Venerable Robina Courtin continues teaching about the Buddhist approach to developing compassion.
WHY ENDLESS COMPASSION?
Sometimes it feels like the world’s problems are demanding so much of our attention that our compassion reserves will run dry. How can we develop strong, resilient compassion that allows us to help others?
Venerable Robina says: “You don't harm others even slightly if you love, have compassion, generosity, forgiveness - it's not possible. It’s the delusions that cause us pain and cause us to harm others. So when we deeply understand that, it’s like we’ve got compassion for ourselves. That’s what qualifies us to have compassion for others - and that doesn’t just mean the victims, it means the people who do the harm. This is a really tough level of compassion but we can not have it until we know ourselves, until we know what causes us pain.”
Course notes: https://bit.ly/EndlessCompassionNotes
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Even if you're drowning, you might as well stay perky...(6:58)
Q: How to recognise authentic compassion, compassion with wisdom? (7:36)
Practices to develop compassion (14:55)
Q: If removing the dirt from the water (as a metaphor for overcoming delusions) is possible - what is "the water"? (39:15)
Q: How to apply equanimity to ourselves? Should we look at our afflictions with equanimity? (46:05)
Q: How does talking about others destroy our equanimity? Is it because we can do it with anger. Is there ever a time that talking about others is okay and in line with our equanimity? (53:22)
Q: It’s difficult to fathom how one person is able to hold all beings with genuine love. If we forget about a stranger’s headache in 1 minute - does a Bodhisattva keep thinking about it? Can we think about 7.5 billion peoples’ headaches all at once? It seems like too big a job for a single person - how is that level of concern experienced by a Bodhisattva? (1:00:00)
Q: I don't understand the suffering of change. (1:03:03)
Q: What is the mudra when offering the mandala? (1:09:43)
Q: Is it so: that which my mind labels as pleasure is actually a delusion and a kind of poison (1:12:24)
Q: Could you please talk more about the connection between the mind and the body? Is this something that we can only experience/ observe through meditation? (1:22:32)