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

Please visit our website at audiodharma.org.

So, hello everyone again, and a topic for this week, Exploration of Compassion is the role of aspiration in compassion.

A common definition of compassion is to recognize, suffering in the world, and to have a feeling for it, to have some kind of resonance with that suffering, to feel it, to have some sympathy with it, or empathy with it, and to have a desire for that suffering to be alleviated.

And that end is a hugely important part of compassion, and a desire for it to be alleviated.

Compassion can exist without necessarily we being the person who is going to alleviate the suffering, but it's still the desire is there.

But in certain circumstances, it makes sense that we have the desire to do something, we have the ability to do it, it's appropriate to do it, maybe sometimes no one else who could help with the suffering of people are experiencing, and so we offer to do something.

And so the common definition does involve a desire, but desire is a kind of somewhat vague word, or somewhat broad word, and so I prefer to call it aspiration.

And part of the reason for this is that I think that generally to aspire to something, to aspire to do something, doesn't come along with duty or obligation.

And aspiration comes from some place deep inside, it's an inspiration, it's a welding up of an inner desire that arises freely, arises without need, perhaps, or without a lot of ego or self-centeredness.

It has a kind of a deep source within, and there's a kind of open-endedness to aspiration. It's different for me, different than hope or wishing, aspiration wants to see something happen, but knows that it might not.

It's not, aspiration is not attached to the outcome. And to act in the world of compassion, act compassionately from aspiration, maybe as a wonderful gift because it frees ourselves from the tightness and the pressure of accomplishment of succeeding.

And sometimes when we're compassionate to others, it's enough for them to know that we have the desire, the aspiration to help, we're making the effort to help, even if we don't succeed.

The idea that someone cares about you, cares enough to make effort to support you, sometimes it's the medicine that's what's needed more than the outcome.

And so aspiration is, the other reason I like aspiration because the word is connected to breathing, and so it has this kind of, in my mind, this idea of having a deeper source within our body, within our heart,

that's different than anything that the mind comes up with, the thinking, the logic, the analysis of the situation, it has some kind of deeper upwelling to aspire.

And to take the time when we're in the presence of suffering or feel it, to not rush to judgment, not rush to obligation, not rush to something has to happen here,

when that rush is motivated by our own distress, our own discomfort, our own sense of self-centered kind of obligation or our own need to do something,

but rather take the time to relax with it and to be present and see what is the aspiration that flows out of us? What's the desire or the wish for that?

That has this kind of open-endedness, this freedom to it, not something that puts us back in bondage or clamps us down or narrows us, but something actually feels like, now we can breathe more easily.

As opposed to getting stressed and tight and our breathing becomes more contracted and tight and narrow.

So aspiration, and so this week I'll talk about the five different aspects of aspiration, and for today the simple idea,

...