Our subject for today, compassion, is about one of the most wonderfully rich phenomena available to human kind. Or, rather, it is one of the most powerfully life-giving dynamics that make up authentic humanness---because compassion is not a commodity available to us, but rather a way of consciousness that is organic and fundamental to the very structure of our humanness. The further we are from living compassionately, the further we are from our very humanity.

There are two paths today that I want to follow as we explore how we might cultivate the gift that compassion offers for our lives, if we are willing to follow its blessed call to our hearts that leads us into loving action---for that is the home of compassion, our hearts, and that is where it inevitably leads us, into action. First we need to, explore what compassion is---we need some understanding of how it actually manifests in us and in the world. Second, after we've established what it is, we can look at how to cultivate it.

So what is compassion (a good Unitarian Universalist approach, donıt you think?)? Well, first there is a very practical understanding, tendered by none other than the Dalai Lama of Tibet. Secondly, there are deeper implications, more hidden demands, as well as gifts, that compassion confers upon and within us.

We must begin, however, by recognizing that compassion always has to do with the perception---at the heart level---of dissonance, pain, discord, a mismatch of desire and reality, a break in relationship; and it always involves us in bearing witness to reality, that is, witnessing from our hearts, witnessing as we stand simply, in our utter humanity---not trying to make life be something other than it is---willing, at long last, to receive life AS IT IS. Adrienne Rich, feminist poet, has some lines that speak about the further edge of compassion and bearing witness:

My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed

I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,

with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.

Nothing extraordinary about compassion, except its will to return us to the world, to life---that is, to recover, revive and reclaim our relationship to life.

Nothing extraordinary about compassion, except that it calls us to bear witness to everything in life, everything. Nothing is to be left out, nothing is to be left behind, nothing can be dismissed, or run from.

Nothing extraordinary about compassion, except that without it we must live either as victims, or as zombie-like automatons---at some level in our beings---no matter how well adjusted and successful in the world we may appear to others.

But closer in, at its less radical edge, we also know compassion when we feel the simple urge to kindness, how our heart is moved when we see someone struggling, someone facing loss. A simple, quick, pulse of the heart, a quick flash of recognition of pain . . . and we respond without thought.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. I want to establish a straight and simple definition as a floor for our exploration. So letıs hear from the Dalai Lama about his definition of compassion. It is practical, simple, and may surprise you, if you think of the Dalai Lama as some New Age guru type. I quote from a new book called, Destructive Emotions: How Can We Overcome Them?, narrated by Daniel Goleman, who also wrote Emotional Intelligence. Destructive Emotions is a collection of episodes narrated by Goleman consisting of actual dialogues between Buddhist scholars and western psychologists, neuroscientists and philosophers who met at the behest of Tenzin Gyatso the fourteenth Dalai Lama. Here are the Dalai Lama's words:

We must keep on coming back to this question of what is really disrupting your well-being. If you recognize that it's your own mental afflictions that are the problem, then you can see for yourself why you might want to pursue an antidote and do so with perseverance.

Coming back to the issue of compassion, you can often get the impression that the cultivation of compassion and lovingkindness is something that we do for others, an offering we make to the world. But thatıs really a very superficial way to see it. I feel from my own experience that when I practice compassion there is an immediate direct benefit to myself, not for others. By practicing compassion, I get one hundred percent benefit, while the benefit to others may be fifty percent. So the main motivation for the practice of compassion is self-interest.

Goleman then offers, "The Dalai Lama noted that in Buddhist scriptures, a Bodhisattva, who reaches a high level of spiritual attainment through practices focused on compassion, has great happiness and well-being because of cherishing others more than oneself and developing extraordinary degrees of compassion and lovingkindness." He goes then on quoting the Dalai Lama:

From my own small experience, I find that as soon as some kind of sense of caring or concern increases in my heart, this brings me more inner strength. The result: I feel less fear, more happiness.

At the first level, then, compassion is nothing more than self interest. But it is a very particular path of self interest, because if I act in ways that will truly support what is good for me---I am invariably led to act for the benefit of others. I am reminded here of words of Protestant theologian Frederick Buechner:

"The place where God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."

"The place where Life calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."

In other words, self interest, which according to the Dalai Lama is where compassion starts, creates a loop between our own needs and the needs of others. The loop of compassion extends through certain moments of experience that involve touching into real pain, suffering, joy, insight and personal need. What this touching brings us is a growing capability of the mind for spaciousness, of the heart for melting and of the will for loving action. It's very important to note, too, that when the Dalai Lama speaks of self interest, he is not talking about selfishness. He is talking about something quite different. He is talking about what truly feeds our deepest needs as human persons. He is talking about what strengthens our capacity to act lovingly and with less fear. He is talking about a deep sense of well-being that is unadulterated by guilt, drivenness, worry, ego-inflation, self-conceit or fear of loss.

I want to share a story with you, one that lists, perhaps, on the sentimental side . . . yet sometimes, during this time of speaking from a deeper level of seeing into life, from a deeper level of discourse---grounded in as direct an expression of truth as I can muster---sometimes the heart pushes me. The heart pushes me to reach down and in, and then to bring it up and let it flow out. Sometimes what this time of speaking truth to you, this whole service time, in fact, is . . . is a risk of the heart and a risk of the unintimidated mind.

So . . . this is the story:

A frail and quite elderly man went to live with his son, daughter-in-law, and four-year-old grandson. The years had worked their wear upon him and the old man's hands frequently trembled, his eyesight was blurred, and his step faltered.

The family, in a gesture of togetherness, ate their meals at a common table. The elderly grandfather's shaky hands, poor muscle control and failing sight, however, made eating difficult. Peas rolled off his spoon onto the floor. He often ate with his mouth open. When he grasped his glass, milk spilled on the tablecloth. Over time, the son and daughter-in-law became irritated with the mess he made at each meal.

"We have to do something about Grandfather," the son said. "I've had enough of his spilled milk, noisy eating, and food spread all over the floor."

So the husband and wife set up a small table in the corner. There Grandfather ate alone while the rest of the family enjoyed dinner. Since in his frailty he had broken a dish or two, they began to serve his food in a single wooden bowl.

When the family glanced in Grandfather's direction, sometimes there were tears welling up in his eyes as he sat alone at his little table. Still, the only words the couple had for him were sharp admonitions when he dropped a fork or spilled food.

Now the four-year-old watched all of this in silence. One evening before supper, the father noticed his son playing with wood scraps on the floor. He asked the child sweetly, "What are you making, my son?" Just as sweetly, the boy responded, "Oh, I am making a little bowl for you and Mama to eat your food in when I grow up." The four-year-old smiled and went back to work.

The words so struck the parents that they were speechless. Then, in a great release, tears started to stream down both their cheeks. Though no word was spoken, they both knew what had to be done. That evening the husband took Grandfather's hand and gently led him back to the family table. For the remainder of his days he ate every meal with the family . . . and, for some reason, neither husband nor wife seemed to care when a fork was dropped, milk was spilled, or the tablecloth soiled.

What I am first interested in is not the response of the parents, though that is such a simple, yet powerful, testament to the melting heart. What I am first interested in is the child, the son, so attentive, so focused, so receptive.

In his childıs innocence and his child's perceptive acuity, that leads from the sensitivity of the heart and the emotions, he misses nothing. He feels his parents' loveless and fierce separation from his grandfather. He notices their hardened attitude just as he notices his grandfather's shrinking and woundedness. And, too, we can be assured, at some very deep level, he feels his own need for survival---and he follows its dictates so that he mimicks his parents' acts. His own primal self interest leads him to incorporate this world of loveless separation into a strategy for living and for relationships. He is not mocking his parents, he is becoming them.

What his parents are wise enough to be open to, finally, is the narrowness of what they have created, of the restrictive world their son is incorporating into his being. That is what we need in order to cultivate compassion for ourselves so that the worlds we choose to live in are not narrowly and coldly furnished with isolated tables and wooden bowls meant to maintain a rigid order that stultifies the warmth and messiness of the human spirit and human relationships.

What we need is openness. Not just the ability to receive experience without being judgmental, but in fact without judgment at all (what in Zen Buddhism is often called, "Not Knowing"). What we need is to experience an internal expansion of our feelings and our thoughts---which absolutely and unequivocally means openning to suffering. An expansion that relieves the pressure in our hearts when we are caught in judgment; an expansion that relieves the narrowness in our thinking when we are sure we have the answer---especially about something for which there are several, many, or no definitive answers; an expansion that allows us to face pain as an irreducible and absolutely unavoidable part of life.

To cultivate compassion means allowing our natural sensitivity to open a place of welcome inside our selves---with a sense of inner fluidity, a sense of warmth, a sense of light receptivity. We need to learn to pay attention to ourselves, not arguming, not judging, not anxiously comparing, competing or obsessing---but openly attending and acknowledging what is actually going on: "Ah, I am calling myself stupid!" "Oh, I am scurrying around in my mind to escape the fear that is pressing." "So, I am intolerant of them, because they disagreed with me." Looking at that, without saying, "Well, that's stupid, calling myself stupid like that!" Looking at that difficulty and inner violence with an open noticing---and when we do, then the most curious thing happens: our heart opens, or melts, or both. And then, as Roshi Glassman says, we bear witness; we bear witness from what is deeper in us, deeper than the cacophony of tangled and difficult words that monopolize our minds, truncate our openness, and blind our capacity to listen deeply.

Yet, of course, sometimes words can help. Sometimes it is words that do encourage openness, words that name the situation very differently than how we've been labeling it. For instance, ceasing, to label a certain situation a "problem" when our capacity for response, opens up so much more by calling it a "challenge," or even more prosaically, an "opportunity."

But there is something else besides learning to notice our own interior feelings, thoughts, reactions that is necessary to develop compassion: . . . time. We need to devote sufficient time each week, preferably each day, for attending to what's going on in here (head), and here (heart). There just doesn't seem to be any way around it. But that's very difficult in our hectic, busy, overburdened lives. Very difficult indeed. So let us take some extra time right now, in this precious space that this Sunday Service has so generously afforded us. Let us sit just for a few moments, being present to ourselves.

"What's up?" you might ask, and then sit without trying to analyze it. "How are you?" you might ask without recoiling from whatever answer comes. "What do you need?" you might ask, and then let a feeling of what that might really be appear, a feeling that's slow in arising, or that comes in an immediate flash image. "Where is there pain?" you might ask, and truly want to know. The bell will invite us into silence. And then it will welcome us to return from it.

Ring Bell 2 Xs

We've taken this time, because we need it. We've taken this time because you deserve it. We've taken this time because we are far more complex than we usually admit or can ever understand---and we need time to let that complexity unwind. We've taken this time, because that's one of the most important things this time on Sunday is about: Breathing together. Breathing fully and deeply. Sitting without anything to do, but to be present. Sitting with the intention of being touched down inside, the place we have to spend so much time guarding and protecting. Sitting here, among friends and lovers. Sitting here . . . together.

Ashé-Amen-Ameen. Shalom. Blessed Be.
Gracias y Namasté.

What is your reaction to this sermon? Please send comments to Reverend Kurt Kuhwald