The casual discriminations we practice in our daily lives were not part of us as children.

We took our biases on gradually; you could say we were educated into our ignorance.

Caring

Measuring our lives against the standards set by others, we do not consider ourselves intrinsically worthwhile, and our sense of self-esteem is never secure.

Knowledge of Freedom

Any mental or behavioral pattern can become a compulsive way of avoiding pressure, tension, or pain without actually resolving them.

In the end, our activities may drain us of energy without providing us with the refreshment we seek.

Knowledge of Freedom

Listening is not judging, positioning, or interpreting; it’s just paying attention. 

Knowledge of OK Mantra

Compassionate caring unfolds a perfect openness we could call ‘selflessness’. 

When we touch that openness, our minds become bigger and bigger, until they are vast as space. Such minds naturally, effortlessly, become fearless: thoughts and sensations, feelings and ideas and concepts disappear like clouds. 

The open realm of space becomes totally silent; uniting with that open ease brings perfect, indestructible freedom. TNMC Annals 45 

Most people today live in a state of excitation and overstimulation since early childhood.

Our fast-paced way of life bombards us with stimulation.

When in the course of a single day can we find more than a few moments that are free of mental, emotional, and sensory excitement? 

Knowledge of Freedom 

The greater our tension and anxiety, the more we feel impelled to act.

We may be physically unable to sit quietly and allow body and mind to regain their balance and calm.

In our excitement, we pour more of our energy into activity until our bodies and minds are exhausted; our bodies feel heavy and unresponsive, while our thoughts grow more complex and dense.

If we have no way to break these cycles, we can reach a point where we feel paralyzed by tension that has nowhere to go.

This tension is stored in our bodies and minds, creating conditions for illness or despair. 

Knowledge of Freedom 

However it manifest, care has the power to transform.  

Ask what someone cares about and how they manifest their care, and you will know how that person relates to wisdom and compassion, love and respect.

Caring

Opening the Heart

Make yourself comfortable on your chair or meditation cushion. Let your body become still and your breath become soft and even. Rub you hands together until you feel warmth. Place on hand on your heart and the other over the first.

Feel your heartbeat.

That’s all, just feel the beating of your heart.

Gently invite the warmth from your hands to penetrate your clothing and skin and warm the very center of your heart relaxing and healing it.

Sit awhile, savoring this feeling.

Stay with the feeling even after you take your hands away. 

Gesture of Great Love

As all the teachings agree, compassion is so intimately linked to wisdom that when we develop wisdom, compassion arises naturally, as fragrance and beauty arise from a flower.

The two are almost interdependent: the lotus and the quality of the lotus; the rose and the quality of the rose; art and the quality of beauty; wisdom and the quality of compassion.

Without wisdom, whatever feelings we may experience—warmth and sympathy, love, or a strong desire to help others—are not truly compassion in the Buddhist sense of the word.

Those feelings are all in the realm of the senses, while the great compassion that flows from wisdom is not based on the senses alone, but on prajna, the full comprehension of selflessness.

Compassion arises in response to the power of wisdom that transcends the concept of self and other, and draws from wisdom its uniquely effective qualities.

Compassion is the bow and wisdom is the arrow that penetrates to the heart of reality. 

TNMC Annals 48 P232