The Grand Fandango

You can have no greater ally in the war against your greatest enemy, your own self-grasping and self-cherishing, than the practice of compassion. It is compassion, dedicating ourselves to others, taking on their suffering instead of cherishing ourselves, that, hand in hand with the wisdom of egolessness, destroys most effectively and most completely the ancient attachment to a false self that has been the cause of our endless wandering in samsara. That is why in our tradition we see compassion as the source and essence of enlightenment and the heart of enlightened activity.

Glimpse after Glimpse
Sogyal Rinpoche
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The key words here are to me “the practice of compassion”. I am in sharp and unrelenting physical pain today and the practice of compassion was furthest from my mind before I struggled to rise from my cushion. Yet, I still found comfort and encouragement in these words. What do I have to give in such a condition? To even ask the question is helpful because, immediately, my mind goes to service. This body… this bag of skin I call George, is breaking down and it is hard to do what once was easy. I can’t go out and run a mile in the morning and I can hardly take a half hour walk on the beach: days like today I can barely make it to my desk. This condition would give me plenty excuses to fall into self-pity but remarkably it doesn’t. My meditation practice is to breathe in my pain and breathe out compassion… empty myself of it. Breathing in the pain is to acknowledge it and accept it and breathing out compassion is to send empathy to others… to care enough to take my own suffering less seriously. After all, what else is there to do about it besides bring down the curtain of opiates on it? I choose to use it to get out on the dance floor to perform a fandango with suffering… the grand hoedown… taking the hand of the Heart of compassion to lift my spirit to another dimension.

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