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Compassion

Introduction

Kevin: I know my dear friend Kevin is going to join in a moment... Ah, thank you, Jozen. I'd like to just say a few words to introduce Jozen to everybody.

Good morning. Jozen Tamori Gibson began formal meditation practice in 2004 through Soto Zen while living in Japan, joined by a Theravada practice in 2010. Jozen is a participant in the 2017-2021 Insight Meditation Society Dharma Teacher Training Program and also serves on the New York Insight Meditation Center's Teacher Council with certifications and embodiment studies in yoga, qigong, indigenous focusing-oriented therapy, and complex trauma. Jozen lives to provide and nourish contemplative mind-heart-body alignment practices and spaces rooted in wellness, anti-oppression, and interdependent liberation for all beings. Jozen honors the wisdom and compassion of all teachers, highlighting their mother Kimi and Dharma root teacher Pamela Weiss. Thank you for joining us, Jozen.

Compassion

Jozen Tamori Gibson: Thank you for your guidance and support, Kevin. It's deeply, deeply appreciated.

So again, this is a compassion practice. If you're familiar with practicing in a meditation center, a meditation hall, or a zendo, some places you may see a Buddha on one side of the meditation hall. Directly across, you may see Kuan Yin, the embodiment of compassion. In Zen centers, in front of the Buddha is Manjushri, being the bodhisattva of wisdom. These embodiments of wisdom and compassion are reminders. This metaphor of wisdom and compassion being the wings of a bird of our practice—in order to fly and to move with some ease, wisdom and compassion move together. They flow together.

When we understand that wisdom is arising but not much compassion, there's some difficulty in how we are engaging in the world. Or if there's an abundance of compassion but not so much wisdom—not so much insight or awareness—some other things are happening in our world. Between them is mindfulness, the awareness. How aware can we be of what is honoring our wisdom and distracting our compassion, or what may be nourishing our compassion and disconnecting us from wisdom?

In the Buddha Dharma practice, the Buddha taught—as I also believe—that we are all innately embodying these levels of wisdom and compassion, karuṇā^[1]. But we have been taught in many ways that we need to focus on the headspace, the mind. Not the wisdom of the heart, not the wisdom of the body.

Gil Fronsdal^[2] beautifully reminded us this past week that what is most fundamental in our life is love. Since that is most fundamental, may that be where we inquire: What is our relationship with love? We may begin by understanding how we define love for ourselves, or even how love was defined for us. Coming into relationship for ourselves with these terms and this innate being, this innate felt sense that may not even have words. Within that understanding, Gil also reminded us that what is most fundamental is love, and everything else is support for love. And if it's not the support, it is the recipient of love.

In this short offering, I'd like to focus on the recipient piece. This is an external understanding from an internal place. What if we understood the embodiment, the expression of compassion, the recipients of being everything? What if this form in front of you that my mama named Jozen—what if this form is compassion? Whatever your form is, is compassion. Within the Buddha Dharma, this also means that there's wisdom present within the Brahma-viharas^[3]. These heavenly abodes, these dwelling places of these attitudes of the heart, mind, and body. Compassion, karuṇā (k-a-r-u-n-a). Karuṇā is when love meets the suffering of the world, when it meets some external suffering and internal suffering.

So there's compassion that is being. Then our conditioning comes in, somehow, some way. You know, at the top of this pandemic—the top of it for us here in this unceded Lenape territory in Northern New Jersey and New York, around March of 2020—we became the so-called epicenter of COVID-19 for the United States. So many in our community started calling COVID-19 "the 'Rona," especially within our Dharma circles, because we understood 'Rona as a teacher. We understood that there's something to be learned here. How do we receive the lesson compassionately? How do we receive the lesson in the midst of everything else that had been going on in our world, in our lifetimes, for centuries, for millennia?

This is what the Buddha saw during his time. These are elements of what the Buddha taught during his time, and the ask of his disciples is to bring it into our contemporary modern-day times, compassionately with wisdom. Rooted in classical teachings, the wisdom of the classical teaching is compassionately meeting this day and age. Evolving the way in which we meet one another through language: the language of the heart, the language of the body, the disconnect of the minds.

This practice is how we can bear witness through suffering. How we learn to accept what is happening without condoning the causes and conditions that brought it forth. Accepting and condoning are very different. This practice is not easy, though it is simple. We as human beings just find ways to make it challenging, to make it difficult. Can we learn to be compassionate with each other? We have to learn to be compassionate with ourselves first and foremost.

I want to read you a quote. This is from Thanissaro Bhikkhu^[4], and this is a piece on educating compassion. It's a very beautiful piece; it goes very deep and wide and spaciously into how we educate ourselves to be more compassionate. This is just a small quote from a larger section, where Thanissaro Bhikkhu says:

"It's a well-known principle in all meditation traditions that a moment's insight into the pain of the present is far more beneficial than viewing the present moment with disgust and placing one's hopes on a better future."

And so this reminds us of the Pali word—Pali being the language of the written texts of the Buddha Dharma. The word for mindfulness is sati^[5]. Many of you are familiar with this; many of you have heard it translated as mindfulness. I feel it is very important for us to remember a key definition of sati is "to remember." We're all going to have our unique doorways and entryways into what we remember and how we remember our conditioning.

What this practice is asking us to do is to be in awareness of our conditioning. To study and investigate mindfully through the body, through the heart wisdom of our conditioning. To decondition ourselves, to decolonize the ways that we have been taught to be in this world. This world that centers division, that may not be your unique world, that may not be your embodiment. Yet we are living in a world that very much feeds that, nourishes it, supports it, and funds it. So accepting that, not condoning.

One of my favorites—this is not a comparison, it's not a hierarchy, but a favorite in terms of how it resonates with my body—there is this group called The Nap Ministry. You can find them online on social media websites. A beautiful group that directly centers a form of compassion that is rest, and learning how to rest. It goes against the stream. Against the stream is the way that the Buddha taught this practice. This is going against the stream of dominant culture, the dominant culture that says we need to "do, do, do, do, do." That's a lot of "do's." That says no, there's no need to be, let's not focus on being. The culture says the body and the mind will follow the body, and the heart will follow the mind; wherever the mind goes, the heart and the body will go. That's just not true. If our bodies break down, the heart breaks, our mind fights itself. Can we learn how to be in this deep, compassionate relationship with our bodies, knowing our capacity levels for any given moment?

Many of us are engaged in the world. For some, during this pandemic, we have learned from folks who have been deeply engaged in the world for generations, right? We call them frontline workers. Do we understand the ways in which we need to be in relationship with our capacity in this moment to be of support for other people, other beings, all beings as best as we're able?

So there's this grand wish that we practice on behalf of all sentient beings—billions and millions of beings. But yet, in our smaller pockets of the world, like Jozen's world for example, on any given day I may only be able to be in connection with five people. Like an actual direct one-on-one connection. I'm not talking about online where millions of people can connect; I'm talking about how we connect one-on-one, two-on-two, or in small groups. Be mindful of how much energy it takes to engage. We need to eat, we need to rest, we need warmth, and we need shelter. We need water. (This thought reminded me to take a sip of this precious element here.) Being in gratitude with all of these forms, not taking them for granted. Allowing ourselves as well to rest, to sleep as a necessity.

Some people say, "Well, when I meditate I fall asleep and I don't want to do that." What if we shifted our attitude and our perspective on that? Sometimes when we sit to meditate and we start to fall asleep, yes, we may understand sleepiness as a hindrance, something that we don't want. But what if it's something that we actually need in that moment? What if that meditation was soothing enough that it allowed us to be who we needed to be in that moment, and that's to sleep? And then it could be the intention at another time, if we want to feel into the intricacies and the wisdom that sleep provides the body, then we can have a little bit more intention and bring some more energy into that intimacy with sleeping as we are meditating. And sometimes when we're sleeping, we bring that inquiry forward: "Oh, let's get curious about this. Let's get curious about this felt sense of sleepiness." That in itself can bring some energy, but we want to be mindful of how we do that. That level of energy that comes forward can be a way of striving. It can be a subtle way of wanting to do more, wanting to overcome sleepiness. No, we're not interested in overcoming anything. We're interested in being with, and allowing that to be our guide through understanding. Again, accepting as it is, not condoning. Compassion. Karuṇā.

This is how we begin to remember in the moments, or come into relationship with understanding the heart and body as wisdom. Just as we understand sleepiness as wisdom, as compassion, as a place of awareness.

Before I close here, I just want to say something about compassion fatigue. There's been a lot of conversation, investigation, and re-investigation into what compassion fatigue may be for folks. I am of the deep belief—through my own practice and what I've seen in my teachers and my elders, and even the youth who have been beautiful guides for me over the years—that compassion itself does not fatigue. The same way we understand wisdom itself does not fatigue, awareness and mindfulness do not have a finite limit. These are very deep, old wisdom energies, ancient ancestral energies. We would be so lucky to get to a point where we could actually view the fatigue of compassion. I don't believe that to be possible.

So what is actually happening is the mind may be fatiguing. The mind may be bumping up against something. The heart may be bumping up against something. I can go into a million different stories of how we may be othering, pushing away, this separation piece. What actually may be happening is within this realm of what some of us are calling near and far enemies. I like to refer to them as imposters, because they're impersonating our innate selves in these ways.

For example, a far imposter—something that we are very familiar with, it doesn't need much investigation or inquiry—is what we may call cruelty or hatred. In our own lives, we have very familiar relationships with it, or we know other folks and we are able to see it very clearly. When we need to be a resource in that way, when we need to honk the horn to come in the middle and be a compassionate wisdom resource, that type of reactivity is something we have some familiarity with. That's more reactive. What we're looking for is more of an appropriate response.

The near imposter takes a little bit more investigation and curiosity. We name this "pity." It's this energy when we are looking down at someone, or separating someone from our experience. We're not connected; we don't understand that we're interconnected in this life. We pity that being or that situation: "Well, I'm glad that's not me." There are ways in which this shows up and it can masquerade as compassion. In many of the ways in which we donate to charity, we feel as if our money can do our talking for us. In many cases, it is a representation of how we can extend our reach to places, but if the intention in how we're giving is, "Oh, look at those poor people, I kind of pity them, I'm glad that's not me, here's some money"—that's not compassion. We're talking about true interconnected compassion, honoring everything, all things. The foundation of everything is love.

So I'm going to compassionately close here, reminding us again of Gil's words. I'll pause for a moment to see if anyone else remembers those words. Okay, we're talking about the fundamentals of love, the foundations of love. Gil says: "What is most fundamental is love, and everything else is support to love or is the recipient for love." And so this week, we're practicing recipient's compassion. Self-compassion. Understanding our capacities to be with what is in the moment, accepting, not condoning. Nourishing our bodies, eating, being warm, sheltered, resting appropriately to be of service as best we are able in the world, for others, on behalf of others.

So that's all for my Vipassana practice. Thank you for your practice, thank you for showing up here as best as you're able. Thank you for allowing me to enter into your space. Thank you.

Q&A and Reflections

I'll scan the chats for a little bit just to see what questions are coming up. We'll do this for maybe five or ten minutes.

I saw a question about the Nap organization. I can't put it in the chat, but just look up The Nap Ministry. If you're on Facebook or Instagram, they'll pop up beautifully. You cannot miss them, they're very, very powerful.

Gratitude for the lovely raindrops in Northern California, yes. Right in the way that the rain, that element of water that we talked about a little bit earlier, just noticing the elements from an external perspective, but really from this internal perspective. When you notice even a fire element—the fire element that allows warmth and coolness to be known. We can even look to nature in this way. I know it's hard reconciling this with what's been happening with the wildfires, right? But may we learn from nature in these patterns as we rebuild, as we honor and mourn what we have lost. There's wisdom in these elements. For quite some time, nature herself has used fire to undo and rebuild, to nourish the soil so that new growth can come up. So how are we learning from nature in that way? The rain was falling here earlier this week, it took a while for us to get that level of rain, and we recently got our first snowfall here as well. These rain elements, it's absolutely beautiful.

Sorry to anyone if the audio quality was low for you. I don't know if that's my connection or could be my voice. You may want to turn it up on your end or revisit this recording and turn it up on your end and see if that's helpful.

I got a message from Kevin about repeating the reading. I think it may be what I shared from Thanissaro Bhikkhu. I'll repeat that here. It's from Educating Compassion:

"It's a well-known principle in all meditation traditions that a moment's insight into the pain of the present is far more beneficial than viewing the present moment with disgust and placing one's hopes on a better future."

B-h-i-k-k-h-u, from Educating Compassion. And so I'm gonna stop here right now.

This is an embodiment practice. Being careful as we engage with these questions and these reflections of how we start to come up into this headspace, this cognitive space, and try to figure it out. This is not something that we're trying to figure out, it is something that we're practicing to be with, and then to understand. From that place, allow yourself to go in and be it. Investigate it for yourself, these elements, especially as Gil continues to guide us this week through his perspective on compassion.

So again, deep gratitude to each of you. I do hope to be at Insight Retreat Center sometime when we can be together in person. Definitely at IMC; I was supposed to be at IMC last year, something personal came up, but I'll make sure to be there in person at some point as well.

Thank you all for your practice. Be well to each other, be well to yourself.