Compassion

I remember that we all face the same givens

Compassion

It is bound to happen. 
While standing in line for coffee, 
while shopping at the crowded grocery store, 
while sitting zazen at retreat. An irritation 
rises in me, an agitation begins to crowd my 
heart. And again, I am in that separate place 
of critical judgment. Again I am filled with 
the noise of my small opinions. Again, I am
in the self-built house of discontent. 
Did you expect me to be perfect, Beloved? 
Did you expect me to have the immediacy 
of Christ in my heart? I may at times be slow 
to compassion, but I arrive here, eventually. 
I remember that each is a world wholly 
unknown to me. I remember that we all face 
the same givens of a life we may or may not 
have chosen. I remember that all strive to 
find happiness and meaning in the face of 
promised loss. Then the fog clears, and 
a clarity shines through. And I am in that 
place again of seeking forgiveness, destined 
as I am, destined as we are, to stumble 
through the vast and holy world. 

- Moudi Sbeity

Photo by Phyllis Poon on Unsplash

You may have experienced this, as I have, when you first started meditating. I believed that in order to meditate properly, I must so singularly focus on my breath and be completely empty of thought, and then I can perhaps attain this awesome state of nirvana. I realized early enough that my mind just will not still like a lake. I had wonderful teachers that guided me in shifting my perspective from attainment to practice. So long as I notice that my mind has wandered and then came back to noticing present body sensations, then I was doing, I was meditating. Life works like this. We fall, then stand. We cry, then laugh. We trail off in our attention, and then we gently bring it back.

What if compassion also works this way? I often hold myself to unrealistic standards of always needing to be immediate with compassion. But I am human, as are you, and as humans things bother and annoy us. As Dan Harris writes, “one of the curses of being human is that we need other people, and other people can be a titanic pain in the ass.” There is something comical about this, don’t you think? God is up to tricks again. I can’t deny my fumbling humanness, but I can, just as I do with meditation and ongoing mindfulness practice, remember to inhabit an attitude of compassion. I can return over and over again to this reminder that I am you and you are me and we are each other. How easily compassion then naturally sprouts as the prominent state. How kinder I become not just toward others, but also to myself. May you have many opportunities to strengthen the muscle of your compassion.

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Friends, horse lovers, neigh-sayers— the horse writing playpen is coming up this Sunday. Jackie has a wonderful presentation prepared, and the poems are nothing to hoof about. Let’s gallop our pens across the page (forgive me, I just love horse puns). Register here if you’re equine curious— inpraiseofhorses.eventbrite.com,