Thank you for coming back after our one-week break. We have four more meetings to explore compassion, to investigate compassion, to experiment with compassion, to question and inquire about compassion. And tonight I'd like to... And then welcome Charlie. And tonight I'd like to go over something that we talked about at our last meeting. With a little addition.

[01:01]

So I'm proposing various aspects of generating compassion. But before trying to enter into the process of generating compassion, I wanted to address the issue of being impartial. Impartial. So it's a natural thing for us to find some people, some sentient beings, to find them pleasant, to be comfortable with them.

[02:07]

And it's also just like a physical fact that with some people we are uncomfortable and we feel unpleasant being near them, irritated by their mere presence. So as a basic background practice, we need to be impartial. We don't need to be comfortable with everybody or uncomfortable with everybody. But we do need to learn how to not hate or be attached to beings. Now usually there's some tendency to get attached to people we're comfortable with

[03:12]

and people who we find pleasant. And it's a natural tendency to hate people who we feel uncomfortable with, who we find obnoxious, disgusting, repulsive. So these feelings we have no control over as far as I know for the time being. But we can notice if we feel attachment to those we're comfortable with and pay attention to that and in a sense confess and repent it over and over until we let go of our attachment to beings who we are comfortable with

[04:19]

and with whom we feel pleasant. And similarly, some people with whom we have an uncontrollable aversion or I should say discomfort to learn to let go of trying to get away from them and avoid them and even hate them. This is an ongoing thing and so that we can treat beings impartially. If we don't find a way to be impartial with people we wind up to be biased. And if we're biased we are disabled to some extent in being able to see what's going on. If we are biased it will interfere with our practice

[05:24]

and lead us to make mistakes due to our biases. So with someone I'm uncomfortable with I can be unbiased towards them even though I'm still uncomfortable and then I can have a chance to have again to develop loving kindness and compassion and leading to Buddhahood. Because again compassion is the main cause of Buddhahood. But if we don't practice impartiality towards beings it will not be possible for us to practice true compassion and become the helpful person we aspire to become in this world. So I proposed that at the beginning and it's also a conversation piece

[06:26]

but I'd like to if you have responses to this suggestion of the necessity of being impartial let's talk about that later, okay, after I present a little bit more. So then the next practice is the practice of well, by the way there's a traditional presentation of four divine abodes which many of you have probably heard about. The first one's called loving kindness metta in Pali and maitri in Sanskrit. The next one's called karuna or compassion. The next one's called pramudita or finding the merit in others finding their virtues and rejoicing in their virtues. And the fourth one is called equanimity.

[07:28]

Equanimity is very close to being impartial so that when we're uncomfortable we somehow learn to treat our discomfort without hating it and when we're comfortable we learn how to relate to our comfort without attaching to it. And then also if we can relate to our own comfort without attaching and our own discomfort without hating then we can learn to do the same thing with people with whom we feel comfortable and uncomfortable. So the usual order is usually in that system it's loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. But in a way this what I'm presenting to you is kind of not quite the reverse it's more like equanimity or impartiality

[08:32]

and then actually to see the merit in others and then practice loving kindness and then practice compassion and then generate the wish, the deep resolve to live for the welfare of others to be focused and steady and steadfast in our intention to live for the welfare of others and from there in order to live for the welfare of others we aspire to Buddhahood because Buddhahood will enable us to be the best friend the best protector, the best refuge the best liberator for all beings and this resolve, this aspiration is the seed of Buddhahood and is necessary for Buddhahood.

[09:34]

So again, going back to impartiality and then going back to a requirement which I mentioned last time a requirement for love, for loving kindness and that requirement is that we have a gentle feeling of fondness or affection for beings and in order to have this gentle fondness or affection for beings we need some help and the help as I proposed last time is to understand that in the inconceivably vast evolution that we have gone through to become the person we are now

[10:38]

all beings have been, last time I said, our mothers they have also been our sisters, our brothers, our fathers our uncles, our aunts, our friends, our enemies they've been all those things to us in our vast evolutionary process and then there was some discussion I was included in about the problem of seeing others as having been our mothers because in the modern times life is really complicated so I would suggest if we are in a time when seeing others as mothers does not kind of accord with seeing others as our benefactor that we change, just maybe understand that mother means

[11:43]

and also in ancient times maybe there was more strict division of labor and maybe fathers did not do caregiving and the mothers were really focused on that but whatever the reasons that we have trouble with this I would suggest that we understand that we wouldn't be here if we hadn't been cared for by innumerable beings somebody did good stuff for us so that we could be here today we are here by the kindness of others and everyone, all beings who are currently living with us has served as an effective and loving caregiver for us in the past to meditate on that until we actually can feel gentle feelings of fondness and appreciation and affection for all beings through this meditation

[12:44]

and this is a meditation to do not when you're on the street but do it in your quiet meditation so that when you meet beings on the street you already have understood this because as you know people on the street sometimes are rude to us, disrespectful of us or disrespectful of others and I really feel that you all want people to respect everyone, right? you all want everyone to be respected and I find that some people who really want everyone to be respected and want everyone to respect everyone have trouble respecting people who don't respect people

[13:45]

so again, I know some people who want all beings to be respected and they really want that and I do too however, when they see someone not respecting someone they think that person should not be respected and making exceptions like that will hinder the development of true compassion and true aspiration to Buddhahood and I'm happy to discuss that later also so once again, impartiality the next, learning through meditation through recollecting that all beings have been our greatly compassionate caregiver in the past

[14:59]

and then from there being able to practice loving kindness and loving kindness is to wish all beings to be happy and to be aware that many beings lack happiness and that we wholeheartedly wish every person who lacks happiness to have great happiness that's loving kindness and if we feel fond of people we will be able to wish that for them and not only do we wish it for them we commit to work for them we accept responsibility for that wish that they would have abundant happiness and based on this love the next phase is that based on that love we practice compassion

[16:02]

so that love, sometimes we use the image that love moistens the ground of all living beings it moistens it and softens it and prepares it for the planting the seed of compassion it will again hinder the planting compassion in ourselves if we do not practice this genuine tender appreciation for all beings we will be hindered in planting compassion in our mind and body and transmitting it to others compassion is different from loving kindness in that compassion is not so much noticing that people lack happiness and wishing that they would have great happiness it is more being aware that

[17:04]

they are miserable and stressed and frightened and tormented and wishing them to be free of misery and suffering so loving kindness wants beings who don't have abundant happiness to be happy and compassion wishes for all beings who are suffering to be free of suffering and then following from that wish is the commitment to that practice based on this compassion we then will be able to really commit to the work the aspiration to benefit all beings so I offer these things and I

[18:08]

I welcome your your conversation about this and your difficulties in any aspect of these practices and once again I want to stress that we want to be able to do these practices in the street, in the grocery store throughout our daily lives with people however, it's also important to do it when you're alone when you have quiet time so you're not like challenged to deal with people while you're trying to meditate on them as having been your truly compassionate and devoted caregiver in the past and also I wanted to say again that also all beings have been our enemies in the past but we don't focus on their having been enemies

[19:09]

but we do notice that in the present they are they are our enemies we have enemies in the present and these enemies in the present have been our enemies in the past but they have also been astoundingly supportive and nurturing and kind to us and that we focus on so that we can be impartial and loving and compassionate towards our enemies not to mention our friends and one other thing, no two other things that there's an order in these practices so that in the case of being impartial we start practicing impartiality towards people that we aren't particularly comfortable with or uncomfortable with

[20:10]

people who have never done it for whom we haven't really seen that they've done anything good for us or harmed us people that we have kind of neutral feelings for we start practicing impartiality with them because it's easiest to do it with them it's harder to start practicing impartiality with people who are good friends because those are the people we have a tendency to be attached to but we start by practicing with people we have kind of neutral relationships with and develop impartiality with them and watch with them for any tendency to attach or hate then we go next to friends and do the same watch out for any tendency to attach or hate and then we go to enemies and then we go to enemies

[21:11]

and with loving kindness we start with those we start with ourselves and if you can't do that then you start with someone who is a friend someone who you feel has helped you then you go to someone who you feel you have a neutral relationship with someone who is neutral to you a person who you feel you have reason to have resentment or somebody you do have resentment towards okay, so now I think I'm ready to talk to the people who have their yellow hands raised but before we do that how can I get the the chat thing to go away it's obscuring my view click on chat

[22:16]

on the bottom of your screen but where is it? I don't see chat the chat's covering the chat it speaks to participants yeah, so the the chat's covering up the participants it's blocking out about a third of the screen the chat thing there's a little box at the bottom and it says chat if you click on that it should disappear but I'm saying I don't see the little chat box it used to be there but now there's big black boxes on top of it do you see a red dot on that big box that you can click to make it go away like it says chat and up on top if you move your cursor if you move your cursor up there that little dot up on the upper left would turn red and then you click it I see a red dot on the top of the

[23:20]

whole screen over on the left is that that one? no, not that one, the one in the chat yeah, I can't get the red dot to go on even with your cursor I'm going up there wait a second, I pressed a button, a little arrow pointing down and it said close maybe I'll press close that didn't work I got a message from Jeff top left, chat, close that worked, thank you okay two times does the trick now I can see many people thank you so, raised hands Justin Rob I'm

[24:22]

I have a confession and hopefully a question in there in that you know, in attempting to be impartial I find myself I find myself for lack of a better way of putting it I'm looking for the right words putting up walls trying to exercise the practice of impartiality by being slightly closed and it doesn't feel good and it's very habitual for me and I want to and I feel like I don't express I don't express or mirror the kindness or affection that's coming from those that I feel it from and want to get it back to so I guess I'm looking for advice on how to be impartial

[25:27]

and feel and express joy and reciprocal and I guess more delicate communication are you saying that in some situations you feel yourself putting up a wall yeah, or be almost aloof in my effort to be impartial or detached and it doesn't and I feel like I'm missing the mark I think you're missing the mark, yeah so with the people that you're trying to be aloof from are they people you feel comfortable with and uncomfortable with I'm more so comfortable with I almost have an easier time

[26:29]

being with people that I'm uncomfortable with I think putting up, being aloof and putting up walls doesn't sound the same as hatred but it's more like hatred so the thing is to the purpose of this is to be unbiased and it's again it's like to learn to treat friends and enemies the same now you could say well I treat my friends and my enemies the same I put up walls between myself and them right so I think that's not really the same as attachment or hatred I think that's more like, I don't know what that is what is that putting up

[27:30]

a wall are you putting up the wall because you are you afraid of something I'm afraid of being attached yeah you're afraid of getting attached yeah well I guess I already am if that's the case not necessarily but well you're kind of I think the fear may be I don't think the, I'm not sure so somebody or something in your life and you well could be you could well be afraid of attaching to to this being and I would I guess I would shift to

[28:30]

considering this fear as a being and you said before that maybe because of the fear you want to put up a wall to protect yourself from this fear so I think it would be good to find a way to treat this fear with love and if and also treat this this impulse to put up walls to treat that with love but again in order to treat the fear with love the fear being with love and the wall building being with love

[29:32]

we may have we need to have some gentle fondness for it and this this fondness will be will be sponsored if you can realize that there's a long history of where this this wall building has benefited you has supported you and has been kind to you and where fear has been like your mother it has protected you and nurtured you so that you can now wish your fear and your wall building you can sincerely wish it happiness so the good news is you can see these beings this wall building being

[30:35]

and this fear of attachment being you can see this being and so now you have the opportunity to develop a warm affectionate relationship with it so that you can wish it happiness because it's not it's probably lacking happiness so this is something I would encourage you to meditate on to find some way to appreciate and be affectionate towards this fear and this wall building so that you can wish it love and compassion and thereby be devoted to liberating it from the suffering that comes with it because fear of attachment is suffering and wall building is suffering so please meditate on that and let us know if you can find

[31:37]

some sincere affection for these beings that you told us about okay thank you you're welcome good evening good evening I have a perhaps question about impartiality perhaps coming from the opposite issue that I think Justin raised which is how does all that fit with our feelings about our loved ones our spouses, our partners, our children family members longtime close friends etc are we to be it's almost I don't think you're quite saying that we should deny that we have those feelings

[32:38]

for them and be impartial about in the sense that we treat them just the same way we treat our people we would be inclined to hate people make us uncomfortable whatever so can you kind of elaborate on that a bit and then I may have a second question afterwards if there are a lot of hands up so all your loved ones they all want they all want to be happy right and if by any chance a loved one should turn on you and become your enemy they still want happiness and and we're aspiring to wish our enemies happiness too our loved ones

[33:39]

can become we can become very uncomfortable our loved ones can be yeah obnoxious to us we still love them they're still our most precious people but temporarily we're very uncomfortable with them they're actually sometimes become our enemies and we do not want to start being biased towards our loved ones when they're enemies and as opposed to when they're our friends right so this we want to be able to love our loved ones even when they are yeah like just you know our enemies when they're actually fighting us and yeah we want to be able to do that so we need impartiality so that we can keep sending them love and compassion even if they are

[34:39]

becoming our enemies and I'm not saying to and also to not get attached to them when they're our dear when they're giving us when they're making us so comfortable and so it's so pleasant and and delightful to be with them so in those cases we usually want to not get attached to them because getting attached to them will also lead us to be biased and being biased will interfere with our love being unbiased will make it possible for us to be more wholeheartedly loving and compassionate to our you know our own flesh and blood so if you have any questions about that I'm going to digest it I probably would some point in the future if you have time for a second question though yeah second question has to do with this notion that

[35:42]

I'm probably taking this way too literally that everybody who exists in the world who's there in the world at some point in the past has been our you know has acted has been our enemy has acted with you know hatefully or whatever it is and also lovingly toward us I mean I'm having trouble understanding that other than apart from saying well all humanity in a certain sense or all sentient beings existence over the time they've existed in the physical world have contributed to our by being here today I mean if that's do you mean something different than that or more than that I think I mean that's what I mean and as part of that process that has brought us to where we are now what what has actually made us be here is lots of loving love and kindness has brought us here along with all kinds of strife and and the people who also the

[36:43]

people at certain points in our evolution some of the people who have been most kind to us we've also been very difficult to take care of and we've been you know it's it's been a great sacrifice for them to take care of us and they have made great sacrifices for us because they loved us so much and everybody's been part of that process and the part that's the literal part it's it's hard for us to imagine that somebody has actually served as our father or a mother in the past but that's the general thing you're saying is true and also the specifics are also part of the possibility that people have actually been our mothers in the past and again that's something to meditate on you can start by taking it literally which is fine but then by meditating on it you get to actually understand in what sense what you can learn from taking it literally

[37:44]

so are you talking about something like I don't know reincarnation that you you know you today are you talking just as an object for meditation how literally do you mean that do you mean the non-literal part of it if I can if that's clear again this is a hard part for us this issue that we I I have evolved from innumerable beings in the past so we can see it in this lifetime we have trouble seeing it from before we were in our mother's womb but whereas we are saying to consider the possibility that there was somebody that there was some life that preceded us being conceived in the womb that the conception in the womb didn't come from nowhere and we we are born of beings

[38:48]

who existed before us and this long evolution well I will contemplate that thank you thank you beginningless evolution good evening good evening I guess I'm feeling a little bit confused or uncomfortable with the notion of separating these four you know saying here's loving kindness here's compassion here's sympathetic joy here's equanimity and it feels to me like I want to think of them as a package that they're different aspects of the same thing

[39:49]

that's fine because equanimity by itself doesn't sound very joyful it doesn't sound very like there's a lot of warmth in it you know but I think if there's warmth and equanimity together then they kind of balance but I'm very uncomfortable with separating them out this way except as a way of teaching them well in the if you make equanimity last it's following from a lot of warmth it's following from loving kindness which is wishing people happy it's following from compassion and it's following from sympathetic joy so all this love and compassion and joy is leading to a state of equanimity where you don't prefer joy over you don't prefer pain over pleasure for example but the

[40:49]

non-preference of of pleasure over pain or comfort over discomfort you don't have a preference for that that non-preference or that impartiality where you don't hate discomfort and you're not attached to comfort it's led to by lots of warmth and love in the case I'm presenting it we're primarily focusing on love and compassion and we're saying that if you want to have real love and compassion you need some impartiality before you start so the other way I would understand as this is a warm loving equanimity which is slightly different but they're closely related and the in both cases it's the virtue of equanimity and impartiality is that we can approach beings in an unbiased

[41:51]

way we can give beings that we're uncomfortable with and those we're comfortable with the same the same love and without that yes? But we don't have to turn the other three off in order to be equanimous Turn what off? The other three What are you turning off? Compassion loving kindness and sympathetic joy You don't have to turn them off in order to be equanimous they can be included Did you say equanimous? Yeah No you don't turn them off, no no no Thank you And the way I'm presenting it is you practice being impartial so that you will be able to practice love and compassion without being biased because if you're not impartial

[42:53]

it will bias your great work so this one is starting with impartiality and then leading into discovering this affection and then based on the affection wanting this wanting people to be happy really really wanting that for them and working for that and then based on that wishing to practice compassion So I think it is important for us to to get a feeling for this and feel good about, have a feeling a good feeling about this about this impartiality have a good feeling about it but but maybe that good feeling won't be pleasure won't be comfortable or uncomfortable it might not be either one but it is not to this impartiality

[43:55]

which I have a good feeling about I feel good about but it isn't exactly comfortable or uncomfortable it's I feel good about not hating discomfort and being attached to comfort I feel really good about that but that's not exactly comfortable but it's also not excruciating it's just I feel right about it I feel like upright Well when you started the presentation there were circumstances where you might start with love and kindness and work towards equanimity later there were others it seemed where you might start with equanimity What I was saying is that in the traditional presentation of the four Brahma Viharas the four Brahma abodes in that presentation it's not the same order as what I'm presenting because I'm emphasizing compassion which leads to which is not so much

[44:57]

leading to equanimity but leading to the wish to become Buddha to somewhere different in the earlier teaching it was loving kindness and compassion leading to sympathetic joy and equanimity equanimity was like in a sense in the early teaching in that particular presentation it looks like equanimity was the highest state whereas in the Bodhisattva vehicle compassion is the highest state so it's a somewhat different understanding but similar elements and so now we're putting the equanimity first to help our compassion be better because compassion is the boss not equanimity but we need equanimity for the boss to be realized whereas in the early teaching equanimity was kind of the boss the equanimous was really and it's a little easier but you need compassion to be equanimous

[45:58]

now we say you need to be equanimous so it's prioritizing in this presentation prioritizing compassion which leads to Buddhahood rather than equanimity which leads to arhatship equanimity will lead to my personal freedom compassion will lead to the freedom of all beings so I don't know if everybody followed that, I appreciate you bringing this out because it showed that the earlier one has kind of the same elements but the priorities are changed from personal liberation in the first one to universal liberation in the second one so I appreciate I'd like to know if people followed that because I think it's a nice thing that Karen's question helped bring out the difference between the two systems and the priorities of kind of the similar elements

[47:01]

thank you very much welcome evening good evening oh it's Sonia hi it's Sonia let's see if I can get my hand down it's okay I can live with that hand I'm trying to enter this thing that you're bringing up called impartiality which I'm trying to turn this word because it seems a little bit intellectual and so I'm wondering about the embodiment of it, what that might look like and as I'm thinking about it or kind of feeling it it seems like it might be a return to this teaching you've given

[48:04]

about silence and stillness or creating a pause because if a bias for me, if a bias is turning up and it means I'm having some kind of activated response to something, I'm not actually and maybe it's not allowing me to remember to come from that which is most important what I'm vowing to do so I feel like maybe the impartiality is approached by creating this pause rather than immediately going into motion and it could get caught or sometimes I can get caught in the same way Justin did which it can look stopped and kind of cold rather than just kind of silence and stillness and then kind of from that coming out with a response. Yeah, good. I think

[49:04]

if you remember stillness and silence when something really uncomfortable comes or an enemy shows up, somebody shows up and says if you're wondering if I disrespect you, you're right, I really disrespect you and I am your enemy and I hate you and so when that shows up, it's good to remember stillness and watch to see if by any chance when somebody declares themselves to be your enemy and insult you and so on to pause and see, watch out for hatred coming up not to mention the reverse which some people get into of attaching to the person who's being mean to them yeah, so being still is really helpful at that point and then say oh, yeah I don't have to hate them they who are insulting me and threatening

[50:06]

me and disrespecting me, I don't have to there's a chance to be there with that when these hormones start moving and wow it's wonderful, I didn't hate them and so I yeah, so and then vice versa whoo, this is so comfortable, it's good to stop for a second there and say watch out for this, this is so comfortable let's be present here and see if we're trying to get more of it or attaching to it, yes yeah, I think in that pause I can remember if I'm trying to get something or get away something in that moment and then I have the possibility if I can remind myself of what it is I actually want to do as an offering yeah and so I want to be impartial towards this really comfortable situation because that will help me

[51:06]

move on to the more important practices but if I have a habit of being kind of sloppy with comfort and discomfort, that will bias me to what's coming up in later phases of this meditation so I want to work on this as a basis, this is kind of the basis for generating love I can see how I feel like the word impartial is kind of cold I can feel the difficulty with it but I feel like you're pointing to something like not moving or not getting too overly animated I can see that it's not a real warm word impartial and also bias isn't a real warm word right what's the heart of what we're trying to do the heart is we're trying to develop love and compassion and the heart of that is so that we can

[52:06]

help people so that's now we're just saying we need some basis some basic things we need at the beginning rather than later rather than be biased at the beginning and then go into practicing love and compassion in a biased way we will be unsuccessful it's kind of like putting on shoes before you walk on a rough surface it's not necessarily that warm and friendly thing to do but if you don't put your shoes on it may be difficult for you to walk on this surface and you you may get very biased if you don't have shoes on towards the surfaces you're walking on so yeah it's not it's a basis it's the foundation for these very warm not very warm for these warm gentle fondnesses and these wholehearted

[53:08]

loving kindness and compassion it's it's some basics to take on beforehand it's like equipment good evening good evening so so in a kind of a big picture i feel like i'm with the program that you're talking about the you know just today on the radio i heard a recording of martin luther king talking about something he's quite a few times talked about which was what is the what does it mean when jesus says love your enemies

[54:08]

and he had you know he handled that question very beautifully and i you're talking about that too and i'm aspiring with both of you however i'm going to raise a problem that i feel a question about how we really help people and about our skill in teaching and helping people and the example that i will give and some have given before i just have to say that sometimes there's been an occasion when somebody said because i raised an example of abuse somebody abusing somebody and sometimes somebody had thought well oh my goodness is linda being abused or does she see a kid next door who's no i'm not being abused i'm not thinking of a case of abuse that i need to do something about but i like this example when a person is really being hurt

[55:13]

you know like you see somebody who's your enemy because they they're hurting you i haven't found it skillful or helpful to suggest to them that they should try to be impartial and cultivate loving kindness toward the person that is hurting them and so i wonder whether this kind of teaching can be bad in cases like that i found it helpful both for myself and with other people that are suffering and being hurt to say just experience that hatred just like you often do you say befriend that feeling so that's my question it is it's it seems not skillful to me to

[56:14]

encourage a person who is actually suffering abuse to say well really you want to love that person so please tell me what you feel well could we start with me or and you yeah rather than somebody else okay so i'm i'm talking about training myself i'm not telling other people what to do however i'm telling people about a training which they could do i'm not talking to people who are right now being abused you might be there's 39 people on here right but nobody's telling me that they're being abused and if they did if they told me they're being abused so maybe maybe we could if you want to do that we can just say you can tell me right now that you're being abused okay so tell me you're being abused by someone is this a role play because i'm not being abused okay but if i'm being abused

[57:16]

yeah what i want to do yes i want to not hate the person that's abusing me i want to not hate them now if you tell me you hate some if you if you tell me you hate somebody yeah even somebody who's not abusing you like some people hate people who are being kind to other people instead of them so if we have a person who's telling me i'm hating then i would address their hate with compassion but if they're being if i'm being abused or attacked i wish to not hate my attacker that's what i want to do now if somebody tells me they're being attacked i might say to them do you do you what you want to do do you want to uh yeah i would ask them what they want to do what should we do here or i might say do you hate that and they might say i hate that person well then i would deal with the hate

[58:18]

but if they tell me this person's abusing them and they say i would like to relate to them without hating them that doesn't mean that i would say to that i would that that would encourage the person to continue to abuse them as a matter of fact i think that i have quite a few examples where somebody's being abused and they don't hate the person and that non-hate wakes the abuser up that's i want to not hate people who insult me as an act of compassion but i'm not so let's we can now we can go more deeply what do you what do you think yeah i i think that i also want to not hate anybody even if i perceive that they're hurting me i'm pretty old now i can understand that somewhat it's just that i don't want anybody to feel that they should love their

[59:20]

abuser because that's i don't want anybody to get the impression that that's the wisdom of the buddha that that's all i worry about that okay so now we have a situation where somebody's being like i'm being abused the person hates me they tell me they hate me you know and i you're being abused and do you but i see they and i and i want to i want to not hate them that's what i'm telling that's what i want to do based based on that then then the next step for me in my training in that is not if i've succeeded in not hating them if i hate them i got i just got to keep working on that because i'm i'm i'm i don't have my feet on the ground yet if i'm hating them hating hating people you know does not help me if somebody's

[60:21]

abusing me for me hating does not help me take care of myself in their abuse doesn't help me i'm with you actually i am completely in accord with what you're teaching and and and i just worry about prematurely or about hastily or anything you know insensitively and i think you would handle that correctly if you met the person you've told me that just now i i i think i think you understand what i'm saying i don't really have any more to say well you are contemplating a situation where you see potential great suffering yes and you're concerned about that yes and that that is not telling people what to do or anything that is something that you

[61:22]

that you really want to free those beings from that suffering correct and in order for you to do that you have to do this work of not hating people who are being cruel to you that will enable you to give these people that are talking about the compassion that they need and that compassion may lead them that and that compassion will protect them and that may lead them to enter the training program the first step will be their compassion for their hatred for their own suffering that you will feel that you feel that for them yeah and they will feel that from you yeah and then you can lead them back through the process of training once they have been touched by you yes touch touch start you don't start by by putting them through the training program you start

[62:22]

by giving them compassion right now in their situation exactly and that that really that encourages them and then they want to know well how do you learn how to do this and then you take them through okay okay yeah and there's no compassion is not rushing you to stop worrying about these people we want you to keep worrying about them so thank you for worrying about them and worrying about anybody misleading them or you know confusing them thank you I'm laughing because somebody showed me this video of this yoga teacher and her

[63:23]

dog and the dog was doing the yoga postures that she was doing it was it's wonderful yes hi rib and hi assembly hi uh impartiality is a very important topic right now in this extremely polarized world painfully polarized and maybe i'll respond to your last conversation i was as i was listening to you using the word cultivate maybe that's where some difficulties might come up for some people because in a way from my observation it's not so much that

[64:25]

we can cultivate something like that we find it that it's there already compassion is there already we don't cultivate it it's there we just need to discover it because it's hidden behind those beings that you call i like that expression being of fear anger or prejudice or whatever and once we find give them attention loving attention and love and compassion is really fully full undivided attention then they they go something happens to them i don't know what happens but they disappear and then what i discovered myself that that's all there is is compassion and understanding for for things that are around me and the reason i

[65:26]

started with the polarizing of this world right now because i must confess this is my work right now is to find impartiality in my attitude in my viewing of the world divided by covered politics by vaccination politics and many other things that are being i i'm afraid to use different words because i see how different words will be guide one in certain attitudes already so very important not to go to into too much detail but as i was struggling with as i was listening to opposing views people with different very extremely different polarized views i was noticing that i have been

[66:27]

leaning even though i wanted to be impartial there was a tendency to see this as right and this is wrong and in that i recognized my own maybe it's from my childhood or maybe we all have it it's hard to explain but i recognize that there was this feeling of pain and grief that i'm meeting people who are asleep and in wrong views and stuck in their ideas and unable to meet the reality with more openness and it was giving me humongous amount of grief and sorrow and anger and all kinds of stuff and i was struggling with that and until i kind of recognize that

[67:31]

struggle i was i was suffering quite a bit and then when you presented reminded me of bahia's story and how he received the teaching from the buddha it created an incredible space because i recognize that i don't have to put myself into everything around me all i need to do is witness it and somebody said in our conversation today that impartial seems cold and that's what frightened me at first like oh my goodness this is so cold this is so scary to view the world without emotions which are what i think is not without emotion it's without hatred and attachment right but if there's still

[68:31]

emotion it's the it's the emotion of impartiality right but it's not you know it doesn't make very good movies that's right no drama right and actually if it is it's like a love story because when i finally experience that end of drama yeah and it was terrifying at first like oh my god that means nothing to get excited about oh my god it's god yeah and it's like how do i live my life without this hate and attachment like oh my goodness this is almost hard to face and then it's like oh my goodness it's so good to discover it so so then at some i started to have courage to just face the most frightening polarized sides you know

[69:32]

people who are so into science and people who are so against science you know so into covid so into vaccines and those who are so against and i just started to just face it and be with it and then suddenly i stopped being irritated by people's attitudes and i totally started to see how we are all miserable beings so afraid and so struggling and so suffering and so i discovered that deep compassion after i entered a very quite a long tunnel of struggles dark tunnel of facing dread and isolation non-belonging and so when last week we were talking about racism i thought i was going to raise up the issue oh no

[70:33]

somebody else some other talk you know how painful it is to feel disconnected with people from people around us how terribly painful it is so and i went through that and it was extremely unpleasant but it once i faced those beings they they're gone and it's different so but i'm it's still so much work to do to root myself into that kind of a way of relating right it takes a while thank you again reps i have no

[71:35]

one else had their hand up so i just wanted to ask you one question about something just said which is whether we're supposed to be whether you're telling us to be impartial toward the views people express which i think i heard boss just say which way she understood it versus being impartial toward to the person who's expressing it because i don't think you're saying that all views are equal are you or that some views aren't no i'm just saying i'm just saying when someone expresses a view which you really disagree with you you don't agree with it or you even think it's a terrible view and harmful view it's a view of your enemies i'm just saying how about noticing that you can look at that without hating the hating the view or the person just i completely disagree rather than i hate it and i hate the person who said it and similarly

[72:36]

when you have an idea that you really feel good about how about having that idea without attaching to it and the people who are who have really great ideas how about you appreciating them without attaching to them that's what i'm talking about that will help us be devoted to whatever it is and to liberate this to liberate this to liberate the enemy and to liberate the friend not to get rid of enemies and friends or stupid ideas and good ideas you know of course it's not good for people to be our enemy but we do we we if we hate them that's gonna that's gonna derail us in our work it doesn't it's it can be we can let go of the hate and let go of the attachment and then we can work on discovering who this person really is

[73:38]

but we're not gonna we're gonna have trouble discovering who the person is or the idea is if we hate it or attached to it that's helpful thank you so it's if someone is expressing racist views it's not wrong to hate the view or see the view as wrong but the point is not to hate the hater the person is expressing that view yeah i wouldn't even call it wrong i just call it cruel and terrible it's just terrible it's beyond wrong i mean plus two is 19 doesn't really hurt anybody it's usually right and we don't use that to control people and exploit them but we use racism to hold up a system of unhealthy relationships and it's very very sad and very very painful and it just horrible we need to but we need to study it and awaken to how to protect beings from this

[74:39]

situation and if we hate it it's going to make us a little bit off one way or another in addressing the problem so we'll be able to address the problem better if we don't hate it i'm totally dedicated to freeing people from this cruelty and hating it doesn't facilitate my work and it makes it harder for me to see what the true path would be and same with attaching to the good way and i still might think this is a good way and i might work for it to realize it but attaching to it will interfere with it so hating the bad way you know kind of aids it and attaching to the good way kind of undermines it thank you that's very helpful you're welcome are there no more

[75:41]

offerings from the great assembly tonight such things do happen i guess yes yes all right well i thought i'd come back again too i um one thought i was having as i'm listening to you talk more about equanimity is that equanimity is kind of what protects us from sentimental compassion it yeah and so yeah so now i see i see that equanimity supports us to examine sentimental compassion more effectively and see its drawbacks and develop another kind of compassion which frees us from sentimental compassion well if there's no more

[76:46]

questions i guess i will say i hope just i pray that we meet again someday on the bonnie bonnie path to luck lowman you take the high road and i'll take the low road may our intention equally extend to every being and place with the true merit of buddha's way beings are numberless i vow to save them afflictions are inexhaustible i vow to cut through dominates are boundless i vow to enter them buddha way is unsurpassable i vow to become it happy trails to you until we meet again happy trails to you keep smiling until then happy trails

[77:47]

till we meet again again good night good night thank you everybody everyone everybody

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