Live in the realization of emptiness. Suggest a fix for the passage at 12:35

13:21 This is the great challenge to somehow integrate this conventional level of reality with a more ultimate understanding. Well, this is a little teaching from a Tibetan teacher which I've read many times, but it just gets right to the point. He said, it's not that you're not real. We all think we're real, and that's not wrong. You are real, but you think you're really real. You exaggerate it. So that's it. We are real, we interact, we relate in an ordinary way, but on another level, we're not really real. And that's what our practice can discover. So we can experience this emptiness of self, and we do experience it, in many ways. We can get intimations of it in our ordinary lives. Sometimes people have experiences when they enter into just an effortless flow. There's something called a flow state. And it might be... In any kind of activity, it could be in sports, it could be in music, it could be in work, in nature, where due to some conditions we forget about ourselves and we're just in the flow of experience. Things seem to be flowing on by themselves without us and are really much better for that. The flow goes on a lot more easily. So it's to pay attention to that, you know, because even in meditation you might have experiences maybe sometimes when you're doing walking and it just seems to be happening by itself. You're in the sitting where there's just a flow of effortless mindfulness and no one is doing anything. So we begin to get a sense, a feeling of this emptiness of self. We can become aware or reminded of emptiness of self. We can be reminded of it sometimes by some of our teachers, either by their words or even by their presence. I had a very striking example of this, although this has happened with many, you know, many of my really accomplished teachers and masters. But once when Deepa Ma was visiting, you know, and she was this extraordinary, extraordinary woman, yogi. High levels of realization and concentration and I think I've spoken about her before. She's quite an amazing being and just exuding mettā and also emptiness. I remember once we were at the retreat center and she was there for a retreat and I saw her come in to the hall and bow before the Buddha and just watching her do that. Suggest a fix for the passage at 13:21

17:05 It was like wisdom bowing to wisdom or love bowing to love or emptiness bowing to emptiness. There was such a sense that there was no one there. There was no self doing that. And so sometimes with people like that, we can really get a feeling or intuit this experience of emptiness. Suggest a fix for the passage at 17:05

17:41 Something I mentioned this morning which can also lead us into this experience. I know that during the day you practiced it all with this passive voice construction of just things being known moment after moment. If you do practice that and get easeful with it, at first it may be a little awkward trying to figure out, what is he talking about? But as you practice it, it's very simple. You know, it's just experiences being known. You might repeat that to yourself, you know, just to kind of get into that groove. Then after a while, it's just happening. And there's no one there doing anything. So then we begin to actualize this experience of emptiness. Suggest a fix for the passage at 17:41

18:39 We begin to see that there is no thing, no entity. That the words I or self refer to. We use those words conventionally and they're useful. Not suggesting that we drop the words. But when we really look to see what it is that they refer to. We see that it's just a convenient designation. It's like using the word storm. Maybe there's a big summer storm. And rain and wind and lightning and thunder. Oh, there's a big storm going on. But is there a storm? Is there something called storm apart from the wind and the rain and the thunder and the lightning? No, there's no thing called storm. It's just a convenient designation for this coming together of different conditions. Suggest a fix for the passage at 18:39

19:48 Looked at closely the term self. Which we can use. Nothing wrong with using the word. But when we look closely, we see it's simply a convenient designation for the changing weather pattern of these mental, physical elements. We could just see all of our experiences changing weather systems. And sometimes it's a bright, clear, sunny day. And sometimes it's a big summer storm. And sometimes the black flies are out. And annoying us. It's just changing weather conditions. Suggest a fix for the passage at 19:48

20:35 As the practice develops, you know, and our refinement of the changes increases, we begin to see that the change is happening just incredibly rapidly. We begin to see that nothing lasts long enough to be called self. Even within one breath, you know, we might say, oh, I'm taking an in -breath. Suggest a fix for the passage at 20:35

21:08 But if we're feeling that in -breath carefully and precisely, the in -breath is not one thing. It is a flow of many, many, many different sensations. And each one of those microscopic sensations is just arising and passing, arising and passing. And our whole life is like that. It's just that we're not usually seeing it on that level. And the point of practice is not necessarily to always be seeing it on that level. But we want to develop the wisdom or the understanding that underneath the conventional reality of our lives, something else is going on. Because it's on that level that we free ourselves from attachment to this view of I, this view of self. Suggest a fix for the passage at 21:08

22:07 One of the early Western pioneers of... People going to Asia to practice Vipassanā was a woman named Jocelyn King. Suggest a fix for the passage at 22:07

22:24 So I was in India in the 60s and 70s. She was probably there in the 50s, very early. So she had a great line. She said, it's better to stand on the firm ground of emptiness. Than on the quicksand of somethingness. Suggest a fix for the passage at 22:24

22:53 Mostly we think that somethingness is the firm ground. No, it's better to stand on the firm ground of emptiness, letting go of the notion of self, than the quicksand of somethingness. But how often do we get lost in the quicksand of our thoughts and emotions and feelings and reactions and judgments? you know Suggest a fix for the passage at 22:53

23:18 So much of our day, so much of our lives is sinking into that quicksand, forgetting the empty, selfless nature of it all. Suggest a fix for the passage at 23:18

23:33 So this is the beauty of being here, you know, and having given yourself this great gift of practice and this fantastic place to practice, where all you have to do, your only job, is just to stay aware. Suggest a fix for the passage at 23:33

23:54 And in that, The firm ground of emptiness reveals itself. Suggest a fix for the passage at 23:54

24:01 Okay, another way of understanding and realizing emptiness, and this way is very obvious as soon as we start paying attention to it, but we often are not paying attention, is to seeing that things, the world, life, is not amenable to our will. Which is another meaning of the Pāli word anatha. Usually translated as selflessness, it also means ungovernable. We cannot with any hope of success at all, at all, say may my body never change. May my body not age. May it never grow ill. May I only have pleasant mind states. Suggest a fix for the passage at 24:01

24:59 It's so obvious that Everything is arising due to causes and conditions, not because we want it or don't want it to be a certain way. If things were amenable to our will, hmm, let me always be healthy, let me always feel good, let me always be happy, but it doesn't work like that. And this is the meaning of anattā. This is another meaning of emptiness of self. It's ungovernable. Suggest a fix for the passage at 24:59

25:39 And ungovernable means it's not subject to our will. It doesn't mean that there are not causes and conditions for things to arise. And so to live in harmony in the world and actually to fulfill our aspirations is to understand, well, what are the causes and conditions for the mind to be happy? And this is the great gift of the Buddha's teaching. He figured all this out. Which is quite astounding. You know, through his own awareness, it's like he mapped the mind. He mapped the heart. He said, these causes and conditions lead to suffering. These causes and conditions lead to worldly happiness. These causes and conditions lead to awakening, to enlightenment. And he didn't say, just believe this. He said, try it out. See for yourself. Suggest a fix for the passage at 25:39

26:47 So this is the great gift of understanding this meaning of emptiness, Suggest a fix for the passage at 26:47

26:56 seeing the importance of understanding the causes and conditions necessary for fulfilling whatever aspirations we have. Suggest a fix for the passage at 26:56

27:19 So this is an interesting way just to test your understanding of this. Somewhat here, you know, while you're on retreat, but even more so when you leave here and around in the world. Just pay attention to those situations when things are not going the way you would like them to go. Maybe it's some condition of the body. Maybe it's some difficulty in a relationship. Maybe it's being at the airport two hours early and then you see your flight is canceled. Suggest a fix for the passage at 27:19

27:57 In those moments when you're bumping up against the world and the world is not doing what you would like it to do, Suggest a fix for the passage at 27:57

28:08 Reflect on that rather than just rebound into some irritation or aversion or judgment or reaction of some kind. Take those situations to notice that they are happening, whatever the circumstance is, whether interpersonally or impersonally, Suggest a fix for the passage at 28:08

28:32 that whatever the situation is, it's arising out of different conditions, not because you want it or don't want it to be a certain way. So just that understanding, Suggest a fix for the passage at 28:32

28:47 you know, there's a sense of ease, there's a sense of relief. Because the more we understand this particular meaning of emptiness, that things are not amenable to our will, but arise out of the appropriate conditions, we let go of the illusion of control. And we can see more clearly what actually are the conditions. necessary to accomplish our aims. So we just see with much greater clarity, Okay, Suggest a fix for the passage at 28:47

29:31 we experience emptiness in terms of a flow. We get into a flow state. We experience emptiness sometimes in the presence of a great teacher. We experience meaning of emptiness when we realize things are not amenable to our will, that they're ungovernable in that sense. take much more effective action. Suggest a fix for the passage at 29:31

29:53 There's no self controlling the world. There's another meaning of emptiness which is emphasized in certain Buddhist traditions, and that is the empty space -like nature of the mind. Suggest a fix for the passage at 29:53

30:10 So this is from a teaching by Padmasambhava, who was the great Indian adept who brought Buddhism from India to Tibet. He said, it is certain that the nature of mind is empty and without any foundation whatsoever. Your own mind is insubstantial like the empty sky. Look at your own mind to see whether this is so or not. So this teaching, there are a lot of teachings like this that are pointing us back to look at the nature of awareness itself. Suggest a fix for the passage at 30:10

30:50 So one exercise which I've done and may have mentioned earlier, but I found very revealing, is just whether in sitting or walking or moving about, In hearing a sound, sound arises, the sound is being heard. So sometimes I'll ask the question in my mind, can I find what is knowing the sound? So it's just a way of turning the attention back towards the awareness itself. Can I find what is knowing the sound? And when I look, I see there's nothing to find. And as one teacher said, the not finding is the finding. That's what's to understand, that the mind in that way cannot be found. And so that's another meaning of emptiness, the empty nature of the mind. Suggest a fix for the passage at 30:50

31:57 But it's really important here, and we need to take care not to create some idea of emptiness, not to create some concept about it, and then get attached to the concept. So somebody came to one teacher and was describing a very empty, spacious quality of mind. And they were having what most people, not you, but what most people would call a good sitting. Suggest a fix for the passage at 31:57

32:34 Open, empty, spacious. And so she was reporting this to the teacher. And he could see that there was just some You could say attachment to that state or reification of that state, oh, this is emptiness. And he said, and he's making a very interesting distinction here, that a better description than spaciousness for the experience of emptiness, rather than spaciousness, it's groundlessness. And I realized when I heard that, that really cuts through attachment to any state. Because yes, it's lovely when the mind is spacious. You know, we all may have had that experience. But that's just another state. It's a very pleasant state. But it's a state. It's a conditioned arising. Whereas the term groundlessness, at least for me, it just cuts through attachment to anything. It's like the ground falls away. And that gives a better flavor of what the experience of emptiness is. Suggest a fix for the passage at 32:34

33:56 So in this practice, in the direct looking at the empty nature of the mind, it's not so much deconstructing the sense of self by seeing all the component elements of what we call self, but rather it's looking directly or seeing directly the empty nature of the mind. Suggest a fix for the passage at 33:56

34:29 The mind is vivid like a flawless piece of crystal, intrinsically empty. But it's not just empty. Schapka went on to say, Suggest a fix for the passage at 34:29

34:44 intrinsically empty, naturally radiant. That's another aspect or quality of the mind. And radiant here means this innate capacity of the mind to know, the capacity of awareness. So as I mentioned, I think maybe this morning, the cognizing power of emptiness. That it's not just empty space, that the mind actually... Has the capacity to be aware. Buddha Dasa, the great Thai master of the last century, he said, we should really call mind emptiness because of its space -like nature, but because of the awareness faculty, we call it mind. So this is important. The mind is not just empty space. It has this knowing, aware quality. So this union, of emptiness and awareness. This is an important understanding. The nature of the mind is this union of emptiness and awareness. It was expressed in the first lines of a book I came across. The title of the book, I was just in a bookstore, and I came across this title, The Nothing That Is. So I didn't know what the book was about, but the title was so, The Nothing That Is, that sounds really Buddhist. It turns out that the book by Robert Kaplan is a history of the number zero. Robert Kaplan was a mathematician at Harvard. Zero was a late discovery and very powerful idea, concept. These are the opening lines of this book. The first two lines. Look at zero and you see nothing. Look through it. Suggest a fix for the passage at 34:44

37:04 Look at the mind and you see That's as far as I got in the book. It soon got very technical. Suggest a fix for the passage at 37:04

37:26 What's important in this realization is that this nature of mind, this union of emptiness and awareness is not something we have to get. This is the nature of mind. It's something we need to recognize and come back to as we free ourselves from the hindrances, free ourselves from delusion. We let go of all our various and subtle attachments. Suggest a fix for the passage at 37:26

38:01 So realizing this really can change the way we practice. Instead of practicing with an ambitious striving to get something, We're realizing the nature of the mind is already empty and already aware. Suggest a fix for the passage at 38:01

38:23 But we don't always see that. Why? The Buddha said it very directly. He said, luminous bhikkhus is the mind. It is defiled by incoming defilements. Luminous is the mind. It is freed from incoming defilements or visiting defilements. The important point here is that The defilements which obscure the mind are not intrinsic to the mind. They're visitors. They come when the conditions are there. Suggest a fix for the passage at 38:23

39:04 So if we learn how to recognize, you could say, the nature of awareness, the empty nature of awareness, it's already here. And sometimes in my practice, especially when I would find myself caught up in striving, in one way or another it could be, Very obvious, sometimes really subtle, sometimes just kind of leaning into the next moment. Sometimes I would use the mantra, already here, or already aware. And just those couple of words would remind, settle back, it's already here. I simply need to be aware of what's arising, not to get something. And the whole system relaxes. A Suggest a fix for the passage at 39:04

40:11 little mental editing. So one image. Suggest a fix for the passage at 40:11

40:20 That describes this movement from delusion to awareness is the image of ice and water. Ice is hard, it's frozen, it's solid. Ice is the mind when we're caught up or identified with a thought, with a feeling, with an emotion, with our story. And you can feel that sense of contraction when we are lost, when we're identified. With the movies of our minds. Suggest a fix for the passage at 40:20

40:53 Water is the free -flowing. Water is when the mind is free -flowing. It's not identified. It's not attached. It's not caught. It's just in the flow of phenomena arising and passing away. Empty phenomena rolling on. Suggest a fix for the passage at 40:53

41:12 Now the big secret. Suggest a fix for the passage at 41:12

41:17 Ready? This is the big secret. Ice. Water is nothing other than melted ice. And so it's not that the free flow of water or the free flow of experience is some far -off attainment. One day I'll be water, you know, just be freely flowing. No, water is nothing else than melted ice. So even with all these thoughts and emotions and stories, as soon as we see them for what they are, the ice melts. And we're back in the free flow of experience. And you've all had this experience many times. Pay attention the next time you're caught up in some story. Suggest a fix for the passage at 41:17

42:20 Probably it'll happen sometime before you leave. Suggest a fix for the passage at 42:20

42:26 Just the next time the mind is caught up. And then notice that moment when you come out from being lost. And you remember, oh. All of that, that whole big drama that I was caught up in and had so strong feelings about and emotions, it was nothing more than just some thoughts and feelings in the mind. It had been ice and it melted and right back in the flow. It's just so amazing, the power of unnoticed thoughts. You know, when we're not aware that they are just a thought, we are lost in the movies of our minds. We are living in this mind -created world. And then we wake up from it. It's like coming out of a movie theater. You know, we may have been totally involved in the story of the film. Then you step out of the theater and you know that sense of, it's like the mind enlarges. You know, it's like, oh, there's a bigger reality. And you realize nothing that was in the movie theater was really happening. Suggest a fix for the passage at 42:26

43:46 I find this whole thing amazing. I really do. It's like, it's very good to have a sense of humor about all this. Because, as I said earlier, Sokni Rinpoche's phrase, so much of our suffering is real, but not true. So it's not the suffering is there. When we are caught in the story, we are suffering. But the potential for freedom is always there. And it's not 20 years down the road. It's right in this moment of just seeing what's happening. It's like being in a prison cell where the door is always unlocked. Suggest a fix for the passage at 43:46

44:37 At any moment, we can step out. There's nothing keeping us there except our not seeing. So that's why it's so powerful what you're doing here, just to spend all day just to be practicing seeing. Getting lost and waking up and getting lost and waking up, you know, over and over again, and seeing that process, it's tremendously liberating. Suggest a fix for the passage at 44:37

45:08 Okay. Suggest a fix for the passage at 45:08

45:14 Intrinsically empty, naturally radiant, ceaselessly responsive. It's the nature of the mind. So what does ceaselessly responsive mean? Suggest a fix for the passage at 45:14

45:30 In the open, empty awareness, there is a natural and spontaneous Compassionate response to the world and to people around us. It's like water flowing down a mountainside. The water will find the most direct way, which doesn't always mean straight down, but according to the contours of the land, the water will find the shortest way down the mountain. Suggest a fix for the passage at 45:30

46:06 As we move out of the self -centered The orbit of the self -center into the gravitational field of the empty center, the gravitational field of the dharma, of emptiness. We find that there is a spontaneous responsiveness to situations, and we begin to have a very active engagement in the world, responding to the suffering that's there, to the suffering of beings, our own and others. In a much more open and compassionate way. We begin to respond in whatever way seems appropriate and in whatever way is possible. So this can show itself and does show itself in many ways in our lives. And it's beautiful. It's a beautiful part of our unfolding practice to see in ourselves and in others a growing compassionate response to different situations. So there's one story of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese leader, when she was under house arrest, which was for many, 17 years, something like that. She was having an interview with an Australian newspaper, and the journalist said, don't you want to bring the generals down? And she replied, no, I want to bring them up. I mean, here were people... You know, who were doing terrible things in the country. And yet her response, her compassionate response to that situation, no, I don't want to bring them down. I want to bring them up. I want to elevate their understanding. Now, sometimes the responsiveness can manifest in very small ways the emptier we are of self, of self -reference. You know, it may be small gestures of friendliness. Or of kindness. Or of generosity. We shouldn't overlook these very small moments in our lives. The Dalai Lama said, I tried to treat whoever I meet as an old friend. This gives me a genuine feeling of happiness. It is the practice of compassion. I mean, it's such a simple statement. I tried to treat everyone I meet as an old friend. So then we think of our own responses to everyone we meet. And probably, at least at times, maybe not often, but at least at times, how many judgments come in and projections and likes and dislikes, even before we actually say anything to them. Compassion can also Suggest a fix for the passage at 46:06

49:27 manifest as times of great courage or determination. You know, you think of Really some exceptional beings like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Nelson Mandela in situations of huge suffering. He used to watch these films of Dr. King leading marches, both in the North and the South, and often surrounded by people just filled with hatred. And he was holding the space of love. And it was amazing. It was amazing to see the potential, that possibility. Suggest a fix for the passage at 49:27

50:15 You know, and the fact of Mandela, when he came out of prison, became the first president post -apartheid. It is amazing. I had taught in South Africa. It is amazing that that country did not erupt in a violent civil war, given the oppression and cruelty that had happened there. But he held the space of reconciliation. You know, so this is The potential of compassionate response requiring a lot of courage and determination in the midst of tremendous difficulty. Suggest a fix for the passage at 50:15

51:00 There's a teacher in California. His name is Lou Richmond. Some years ago, he contracted a terrible disease. It was viral encephalitis. which I'm not exa - It's even exactly sure what it is, but it was some brain virus. It was terrible. He was really on the verge of death. He was in a coma for two weeks, brain damage, other disabilities. He said it took him three to four years to recover from this illness, and many people don't. So he was writing about this. He had been a Zen teacher and still is. So this is what he wrote after his illness. Sometimes when I'm asked to describe the Buddhist teaching, I say this. Everything is connected. Nothing lasts. You are not alone. This is really just a restatement of the three marks of existence. Impermanence, not self, impermanence, and suffering. I don't think I would have expressed the truth of suffering as you are not alone. before my illnesses. So this is very interesting. This is how he described the truth of dukkha. You are not alone. But now I find that talking about it that way gets at something important. The fact that we all suffer in one way or another and at different times means we are all in the same boat. And that's what allows us to feel compassion. So it's the universality of this truth. The universality of the truth of dukkha, of suffering, expressed as you are not alone. And when we remind that, remind ourselves of that, it really opens the heart to compassion for ourself and for others. Suggest a fix for the passage at 51:00

53:28 In understanding compassion and how it's the natural responsiveness of the heart, of the mind, It's important not to create a hierarchy of compassionate action. Oh, this action is really compassionate. This is just moderately compassionate. The field of compassionate responsiveness is limitless. It's the field of suffering beings. And we each find our own way in it. We each find our own way in expressing this compassion. You know, sometimes it might be active engagement with the world. Sometimes it might mean sitting in a cave for 20 years, practicing to awaken with the aspiration for the benefit of all. And if you don't want to sit in a cave for 20 years, you could sit here for 20 years. That could be as compassionate an action as being on the front lines of social action. There's no hierarchy. And think of the... The Bodhisattva, how many lifetimes did he spend as a solitary renunciate? And you could just imagine his parents, relatives, people saying, what is that guy doing? He's just selfish, sitting in a cave by himself for all these years. And yet, after all those lifetimes of practice, flowering in the awakening of Buddhahood, we're here today because of the flowering of that compassion. So it's to be careful not to judge or discriminate. It all has to do with the motivation and the aspiration in the heart. Suggest a fix for the passage at 53:28

55:41 The mind's nature is vivid as a flawless piece of crystal, intrinsically empty, naturally radiant, the aware quality, ceaselessly responsive. The more we recognize the innate Empty wakefulness of mind, the more the compassion responsiveness comes forth. And the more we practice compassion free of self -reference, the more we recognize its empty nature. I'll just close with this wonderful teaching from Dilgo Kense Rinpoche, who was one of the really great Tibetan masters of the last century. He said, when you recognize the empty, selfless nature of phenomena. Which is what we're all doing here. When you recognize the empty, selfless nature of phenomena, the energy to bring about the good of others dawns uncontrived and effortless. So this is the union, you know, relative and ultimate bodhicitta. Compassion is the activity of emptiness. And this is really the great work that we're all doing here. That's it for just a few moments. Suggest a fix for the passage at 55:41