This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: How is this Compassionate Mind?; Compassion (5 of 5) Compassion & Awakening. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: How is this Compassionate Mind; Dharmette: Compassion (5 of 5) Compassion & Awakening - Kodo Conlin

The following talk was given by Kodo Conlin at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 10, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: How is this Compassionate Mind

Welcome, everyone. It's Friday, and our discussion of compassion continues. A little hiccup with the stream—I'm not sure what happened this morning, but many of you have made it over to this new URL. I hope there's not too much confusion. Spending five days practicing, thinking, talking, and living compassion is so sweet. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for your practice.

Let's settle right into some meditation, and then we will bring our fifth session to its conclusion. The meditation for today will be a simple one. We will start, as we have been, with settling in this body, this mind, this heart. Then, gently call up compassion. Once we've really spent some time cultivating compassion, we'll take a look at just what the quality of the mind is when it is arousing compassion, sustaining compassion. When it's suffused or filled with compassion, what are the qualities that are there? Let's start with the settling.

May our posture be balanced and grounded, connected to the earth. With each breath, coming into balance, alignment, and presence. Taking a few minutes to settle, to be with the senses.

And when we're ready, inclining the mind toward compassion. Arousing compassion in the body. Taking that attitude, perhaps with the help of an image or a reflection. May we be free from suffering and harm. May we be free from suffering. Relying on¹ our intention, the wish that others be free, that we be free from suffering.

Arousing the wish that beings be free from suffering. Sensitive to the effect this has on our body and mind. Inviting compassion throughout the body. This kind care. May all beings be free from suffering. Arousing compassion, sustaining compassion. This body and mind becoming compassion.

Now, to bring in the question: just how is this compassionate mind? Bring in just a little bit of investigation, not to interfere with our practice of compassion, but to come to know it. Is this compassionate mind clearly mindful? How is its energy? Is there joy? Even joy, or is there a calm balance, a settledness? Just how is this compassionate mind? What qualities are here?

Now, as we come to the end of this sitting, inviting ease and relaxation into this body with a wish for the welfare of all beings. As we hear the sound of the bell, may our intention² of compassion go along with the sound, spreading in all directions. May all beings be happy, and may they be free from suffering.

Dharmette: Compassion (5 of 5) Compassion & Awakening

Hello again. Welcome. Good morning, good day. It's our fifth day on the topic of compassion, and I'd like to talk a little bit about compassion and awakening. My curiosity is so strong; I wonder how it's been for you to see and practice bringing compassion into your worlds, each of our worlds. How has that been? I wonder if there have been any moments in your week that stand out to you, when you're bringing this attitude of kindness into your words, your thoughts, and your deeds.

As we get started, we've talked a lot about how the practical scope of compassion is this mettā³, loving-kindness, that can be expressed in all of our actions. This is inspiring, in part, because it means that our compassion can be expressed through our conduct. We can bring our wisdom to recognize what we need, to recognize what others need, and to—in one way of speaking—live beautifully. So, to say something about compassion and awakening will move the scope just a little bit from the expression in daily life to meditation.

One of the things that makes compassion and the other Brahma-vihāras⁴—loving-kindness, sympathetic joy, and equanimity—such powerful meditation practices is they have this natural way that they can undermine some of the challenges that come with some other focuses of meditation practice. For some people, it's possible when, say, we're focusing on the breath, there can be a way that we grab after the object of meditation, and the mind can sort of get contracted and tight, maybe even getting a headache. But there's something folded right in with the gentleness of compassion, and the focus that is the whole body, and then actually all space, all beings. It takes a very, very wide hug to hold all beings. You can see right there in the posture, the difference between a sort of crunching or pushing, contracting head that's trying to follow after the breath, for example, versus the natural posture of this broad hug⁵. Of course, breath meditation does not have to be contracted; it's just one of the things that can happen.

There's also a way that taking compassion as a meditation subject perfumes the mind. The object itself, focusing on compassion, creates an atmosphere almost in our body and in our mind that is conditioned by compassion. This is pretty powerful because it undermines directly those roots of what we call unwholesome conduct: those roots of greed and grasping, the roots of ill will, aversion, hatred, and cruelty, and the roots of delusion and ignorance. With this gentle mist of compassion, they're all undermined. Instead of our thoughts, words, and deeds feeding these roots, we feed the roots of mettā and we bring real care and love into the world.

A third feature of all of the Brahma-vihāras, but speaking specifically about compassion, is they have the power to bring both calm and insight right together. This is a powerful combination in the early tradition. Of course, we've seen over the week the way that compassion can bring soothing, settling, and calming just here. And of course, as Gil⁶ says many, many times, meditation brings calm not just to be calm; we bring calm in order to see. That's where the insight comes in. Calming in order to see is a bit like setting up our telescope on a tripod, nice and steady, nice and still, so that we can see the stars. Another metaphor is like letting a deep pool of water become very, very still and very, very clear, so that we can see all the way to the bottom. There's a beautiful image in a Zen poem of seeing all the way to the bottom of the water, the large, silent fish that are swimming there. These things we wouldn't be able to see without tranquility. These both come together: tranquility and insight.

Something we did this morning in the meditation, and one of the ways that we can invite the insight aspect into compassion practice, is by opening this investigation, a little bit of curiosity, posing the question: just how is this compassionate mind? With that question, we lean in the direction of insight, bringing insight together with tranquility. This is especially powerful in terms of the movement toward awakening with a practice like compassion; we take a few steps in the direction of awakening by looking after the Seven Awakening Factors⁷.

So, is there mindfulness in a compassionate mind, a compassionate heart? Is there the second factor, which is investigation? This is the quality that asks, "Oh, what exactly is here?" If mindfulness is the quality that knows what's here, investigation is the one that says, "What exactly is here?" This investigation builds on with the next Awakening Factor: it takes some energy to look into the mind and the heart and do the meditation practice, so energy can be aroused. Then, these first three together—mindfulness, investigation, and energy—seed the arising of joy. It can be a bright, full-body, beautiful joy, or it can be quite subtle. But is there joy in a compassionate mind? The fifth of the Seven Awakening Factors: is there tranquility? Then, is there concentration, collectedness, settledness? Is the mind settling? And then the seventh is mental balance, equanimity, that can look upon all things, all beings, all phenomena with a measure of balance. So, are these here? What exactly is here in this compassionate mind?

Doing this sort of investigation brings together tranquility and insight, which can set the stage for a very deep letting go. Just as I quoted Gil as saying we don't practice calm just for calm, and actually, we don't even practice insight just for insight. We condition a sort of letting go that allows us to be free—allows us to be free in some way, in all circumstances.

I wanted to take a moment to say a couple of things about why compassion and awakening go together, why this is so inspiring. There's something for me—I wonder how it is for you—that is quite inspiring about the power of compassion as a meditation practice to bring about these degrees of freedom very, very quickly. It's not only about the speed, but it's that we can taste the flavor of freedom. With compassion, it's right there. It's right nearby. This can be such a powerful touchstone for us, or a guideline. We taste the flavor of freedom, and we know to move in this direction. That's something inspiring about compassion practice: the path of compassion is onward-leading, and it goes so far in the direction of freedom. The third reason is that the influence of compassion is evident throughout the path, and it's evident in every action when we practice it. There is one teaching that says, "A mind well-cultivated in loving-kindness is supreme in beauty. A mind well-cultivated in loving-kindness is supreme in beauty."

Over the last several days, we've covered a bit of territory: from compassion as it relates to deep rest, how to love sustainably, how to release the hindrances⁸ and practice seclusion, the importance of mettā as a root for compassion, and then discussing not-self⁹, and how this path can lead onward in the direction of awakening.

I'd like to close the series with an image. I mentioned before the circle of compassion. The notion here is that self-cultivation, the work that we do with ourselves, benefits others, and benefiting others enhances our self-cultivation. We enact, develop, and cultivate compassion right here, with this one, and that benefits beings—real, concrete, actual beings. Then, the benefits to those other beings circle back and nourish our practice: the circle of compassion.

Thank you very much for your kind attention and your practice this week. May our time together be of great benefit to us and to all beings. May all beings be happy, may they be safe, and may they be free. Take good care.