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

Please visit our website at audiodharma.org.

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's

time together to sit and to explore the Dharma.

Thank you for being here.

I'm delighted to be back after being gone for a month.

It feels very kind of like a homecoming in a certain way to come back to IMC and sit here

and to be able to be together with you this way, reflecting on the Dharma.

So thank you.

And some of you I'm sure remember that in the weeks that I was here before being gone for a month,

the overall topic was compassion and that I had divided compassion into five different aspects.

With the idea that if we are aware of the richness of these different aspects,

that compassion becomes more embodied, becomes more considered,

more wholehearted, more wise and considered and practical, useful.

And if we don't have these five things in mind, it's very easy for us to have a narrow idea of what compassion is

and maybe have it be a call to action that maybe isn't always so wise.

So these five were general categories of awareness, attunement, appreciation, aspiration and action.

And action being the last one, we often associate compassion with the need to act quickly,

but have this be the last after, if there's time, some kind of deeper consideration.

And then I was going through each of these five days and each of them.

And now we're at aspiration.

And aspiration is a beautiful quality.

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