I thought I'd begin by letting you know that a few weeks ago I was walking with a very dear friend of mine by the river and she was telling me some of the difficulties she's going through but she was speaking of them quite cheerfully and then she kind of showed me her necklace and the necklace said no mud no lotus now if you know a little bit about the symbology of the Lotus the lotus roots in the mud and it's nourished by the mud and it blossoms into this beauty that in Buddhism and in some of the other Asian religions symbolizes the awakening of our heart and mind and the understanding here is that sometimes one friend of mine describes it as manure for Bodhi Bodhi being awakening that that we that we awake and not because we managed to sidestep the difficulties but because of the quality of presence that we bring when the inevitable stuff of life appears so tonight this will be our exploration no mud no Lotus and and I think that for most of us we know that it's the times in our life those seasons when we really encounter something very very difficult and it might be a major loss of some sort a big relational conflict something with our hell something very painful occurring for someone we love that those are the times that require that we dig deeper into our reservoir of resources and spirit we discover more of our strength and of our of our depths and and for most of us you know there are times that we get caught in a reactivity but when we really let ourselves dive deep we discover a resilience we discover a quality of soulfulness or of strength and I love the way Pema Chodron describes this with this path and she said it's not like we're climbing up a mountain to get some pinnacle of light but it's more invert the mountain it's more that we're going down down down into the the mud and the realness and the vulnerability down and down until we find at the bottom and we're going together holding hands this love that will not die that when we root deep into the mud with presence this awakens the heart of compassion so it's quite appropriate fuels that on the Solstice the shortest day of the year that it's the time that we know seasonally we can feel it can sometimes be bleak in the winter it can sometimes seem like not much as happening you know they say that not every season of our life can be harvest right that we we have winters in our life and that it's at those times there's a huge amount happening that's invisible to our maybe earthy eyes but if we we trust this awakening and we let ourselves encounter what's difficult we actually discover a tremendous freedom so what we'd like to explore a little sometimes I do here is from an evolutionary perspective and it's quite interesting to me that it was really our vulnerability that gave rise to empathy and compassion that in order to care for for our offspring who were came onto this planet really neat very helpless that first the females developed this capacity for attunement for being able to emotionally read and resonate and respond with care that the centers of the brain that are responsible for compassion and empathy were a response to the perceived helplessness of offspring and then it generalized to men so men and women have the same equipment but here's an here's an interesting piece of a read you one day I was walking through the Stanford University campus with a friend writes Fran P Z P V who's an activist she says I saw a crowd of people with cameras and video equipment on a little hillside they were clustered around a pair of chimpanzees the male was running loose the female on a chain about 25 feet long turned out the male with marine world the female was being studied and the spectators were trying to get them to mate now the male was eager he grunted and grabbed the females chain and tugged she whimpered and backed away he pulled again she pulled back and watching the faces of these chimps I a woman Fran rights began to feel sympathy for the female suddenly the female chimp yanked her chain out of the male's grass to my amazement she walked through the crowd straight over to me and took my hand then she led me across the circle to the only other two women in the crowd and she joined hands with one of them the three of us stood together in a circle I remember the feeling of that rough palm against mine the little chimp had recognized us and reached out across all the years of evolution to form her own support group so there's this understanding that that mammals more and more that mammals have this wiring for for empathy and it's gaining ground and in a study I read last week that I found helped me understand something fresh this is a study of rats and it showed that rats when they're put in a in a kind of a large cage together if one of the rats is in a smaller enclosure and trapped in there and the other rat and then that rat gives a distress call the other rat that's more freed up will come over and open learn to open the small enclosure and free its fellow rat and these rats already knew each other from a past lifetime or a past cage or something now here's another piece of it that if the freed up rat was given a hoard of chocolate chips it would save one save a treat for the captive rat until it was free I think that's really interesting that that's part of the way these rats are designed now here's another interesting piece that the male rats were not as effective in freeing the trapped rat as the females and what they found is that that both sexes of rats have empathy they both sense and want to respond to vulnerability okay but the females have better control over their own stress reaction so in other words they can drink down regulate strong emotion and respond in a difficult situation to be trapped rat so they're better able to open up the cage and to me what is fascinating about that is what it says about how we in difficult times when when the reactivity of stress takes over in other words when when our fears our shame our anger takes over then we lose contact with our capacity to respond from empathy and compassion so that it's becomes critical that instead of responding in a healing way when when we get stressed out we get stuck in the mud we encounter the difficulties but if we don't know how to work with stress rather than responding from our heart we get stuck in the mud we get identified we get reactive we get angry this is Maya Angelou she says I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he or she handles these three things a rainy day lost luggage and tangled Christmas tree lights I like that so this is um this is one level of the stressors how do we respond is it mud that we just open to and and blossom out of or is it do we get stuck one writer said that a sign of enlightenment is whether when we have to get a take a detour we can still enjoy the scenery so what we find is that we all have very strong conditioning when we encounter the mud the seasons that are difficult to react to get stressed and to get caught up we all have that conditioning in us and to assume that something's wrong so the first thing is it's useful to sense well how do we do that where do we get caught so we end up rather than down regulating the stress reaction and coming from our heart what's our patterning now one of the main ways that we get stuck as we know is when something goes wrong we think this is bad and we look for something to blame and often we'll blame others so if we find ourselves blaming others those are moments when we're not having access to the parts of our brain our heart and our spirit that really have this capacity for compassion some of you might remember this a devoted wife had spent her lifetime taking care of her husband now he had been slipping in and out of coma for several months if she stayed by his bedside every single day when he came to his senses he motioned for her to come near to him she sat by him he said you know what you've been with me all through the hard times when I got fired you were there to support me when my business failed you were there when I got shot you were by my side when we lost the house she gave me support when my health started failing you were still by my side you know what what dear she asked gently I think you bring me bad luck that's one reaction to stress now the other as many of you know when we get stressed out we start moving faster and again that discus disconnects us from our apparatus for compassion and we excuse the dry terminology but again when we speed up when we move faster when we race around when we get busy we're unable to contact the tenderness of our hearts there's a saying that even if you win the rat race you're still a rat you know unless you're one of the real compassion over hats now that we've met so that's another way that we leave this innate capacity to respond with heart and to have the mud become really this part of awakening another to mention is addictive behavior because so many of us will go to what what numbs us what soothes us rather than learning to stay we don't learn to stay we turn to food we turn to our email to online surfing you know there's only two industries that call their clients users computers and drugs right right okay I think that's interesting a friend of mine handed me this about eight months ago man goes into a bar and orders a drink bartender gives it to him and he pushes it off to the side he utters another drink the bartender serves it to him this time he drinks it what gives the bartender ass well I go to a meetings and I hear it regularly it's the first drink that leads to trouble so we have our addictive behaviors and then we have this mind that rationalizes and justifies and keeps us in the very strategies that actually keep us from our heart the most common of all the strategies that really keep us disconnected is what I often call the second arrow the first arrow is things are tough the second arrow it's my fault I'm bad something's wrong with me you know I'm failing I'll never get it right I'm the one that's different I'm the one that's really really not a good person that kind of thing so I'm bringing these up because what the critical piece in all this is when things get difficult when we have a season that is what I'm calling my the vulnerability the fear the loss how do we relate and and even if we relate immediately with maybe blaming or whatever how much of a lag time is there until we go oh yeah this isn't really a detour this is the path itself this sickness is not like I'm waiting to get over it so then I can live my life are this divorce this this hurt the sense of insecurity about finances it's not like I'm gonna I got to figure this out or I've got in some way get through this so then I can enjoy things it it's right now what's happening and it is the mud that serves awakening if our attitude if our way of relating is mindful so let me ask you to reflect as I often do just to check in for yourself and as you pause right now to sense that you're you're coming home to your breath to presence and let come into your awareness anything that might be going on in your life right now that you might consider as something difficult or challenging something that that might bring up a sense of insecurity or hurt anger might be something in a relationship might have to do with your health or the well-being of someone you care about now just scan and since how have I been relating to this have I been thinking of this is this is a bad thing that's happening this is a detour that something's wrong with life or with me or with somebody else that it shouldn't be like this notice if you have been feeling either victimized or offended by what's happening burdened and just since if it's possible to regard whatever this difficulty is not as a detour but this is the path that this is exactly the mud that serves and nourishes your freedom should you pay attention a way to a way to explore that is to just sense that longing and you may this difficulty serve to awaken compassion and wisdom this is the traditional Bodhisattva aspiration Bodhisattva is an awakening being may this difficulty serve to awaken compassion and wisdom and the more sincere you feel you few holding that that prayer the more you really right this moment this isn't just like a little exercise you're going through mechanically but the more your heart says yes really may this difficulty help to wake up this heart the more actually you have aligned yourself in a way that makes that possible imagine how this might serve awakening Barbara Kingsolver writes here's what I've decided the very least you can do in your life is figure out what you most hope for the most you can do is live inside that hope not admire it from a distance but live right in it under its roof what I want is so simple I almost can't say it elementary kindness okay so open your eyes come on back okay so now we bring this inquiry right to the heart of things which is so what allows us to call on our hearts rather than get caught in that reactivity where we get stuck in the mud and we come to this training in mindfulness and meditation there's been a lot of research on compassion in recent years a wonderful compassion lab out in Stanford and there there are many places and a lot of the articles written have mindfulness as the context for compassion that when we can bring a real presence to what's happening it's the alchemy of that presence that actually unfolds compassion and if I had to say it differently it's when you actually have the mindfulness to contact the mud the vulnerability the fear the clench in the heart the feeling of the heart beating the shame the hurt when you are let your attention root into the mud and are able to at the same time in some way wish yourself or another well then that wakes up the parts of the brain that are really filled with empathy and compassion so we go into the mud and we look towards the light simultaneously and we'll talk about this a little more in a moment when we begin with compassion it's said that the very heart of Buddhism is compassion the heart of compassion is really for ourselves if we don't have this capacity to stay with what's difficult in our own body and heart then our compassion for others will be abstract it'll be one step removed compassion has to be embodied hence the mud hence we have to be able to contact the the difficulty the unpleasantness of it and yet if all we're doing is fixating on the unpleasantness that's what I call being stuck in the mud identify so a mindful presence both contacts what's here but also senses a larger space it has the wizened a sense of space things are happening in it's allowing in the moment that you contact the mud but there's this allowing quality you'll find the space that actually let's be a kind of a light of compassion spring forth and we'll explore this together as a closing meditation but just to say that when we've been able to do that for ourselves we can be in touch with what's difficult in ourselves and open in that way when we see another struggling we are immediately and spontaneously responsive our heart cares story for you one day when I was a freshman in high school I saw a kid from my class walking home from school his name was Kyle he looked like he was carrying all of his books I thought to myself why would anyone bring home all his books on a Friday he must really be a nerd I had quite a weekend planned parties in a football game with my friend so I shrugged my shoulders and went on but as I was walking I saw a bunch of kids running towards him they ran at him knocking all his books out of his arms and trick I mean tripping him so he landed in the dirt his glasses went flying and I saw them land in the grass about ten feet from him he looked up and I saw this terrible sadness in his eyes my heart went out to him so I jogged over to him and as he crawled around looking for his glasses I saw a tear in his eye and I handed his glasses to him I said those guys are jerks they really should get lives he looked at me and said hey thanks there was a big smile on his face it's one of those smiles that showed real gratitude I helped him pick up his books and asked him where he lived turned out he lived near me so I asked him why I had never seen him before he'd gone to private school so I smacked him on the back and said hey big guy you'll be great he looked at me with one of those looks the real grateful one and said thanks we talked all the way home I carried some of his books it turned out he is a pretty cool kid I asked him if he wanted to play a little football with my friends he said yes we hung out all weekend and the more I got to know Kyle the more I liked him and my friends thought the same of them Monday morning came and there was Kyle with a huge stack of books again I stopped him and said boy you're gonna really build some muscles with this pile of books every day and he just laughed handed me half the books over the next four years Kyle and I became best friends when we were seniors we began to think about college he decided on Georgetown I was going to Duke I knew we'd probably always be friends and the models would never be a problem he was going to be a doctor I was going for a business on a football scholarship Kyle was valedictorian of her class I teased him all the time of being a nerd he had to prepare a speech for graduation I so glad it wasn't me having to get up there and speak graduation day I saw Kyle he looked great he was one of those guys that really found himself during high school he filled out and actually looked good in glasses he had more dates than I had and all the girls loved him boy sometimes I was jealous and today was one of those days I could see he was nervous about his speech so I so I told him don't worry you'll be great and he gave me that smile again thanks and he began his speech he cleared his throat and began saying graduation is a time to thank those who helped you make it through those tough years your parents your teachers your siblings maybe a coach but mostly your friends I'm here to tell you all today that being a friend of someone is the best gift you can give them I'm going to tell you a story I just looked at my friend with disbelief as he told the story of the first day we met he had planned to kill himself over the weekend he talked of how he had cleaned out his locker so his mom wouldn't have to do it later and was carrying his stuff home he looked hard at me and gave me that little smile thankfully I was saved my friend saved me from doing the unspeakable I heard the gas go through the crowd as this handsome popular boy told us all about his weakest moment I saw his mom and dad looking at me and smiling that same smile not until that moment I realize it's never underestimate the power of your actions with one small gesture you can change a person's life for better or for worse we're in each other's lives to impact each other look for the goodness the vulnerability and others your lives are inextricably bound we do underestimate the effect we have on each other we are entirely interdependent this idea that we're supposed to be independent we are waking are very waking up is awaking up to realize non-separation to realize who we are beyond these changing forms to realize that timeless presence and that awake heart that really is our shared source and what happens is that when we forget we get caught in fear and when we're in fear we end up not seeing who others are we can't reach out now I want to share very briefly another story that a friend of mine passed on to me it's a video that you can see on you tote - this is a young boy Jonah Mowry and Jonah in middle school Jonah was gay he was pretty much tormented by the homophobic and cruelty of you know that's in our society and certainly among kids that age and so the mud that he had a contact was it was the incredible pain and shame and despair he was feeling and what he did was rather than do himself in that tragically has happened to so many young gay people rather than disconnecting or getting addicted or getting getting into blame and rage he did this video where he named the depth of the pain he was feeling and this video went viral and why did it go viral this is a human in a very evolved way naming the truth of the vulnerability and from a place of a very very large and wise heart naming it in a way that other people became safe for them to feel their belonging to the amount of compassion that it brought with the wave of it they came towards him and then towards others in similar situation is why that went viral it is part of our evolutionary equipment to learn to relate to what's difficult in a way they can free our hearts not keep us stuck in the mud that's our capacity every one of us has that capacity every one of us and I've seen people go for years and years and feel like well I'm just never destined to be the one that actually gets freed up through the hard times and then a slight shift in perspective of getting that this is actually perfectly the thing that I need to stay and feel this can free this heart actually ends up unfolding us when we stay with our own pain and start waking up we see past the mask in each other we see just as this voided with Kyle we see who's there and we see it more and more quickly it's as Naomi and I says before you learn the tender gravity of kindness you must travel where the Indian and a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road you must see how this could be you how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive so this is really to me the hope of evolution and the hope for peace and harmony and social justice on earth that we have the courage and the mindfulness to be present with the difficulties we encounter that we can contact what's true and then reach out across species to other creatures because we can to this idea that we humans are different we are of the earth we are the earth to reach out to this earth to reach out to those with different sexual orientation or different race or different politics whatever it is and discover the vulnerability and the goodness that dwells in each person discover that the light of the star shines through us you know there's a Serbian saying that goes like this it says be humble for you're made of Earth and be Noble you come from the stars so we'll take a few moments to explore this this no mud no lotus in our last little sitting perhaps the most well-known mantra in the Buddhist tradition Omani Padma whom the meaning is literally the jewel is in the Lotus and the understanding is that as we awaken as we awaken we discover the jewel of compassion our awakening comes from this dedication to being here with a life that's right here so in this practice is very simple heart practice I'd like to invite you to bring to mind someone that at this time in our history this time in their life this solstice time is having a hard time someone who's having difficulty might censure your wish for this person that whatever the mud is that they're encountering the difficulty that it really serve his or her awakening his or her wisdom happiness peace you might ask yourself what is it like to be this person so that it's not abstract as if you could be inside this person's body and heart and eyes and look through the world I see what's it like what's this person believing and feeling and the most deeply ask yourself what does this person need what does this person need to experience is it to trust his or her goodness is it to feel loved feel understood since it energetically whatever's needed that you could offer with your heart in your prayer you might whisper mentally a message of love as if you could your words and perhaps imagine your hand on that person's cheek or around their shoulders communicating in a very direct way your care and then to sense all those that are suffering in the same way that your heart really is holding all those that suffer including your own being and will close this meditation with this chant Omani pardon me home again I'll say the word slowly ohm Monni Padme whom once again own money Padme whom so what we'll do is we'll just start chanting it slowly together and then as before if you want to to change the pitch to harmonize please feel free and we'll stop when you hear the gong so first just listen for one round and then join in