Hey, this is Leo, for actualized.org.

And in this video, I'm going to be talking about feminine versus masculine compassion. Compassion a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who's stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the

suffering. In his book, Big Heart, Big Mind, Zen Master Dennis Genpo Merstle has a really beautiful

story that explains the two sides of compassion that I wanted to share with you.

It's the story of the horses. And here's how it goes.

Basically, there's a mother horse who's giving birth to a baby horse.

And horses live also, they live in a group, so there's not just one horse, there's a whole bunch of other females, and there's also the lead male horse of the troop.

Well, I don't know what they're called. Anyways, so they live in a group.

And the mother is giving birth to this baby. And the baby is born and then for horses the baby is supposed to stand up and start walking around on its feet really fast after it's born. So this baby though is struggling and it can't quite

get up on its feet. Now the mother looks at the horse she's feeling bad for the baby horse, she wants to help it along,

so she nudges the horse with her head trying to help it up.

And the horse, the little baby horse just can't get up,

keep struggling and falling back down.

So the mother's doing everything it can and it's not working.

Then some of the other female horses come from the group and they try to help the baby horse too to get up

And they keep nurturing it and encouraging it and just nothing seems to be working

And then finally, the main male horse, he comes over and he grabs that baby horse by the back of its main and he takes it over to the

boulder over there on the ground and he smashes its skull into the boulder.

And that right there is a perfect illustration of compassion as being both masculine and feminine.

It's got those two flavors to it. It's interesting though that when we talk about compassion we typically

assume the feminine version of compassion, not the masculine. So that's what I want to

talk a little bit about more in this video.

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