The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.

Please visit our website at audiodharma.org.

Okay, it worked. Great.

So, hello everyone, and I'm quite happy to be here with you all.

And what I'd like to do this week is to continue this intermittent series that I've been doing when I'm here, related to compassion.

And the premise around this is that the desire to live with compassion, to be more compassionate, is supported by understanding the many things that come together to really allow compassion to be strong or full, complete.

And that a quick, headlong movement into compassion might be okay, but it might leave out too much of ourselves.

It might leave too much of our potential or the fullness, the full embodiment, the full quality of compassion that is nourishing, that is beneficial.

Certainly for the people we have compassion for, and also for ourselves, that we don't leave ourselves out in being compassionate.

And one of the reasons for that is that compassion we have, the way we care for others, is so much better and cleaner if we have cared for ourselves properly.

If we include ourselves as the foundation for a healthy form of compassion.

So, to understand the different elements and dynamics within ourselves that contribute to a healthy compassion is really important.

And so many weeks ago I said that there were five different elements that come together for this kind of healthy compassion.

And so there were five A's, so awareness, attunement, appreciation, aspiration, and then the action.

And so to take time to understand these different aspects of compassion, things that contribute the foundations for them, and then to bring them along with us, the way we are going to be compassionate.

And that can be second nature after a while as we understand it, so it doesn't take that long.

And or each of these different foundations can be cultivated so that they are there more often for ourselves.

And so I've spent now a week on some of these elements.

There was a week on awareness and a week on attunement.

And today I want to spend this week on the week of appreciation.

And I mean the appreciation is a wonderful quality.

I hope that each of you understand that when you feel appreciation for anything at all, that it's a nice feeling.

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