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

Please visit our website at audiodharma.org.

So, for this second talk on the aspiration that comes along with compassion,

the desire for people not to suffer, people not to struggle and be in danger,

be challenged in unnecessary and difficult ways.

It's such a wonderful idea, a wonderful occurrence to have this wish, this aspiration,

an aspiration where we're not self preoccupied, we are available to care for other people,

to have care for them, to have concern for them, to have wishes for them,

that their welfare is at least as important as our own, and may it be that they are happy,

may it be that they don't suffer.

And so, this instinct, this movement towards compassion involves a wish, a desire,

that precedes acting, and the action part, that's the whole topic we'll do another time for a whole week.

But before the action, there's the wish, the aspiration, the care,

and there are times when we have that wish, if it's not for us to do anything,

we learn about someone far away, we read about someone in the news,

and we have compassion, we wish them well, we hope that we would like the suffering to go away,

we aspire for it, but maybe it's not our place to do something about it, it's not our opportunity.

But there are times when we have the opportunity to act and to do something,

and there also, this idea of acting and doing things for the welfare of others,

is also a wonderful antidote to self-preoccupation,

which is often the word, the operating idea, self-preoccupation, self-occupation,

that they cut up in one self, and spinning around in self-concern,

...