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

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So hello and welcome everyone to this edition of Happy Hour as we practice the Brahma Vicharas as we practice practice kindness, cultivating kindness,

cultivating kindness, compassion, goodwill,

and the very many shapes that it shows up. So for today's practice I want to invite us to practice with,

open our heart with and again these practices are ways that we open our hearts and cultivate our hearts so that the first reaction of the heart is kindness, goodwill, not judgment, not dread, not fear.

You know, there's so many various reactions that we can have to what happens in our lives and the lives of others. So we cultivate our heart so that the go-to-place in our heart is one of kindness and compassion.

And for today I want to invite us to practice with

with someone in our life, someone we know well a either a person a dear person a friend it could be an animal, could be a child, could be a colleague, but someone we know personally who was having a challenging time or yeah just there's

something challenging about to go into

they're experiencing, either in their lives,

in their relationship, in their bodies,

and maybe they're about to go into surgery for example so it's just you know so having

cultivating our hearts to hold them and it's and again compassion the what we will be practicing now the practice of

compassion is is not pity pity is the near enemies can masquerade as compassion but it's not compassion.

Pity is like oh you poor you this thing is happening to you or this thing is

a part of like oh yeah poor you this would never happen to me whereas compassion is

oh this this is me what you what you're going through some is something that I could very well be going through. We're not so different. We're so

pity as the, you know, you put the other being kind of less than, oh, oh yeah, this would never happen to me,

whereas oh, compassion is on the same level oh we're

we're siblings we're we're brother sisters or siblings and in being human these kinds of things

happen these kinds of things happen to all of us. It has happened to me. It might happen to me. So the sense of this sense of care really is an expression of care. So practicing in this way we can open our heart to care.

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