Sympathy? Compassion? Wisdom?

*transcript generated by AI

All right.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Glad you were able to make it today.

Yes, me too.

And thank you to all of you who come pretty much all the time.

It’s fun to have a solid crew to do this practice with because that really enlightens it, you know.

On the one hand, Zen is a very individual path, because no one can do it for us, just like no one can drink our tea for us, no one can sit in Zazen for us.

But there’s something that happens when we practice in community.

It just gives a little extra strength and vibrance to this individual path that we’re on.

So, normally this time I do like, I don’t know, like a seven to 10-ish minute kind of like teaching or exposition of some aspect of what we do here in Zen and what it all means.

But today it feels like it’d be, I’d like to just make it a general Q&A session.

Obviously, you get first dibs.

If you have any questions about anything that was going on or what we’re doing or meditation or something like that, I’d like to invite you to go ahead and ask them.

We can do that.

Put me on the spot.

Not on purpose.

If you have something, go ahead.

If not, we can open it up to everyone.

I would just like to listen and hear what other thoughts are and just get a better understanding of this morning.

Okay.

Great.

I’ll just listen to all of you.

Well, if anything comes up specifically, feel free to jump in.

I will.

So, for those of you who have been doing this for a while, would any of you like to share what you know about what we’re doing this morning?

Or ask me a question that would help you understand what we’re doing this morning that will, by extension, help understand what we’re doing this morning?

Oh, nobody knows.

Not knowing is one thing.

Not talking is the other.

There it is.

It’s interesting, usually.

Oh, Robin has also opened her mic.

It’s interesting because usually I love to talk a lot.

Currently, we did Zen practice as you offering it at Open Door Zen.

I always appreciate when someone new is coming because then you give some little pointers.

So, for example, the way you explain the meditation practice or the precursor, like our morning service, what is this about?

Why are we doing this before we sit?

Why do we walk between the morning service and the sitting?

Why do we do the Qigong practice?

Why is it important to be with others in Sangha or on this individual path?

So, it’s so important to listen carefully.

Just be open to what is said.

Beautifully said, Zenshen.

I’m not sure it will be very helpful for explaining what we’re doing here, but a question that’s been rattling around in my mind is I would like to hear you explain from your perspective the difference between sympathy and compassion.

All right.

All right.

That’s a juicy one.

So, just for a little bit of context, one of the things that makes…

So, there’s multiple branches of Buddhism, and one of the things that makes our branch of Buddhism or is really central to our branch of practice is this idea of compassion.

And, you know, exploring what does compassion really mean to us is kind of essential to understanding what is our spiritual practice.

And there are other branches of Buddhism.

Every branch will have some teaching on compassion in it, right?

But for us, it’s like the whole reason.

But everything that we do is kind of built on this idea of compassion, which is the twin, you know, that’s the other wing to wisdom.

And we say that you need both wings to fly, wisdom and compassion.

And in our Western context, compassion is often just that it just has a lot of means, you know.

And so I would imagine that this question comes from that and the nuance between sympathy and compassion is kind of exploring what is Zen compassion compared to the way that we typically think compassion looks like?

Or what is Zen compassion compared to just simply being sympathetic for somebody?

Right?

Am I on the right track?

So if I start talking about that, I won’t just go so far into the weeds that you’re like, that was not my question.

So.

Compassion in our context is when we step into a moment of interrelating of being with other pieces of existence, full of the knowledge that we’re not separate.

So compassion literally means to suffer with.

And so it’s like, can I be with, for example, can I be with the door when I close it?

And this is a great way to practice.

If I’m truly with the door when I close it, I won’t really want to slam it.

Because like that sends an unnecessary shock through the door.

And is the door alive and doesn’t have feelings?

Who cares?

That’s not the point.

The point is, can I use that as an opportunity to recognize my oneness with the door and to really treat it with the respect of being another aspect of creation?

That is part of my world.

And I’m part of its world.

So compassion is really just stepping into a moment, fully aware that there is no separation between anything.

Which is at the very core of our, our tradition.

Now, sympathy is really interesting because sympathy is an emotive faculty.

Sympathy is when I, as an individual being, look at you and your experience and can feel a sense of.

I get what that feels like.

Right.

So inherent in sympathy is the idea that I’m having my experience and you’re having your experience.

And to be sympathetic to you, I have to open up to what your experience might be like.

And relate to relate that to experiences that I’ve had in my life so that I can be like, wow.

Oh man, that’s tough.

But that I’m not actually having a tough moment, other than the toughness that I experienced through your emotive.

Right.

And we can also have sympathetic joy.

If somebody is really happy because something good happened, we can be in sympathy with them.

We can start to vibrate at the same frequency as them, like sympathy, sympathetic vibrations.

And this is, again, the idea that we are picking up the experience of something else.

But we are fundamentally separate from that experience.

OK, so sympathy has a little bit more detachment to it than compassion.

We can be very sympathetic and feel absolutely no need to take action, for example.

Right.

Or our sympathy can motivate us to take action.

But compassion will always motivate us to take care of what’s happening.

Now, the interesting thing about compassion motivating us to take care of something is that we aren’t motivated to take care of something because it will help us feel better.

Which is a lot of times what sympathy engenders.

So if we go to a funeral and we see somebody grieving and we feel grieving in ourselves and we’re sympathetic, we’re really paying attention.

A lot of times our effort to console them is really an effort to console ourselves.

If you’re grieving less than all grieve less and I would like to grieve less.

So I’m going to say nice things to you so that you’re not grieving so much in front of me.

There can be a lot of selfishness and sympathy, sympathetic resonance and what we do when we’re motivated by sympathy.

Compassion, on the other hand, would allow for grieving.

In whatever way grieving needs to happen, the compassionate person is the one who just sits there silently and allows you to weep.

And it’s comfortable with that own discomfort in themselves because compassion shows them that this is the time for you to do that.

And it’s not about whether or not that makes me feel uncomfortable.

It’s about this is the appropriate energy flowing through you in the appropriate time and in the appropriate way.

And if I get in the way of that, if I interrupt that, I’m not really helping you.

So that’s that’s one difference or some some nuance.

And there’s another piece here where sympathy, in my experience, when I’m feeling really sympathetic, when I am feeling really sympathetic, you’ll notice that I often say when I am sympathetic or when there is compassion.

I think this is a good way to feel the nuance of the two.

But when I am very sympathetic, I tend to make my decisions based on a very narrow field of consequences.

Is this good for me?

Is this good for the person that I’m in sympathy with?

You know, sometimes I can be brought up a little bit to be like, is this good for this particular subgroup of people?

Or is this good for this particular situation?

You know, in isolation, when there’s compassion and there is oneness, we automatically experience a broadening of perspective.

That says, oh, you know what, this action that I need to take from a place of compassion is going to be really hard on this individual and this individual or this particular group of people.

But in aggregate, it will be kinder.

It will result in less suffering.

It will be more better, including for me.

And sometimes that action is actually really painful for me as an individual and contrary to my own survival instincts, which sympathy would never engender.

Sympathy would always ask me to make myself feel better.

But compassion can say, you know what, it doesn’t matter because in the grand web of life, this is what needs to happen.

For all parties considered to move forward in the best possible way.

So I feel like generally sympathy, we can only be sympathetic in a fairly narrow spectrum because we can only reach that coherence in a very narrow field of vision.

And as we get our perspective broader and experience a greater sense of compassion and oneness, then that field just levels out because everything’s balancing with each other.

And this person’s suffering and this person’s joy kind of level out and our compassion feels much more neutral, which allows for a totally different type of decision making than when we’re in a very narrow sense of sympathetic resonance with a particular situation or individual.

There you go.

Which is part of my group practice is really helpful because we get to drop into that compassionate space.

And as we practice and as there’s more people here, you get to feel the room become one field.

Feel everyone walking in one step.

Feel everyone sitting in one set.

Feel everyone chanting in one chant.

Conduit through which we can release ourselves into that compassionate field.

Yeah.

Yeah.

More than adequate.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I’m noticing that now, for me, I feel imbalanced now because we only talked about one way.

So you got our little birdie over here trying to fly with one wing.

So what is wisdom?

How does wisdom put into the equation?

But it’d be okay if I said a few words about that.

Okay.

So.

Wisdom comes into.

So part of what we’re doing when we’re sitting in aliveness as we’re recognizing the nature of reality.

This is what we believe we’re doing.

And the nature of reality is basically in a series of discrete moments that are vibrating one into another as a giant field of energy has this crazy dance with itself.

And there’s lots of more technical ways to talk about that.

But in a way, that’s what it is.

At a material level, it’s talking about the interactions of particles in the quantum field that end up creating our entire universe.

And so in the meditative tradition, that’s kind of what they were exploring by going down in it.

And by tuning into those experiences that we discover through meditation.

One of the big things that we notice is that everything changes.

And everything is part of something else.

And in a way, everything that we experience is kind of an illusion.

Okay, so what that means is that, like, we don’t actually see the chemical structure of this, we don’t actually see the atoms and the molecules and the infinite amount of space in this.

So my sense of touch, and my eyes are fundamentally flawed.

Right, I just have like an interpretive experience that’s useful for me and not die.

That’s really what we experience is kind of an interpretation of reality that has been evolutionary health, I will helpful in an evolutionary way for us to keep existing.

Wisdom tells us that.

That’s great.

It’s very useful, but it’s not really true.

What’s true is that everything is changing your, your perception is very limited according to what you can experience through your sense organs and your life experiences and who you think you are and how your parents or other caregivers raised you and what society says, and all these things shape your experience and it’s all not really true.

It’s all perfectly true to us in our individual sense, but wisdom is saying it’s really not true, and some sort of cosmic absolute sense.

What is true is that everything is changing.

Everything is connected to everything else.

And that if we get confused that something which changes all the time is actually not changing.

Then we suffer.

We have emotional distress.

And so wisdom just asked us to remember that everything is changing, and this vibratory dance of interconnection, and our sense experience is fundamentally flawed.

So that’s wisdom.

Wisdom gives us the capacity to be like wow, this is really awful.

And then compassion reminds us, yeah, it’s really awful we should do something about that.

And wisdom is like, well I don’t really need to.

And compassion is like well yeah you kind of do.

And then you go, yeah, you’re right.

And then you show up.

But this allows us to show up from a place that is kind of like, it doesn’t really need anything to change, so it takes all that grip out of it, it takes all the angst out of it, it takes all the edge off of it.

And it’s more just like, on behalf of the entire cosmos, this needs to be different.

Okay.

And then it doesn’t work out the way that you think it will, but somehow it still works out anyway.

And you get to enjoy this amazing ride that we call life, without all of the trying to make life do what we want.

And so that’s kind of the fruit of Zen practice, is to just be able to show up in our lives and live it without getting too worked up about it.

Because it’s just kind of fun.

Even though it really sometimes doesn’t feel fun.

So there’s the wisdom part.

I’m just waiting if Marie wants something to say or a new participant.

I’m good.

Thank you.

I’ve appreciated your questions.

When I listen to what you say, Bumi, again and again and again, I’m confronted with this challenge of wisdom and compassion, where, like false beliefs, can let me think, oh, this is compassion, can let me think, oh, this is wisdom.

Directly, I’m pointing to, for example, my mom and the way she shows up sometimes and where I really deeply struggle.

What the hell is the part of compassion here?

What the hell is the part of wisdom here?

How do I face some of those situations, especially those when it’s not only her and me involved in a situation, but also others?

I haven’t found that goal, that Zen balance way of living yet.

And it’s really, yeah, it holds me in a space where I think I don’t need to be there.

There is a way to move forward.

But until now, I don’t see it.

I don’t know if you have some words of wisdom or compassion or both.

Well, you can’t actually stand still.

And so it’s just important to remember that each time you face a situation and each time you make a decision, you are moving forward.

And it can feel like we’re just going around in circles.

And we might say that we are.

But as long as we’re paying attention, each time we make a decision and that decision has some sort of outcome and we’re paying attention and we’re learning something, then we’re still going forward.

And, you know, some some lessons we have to learn in this life take a long time and we get pretty beat up before we figure out what it’s trying to teach us.

But that doesn’t mean that we’re making the same mistake over again.

It just means that we haven’t quite uncovered whatever that core nugget is.

And because I know a little bit about the situation with your mom, you know, we have really complex interpersonal relationships.

It’s important to understand that there is no ideal outcome.

A lot of times what we do is we impose an ideal transformation like, oh, only my mom was this way of only I was this way with my mom.

Oh, if only my kids showed up this way or my partner showed up that way or whatever, we create some picture in our mind that we want to strive for.

And that’s good.

We need to do that because without that, we have no direction.

But it’s kind of like, well, I know I want to go that way.

But what we do is we say, I want to go that way, and then we ignore all of the signs that are pushing us in a different direction or saying, well, if you really want to go that way, then you have to start going that way first.

You know, because we get so fixated on our goal and how things should be that we miss all of the signs about how to create that reality or about how our interpretation of what should should happen isn’t quite right.

You know, and so it’s always about coming back to what is right now, based on all the information that I have, what direction do I want to set for myself.

Now I have my starting point and my destination.

What’s my first step.

Well, it might be left, it might be right, it might be back, it might be forward, it might be anywhere in between, who knows.

And then once you take your first step, you’re in a different position.

And then you get to check again.

Is that still the right destination.

What steps do I need to take next.

Oh, I just walked off a cliff.

Okay, fortunately, reset.

Okay, now I’m at the bottom of the cliff.

Now what do I do.

Right.

It’s just a constant inquiry.

What is where do I want to go.

What’s my next step.

Not what’s the entire route.

We can’t know that just what’s my next step.

And then check it out again.

It’s helpful when we have ongoing difficult situations, but the process is the same, regardless.

Which is also part of Zen practice.

So what we do on Sunday mornings is a micro experience of that.

Right.

Well, I enter the center when I find my seat and get myself set.

Okay, the clackers clack.

What do I do, I say this part.

Right.

Oh, the bells are ringing.

What do I do, I do this.

Oh, now we’re walking in Kim and what am I doing, I’m doing this right it’s a constant check of, am I here doing the thing that I’m supposed to be doing, according to what the destination is, or am I off somewhere else doing something else.

So we get to practice that over and over.

So, thank you all very much.

That’s our Dharma discussion for today.