Compassion is an Act of Courage By Rev. Sue Greer, UUSD Member July 30. 2017 A Sermon for the Unitarian Universalists of Southern Delaware

Compassion is an act of courage, the courage of an open heart! Buddha’s teaching tells us that all beings are born into suffering and that the antidote to that suffering is the “awakening” of the compassionate heart. It is the belief that within all of us is the latent wish for all beings to be well and free of suffering. Compassion for all, this is a strong and relevant teaching, especially in our world today that seems full of hatred, greed, and suffering that divide and separate us. Finding our open- heartedness breaks down these barriers of separation of self and other, and helps us find our way. We hear the cries of suffering; your suffering or my suffering, there is no difference, our suffering is the same, and this becomes our freedom, to step outside our suffering, accept it. So we can courageously love ourselves and all living beings.

I wanted to talk here today about compassion from my studies and my own experiences. I come to you as one who has been a Buddhist for over 30 years and have worked on my own self-awareness and open heartedness for most of my life. And as my family can say, I still can react in anger, have unkind thoughts, and judgements, but one thing I have done is taken a vow to offer compassion whenever possible and to live in compassion. I have dedicated myself to living a life of love and kindness. As Unitarians, I hear that same dedication when we say we want to create a compassionate world, but what are we committing ourselves to? What do we mean by compassion and how do we grow a compassionate heart?

Buddha teaches that suffering and compassion are two conditions of all beings. Everyone grows old, experiences the weakness of disease, and will inevitably die. This seems simple: we live, we all experience loss and suffering, we will die. But right alongside of our suffering is our inherent release of that suffering, through compassion.

Compassion is UNITY, open-heartedness, nonviolence, nonjudgement, freedom from prejudice for ALL beings, and all life. It’s the foundation of tolerance, patience, understanding, and forgiveness. Whereas suffering creates separation, division, fear, anger. We isolate into them and us. Enemy is created. We close our hearts. Greed is born. What binds us as humans are these two forces: our innate compassion and inevitable suffering.

When have you felt yourself harden your heart, turn away from suffering, close down, not listen to another’s story of pain? It’s just too much. You recoil, your body tightens, you want to avert your eyes, walk faster… Hope the light changes so you don’t have to look at the street person begging for money at the red light. When you can’t stand to hear one more time about your friend’s struggle or fears and then the voice goes off in your head... “Oh, stop whining. Do we have to hear this again?” Or “he doesn’t need my money; he’s just going to drink it away.” JUDGEMENT, FEAR, ANGER, INTOLERANCE. Where does this come from? Where are these hard places hiding in you?

The Dali Lama teaches us that if your compassion doesn’t include yourself it is incomplete. Clearing away your own prejudices, your own fears is a key to growing more compassion. And here is where courage comes in. What are your prejudices? What is your unique or cherished suffering that closes you or separates you?

I wanted to share a story, my own experience, what I learned about BLIND Hatred.

I would often say, with my liberal pride: I just can’t tolerate those BIGOTS, those hateful people who hate, just to hate. For years I held this stance. I was RIGHTEOUS! I thought myself to be without prejudice, I LOVED EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING. I protested. I marched for the end of the Vietnam War. I marched for human rights, civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights. I marched for peace. If there was an injustice, something to stand for, I was there.

In 1970, I supported myself by selling my paintings, baked bread, crafts, and beads on the streets of Pittsburgh near Carnegie-Mellon University. I lived in a commune and looked like the classic hippie artist. You get the picture…bell-bottoms, long braids, moccasins, and I wore a beret.

That day we were protesting the WAR. “NO WAR,” we chanted, “NO WAR.” We had signs, drums, chants… Then we saw them coming at us with such a rushing, it looked like a group of joggers coming up to join us. But as they came in to view, we heard: “Dirty hippies!” With this they started throwing garbage at us…spitting on us. We kept walking... Get out. Get a job! Commie scum! Cursing and spitting hate!

Then I felt something hit me on the side of the head. A beer can, a full beer can. It hit so hard it broke my glasses and blood flowed from my eyebrow. Hate and pain. My tears were from their yelling...and all I heard in my head was: WHY? They didn’t know me… I loved the soldiers, I loved my country. We wanted the same thing… THEY HATED ME. Blood and tears flowing across my face I stepped out of our circle only to have one man standing in front of me, face to face. I had to stop and look at him. He wasn’t seeing me...only what he hated.

Hate and fear… GET OUT F...Hippie! I was shaking as one of my friends grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the VIOLENT rageful man

At that moment, fear and anger overwhelmed me. My defenses went up. I was him… he was me and we didn’t know anything about each other. Just that he was THEM and I was US… I became hard hearted, I was now fighting the enemy. I had become the OTHER. It took me years to come to try to understand my experience of his blind hatred. Raw hatred. Hatred that was blind to who was being hated. I wasn’t what the man thought me to be… and he wasn’t what I thought him to be. We stayed separate; we stayed enemies without ever knowing each other. I have since released my own hatreds, my own prejudices, at least the ones I know. I felt how powerful the fear and hatred are, and how my feeling them created my own pain and suffering. I had to let go of other people’s hate of me, otherwise I was bound to it, bound to that hate and my opposition bound me to them as enemy.

This was the great wisdom of Dr. King’s peaceful, nonviolent, and non-hateful demonstrations. And he taught the teaching of Buddha: “Hatred can’t drive out hatred, only LOVE can do that.” This experience started me on a path to let go of my own judgments and my own hate; it’s an ongoing process.

My second story I wanted to share is an experience I had that opened me to more compassion. In my healing practice through the 90s, I worked primarily with women who had been traumatized by sexual assault as children or adults. My work helped these women release their memories and fear and reclaim their lives. It was deep and meaningful work; I was honored and pleased to be able to relieve their suffering. I had a new client who had been referred by his psychotherapist to see if I could help him move through his debilitating grief, find forgiveness, and some peace from his pain. I wasn’t given any more information about him and I realized I would hear his STORY from him directly. He was about 26 years old and was obviously very nervous about being with me and seemed very disconnected from his body. I reassured him that he was safe with me. I was not here to judge him and I had heard many painful life stories and I assured him I could hear his. With this OK from me, we began his journey of healing. I used energy balancing and body techniques to help him reconnect to his body and release some of his trauma that he held onto so tightly. As our sessions continued, he finally revealed to me his suffering. “I hurt her. I didn’t’ mean to...I hurt her. A long pause. I forced her...I made her. He was confessing to me. I’ll never be forgiven! I never meant to...” At this moment, my stomach tightened, my heart closed and I could feel anger and judgement rise. “You disgusting shit.” My anger grew and I didn’t know what I was going to do with my own feelings. I realized I was with a rapist. All the women I had seen in my practice, so damaged and suffering from sexual assault! I was fierce in my anger and I wanted to scream at him, “Get out, you shit!” When in what seemed like the same moment, he said, “JUST LIKE DAD did to me.” I was pierced by his pain. ALL my anger drained out of me and I saw in front of me a wounded, hurt child. In that moment, I went from being angry and judgemental to experiencing an open heart. My suffering is your suffering and OUR suffering invites compassion. He was suffering, he had been deeply suffering. He suffered as both a victim and perpetrator; they were the same for him. He was broken and broken open by the compassion we had found together.

My time with him was rich in teaching me the power of forgiveness and love. And within the two years we worked together, he was able to ask for forgiveness from his victim and find a way to release some of his pain about his father. His self-judgement and shame had been replaced with a sense of courage to face the painful truth of his life and accept himself. He was much more present in his life and his continued healing.

I had such profound lessons from this young man. He taught me the power of a nonjudgemental heart, how by meeting my own hardness I could know my own suffering and HIS. It was from my own courage and willingness to know his pain and allow it, not separate myself from him or myself, that compassion came to us both.

Compassion is not easy. and we all can become overwhelmed with the cries of suffering around us especially when we feel powerless or have no control. So what do we do? Can we love our enemies? The haters? Anyone who doesn’t hold our world view? Compassion starts with YOU. We begin with ourselves. We invite the courage to find out what is the root of my fear, anger, hardness...pain. What are my conditions in which I will invite you in or hold you as OTHER? What stops my unity with all? This awareness can take a lifetime to unwrap…yet to undo lifelong holdings of suffering and pain is exactly what we need to do. For as we lessen fear and hatred we open space for compassion for ALL of us. After all, we are part of all life.

I offer these steps of mindfulness as a basis for us to begin mindful thinking and action. For me, meditation is a wonderful ground and support to our mindfulness, but I have also seen that learning some basic steps of mindfulness can be helpful in giving us a guide to be more present to our interactions with our own suffering.

We need to learn step by step compassion. Start with small acts of acceptance, small acts of compassion with everyday events. Don’t try to take on the world. Begin, as step 1... to feel your own reactivity or hardness as it arises. Your own mindfulness: Is my heart open? What do I feel? As you begin to learn the conditions of your closing down, Ah… I’m AFRAID, or I am closing my mind with judgement, you invite a way out of that fear or closed-minded response.

This step one is a skill to find out what your body feels, or what your emotions are telling you. Here you will find the hardness or openness of your mind.

THEN in the moment, step 2: Can I pause. STOP, breathe! This is a simple but critical STEP. This moment can help you choose how you will react. Will I choose compassion, or fear, compassion or judgment, compassion to the situation and or compassion to MYSELF? Remember, no negative, hateful self-talk. This means not closing down to yourself with judgment and self-loathing. At this point, you begin to invite yourself out of your own habitual suffering! Step 3… begin again.

These are the steps. If it’s too hard, too big, to find compassion can you find the small forgivenesses, or kindnesses? It has been my experience that compassion may not always be possible, and that’s ok…. If you can’t find compassion, can you be kind or friendly?

If kindness is not possible can you be patient or pause to react? This moment can be HUGE, because it can give you that moment to change your habitual response, to change why and how we hold onto our prejudices. If not, then can you choose to be nonviolent? This can be in thought or action like not yelling at the car in front of you, or not being unkind to a store clerk. Or if nonviolence is not possible, then how about becoming non-attached to the event or story? Knowing the event or story is a condition of this moment, only. It’s temporary. Within each step is a wisdom that helps us build our capacity for compassion in ourselves and for one another.

Every day we affect the web of life with our own suffering or our own LIBERATION from that suffering. Which will it be? YOU decide! I wanted to end with the Bodhisattva dedication which can be recited to help focus our intention to kindness and compassion.

MAY ALL BEINGS ENJOY HAPPINESS AND THE ROOT OF HAPPINESS. MAY ALL BEINGS BE FREE OF SUFFERING AND THE ROOT OF SUFFERING. MAY ALL BEINGS NOT BE SEPARATED FROM THE GREAT JOY, DEVOID OF SUFFERING. MAY ALL BEINGS DWELL IN GREAT EQUANIMITY, FREE FROM GREED, AGGRESSION, AND PREJUDICE.

INCLUDING MYSELF THANK YOU