This class is the second of five classes on the universal faces of love.

In the last class we covered loving kindness which is the response to the goodness and beauty of this world and tonight we'll be on compassion with an emphasis on self-compassion.

We'll also cover forgiveness, enjoy, and equanimity.

I mentioned to the group that was gathered here on location, I know a lot of you are listening from podcasts.

I wanted to share that teaching a series of classes on loving presence comes at a very poignant time in my life and that my mom who's 87 and many of the folks here in DC know her and she's been a regular at our week-long retreats for quite a while.

It has just entered hospice care and so this is the final season of her life and as many of you know because so many of us have been through it right hand in hand with the very deep sadness is right there is the point and see of loving.

It's a mortality is the gift of it is it lets us absolutely know without any doubt what really matters.

It lets us know that love and embodying love, living it, expressing it, receiving it, giving it is really what we're here for.

Many of you know the Dalai Lama puts it in a very simple way. He says my religion is kindness. We don't need much more.

Then of course there's now going viral or semi-viral online. There's a picture of this really adorable little girl and she's got a map.

She's using her hands as a mask and she says my superpower is kindness. What's yours?

So I think our inquiry is you know sometimes we're at one of those times in our lives like I am where it's like right there in front of us this is what matters and other times we get caught and have it.

You know every one of us just the way it is and perhaps the most important inquiry that we can have is really what will reconnect me in this moment.

But in this moment will help me remember this heart that's here and then as we'll explore there's different expressions of the heart.

So tonight we're exploring in this class the expression of compassion which is in the simplest way it's a kind of resonance that we have when we encounter suffering.

It's a tenderness that naturally arises. I'm reading a book by Anri Nguyen the return to the prodigal son but I found this quote from him that I wanted to share on compassion.

When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us we often find it is those who instead of giving advice solutions or cures have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.

A friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement who can tolerate not knowing not curing not healing and face us with the reality of our powerlessness that is a friend who cares.

What I like about that is you can sense the courage of it that it's so much easier to try to fix something or in some way have a role other than just being that space of tenderness that just sits in that reality that we can manage certain parts of our life but the big events birth sickness death and what other people do we can't.

So can we have the courage to let go enough to be with ourselves and each other just being with.

So in a spiritual sense compassion is the flavor of an awake and wise heart it's the heart that recognizes we are of the same essence.

These different appearances of form these bodies are really made of the same spiritual essence of awakeness kind of a dynamic energy of awareness that we're there were one it's a heart that realizes that and responds from that sense it's a tenderness that is right there when we get we're connected.

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