Cultivating Compassion, p 3

To do this again and again, to have this thought arise again and again on a regular basis in our lives and to make that part of our lives, this is what we call practice. Not falling under the sway of negative emotions always and to have the wish to be free from negative emotions, this is the practice of what we could call self-compassion.

When we are no longer a slave or a servant to negative emotions and we have the experience of compassion arising within us, then naturally we also experience peace. But we also need to make an effort to cultivate compassion. When we do so, the experience of inner peace comes naturally to us. This is the root of the experience of compassion: it has to be something that we experience ourselves. We must have the actual experience in ourselves, a very real experience of compassion. It can't be a conceptual or a big idea of compassion. It has to be felt by us, experienced by us. When we do that, then naturally the experience of peace and inner peace comes about.

We always talk about compassion for all sentient beings. We say, may all sentient beings be happy. That’s a very grand kind of statement that we make, but first we have to experience it for ourselves. Self-compassion is the wish for ourselves to be free from suffering and to experience what that's like. We also want to have compassion for those who are close to us, who are directly in contact with us -- our parents or our loved ones, our friends, families -- for all of these, we can develop the feeling of compassion.

We develop the wish for others to be free, and then knowing that experience, knowing what it tastes like, knowing what it feels like, we will experience inner peace. We will experience a decrease of our self-centered attitude, our self-cherishing, and we will have a genuine spiritual experience of compassion. It's very easy to mouth the words, "may all sentient beings in this universe be free from suffering, may they have compassion, may they have happiness, or may all people in this world and the countries of this world be free from suffering and may they have happiness." That's very easy for us to say, but the root is to first have the experience. It can be an experience of compassion for oneself or for those who we are in relationship with; it's an experience of loving kindness and the wish for them to be free, that is the root. We must have that experience first before we can make very broad statements of wishing for all sentient beings to be happy.

First we begin with ourselves. We ensure that we ourselves and those who are in our immediate surroundings are the ones we cultivate compassion for. When we do that, then we will experience peacefulness. We will taste what it's like to experience compassion, to know what compassion is like. And then we will know the power of compassion.

The Mahayana has a very vast goal, a very vast focus. When we are working with compassion, when we are trying to develop compassion, we hold that focus in our minds. We hold the ideal of all sentient beings to be happy on a very vast scale. But we have to begin with ourselves. It doesn't really make sense if we have a goal or focus for all sentient beings, but those who are near us, those who are in our immediate surroundings or we ourselves are not recipients of that compassion. If we are not compassionate towards ourselves, but we are saying that we are compassionate towards all sentient beings, then the goal has become reversed. If all sentient beings are the objects of compassion, and yet we ignore ourselves and those who are very near to us -- if we're not feeding our pets, or we are not kind to our parents, those beings who are very near and dear to us -- but we are saying at the same time that we are wishing compassion for all sentient beings, then that is missing the point. This is a reversed application; if we are saying that we want all sentient beings to be free, then we have to hold compassion for those who are near to us, such as ourselves or our family members.

It's important to begin with oneself and to have an experience of compassion beginning with oneself and those who are near to us. From there, we experience the taste of compassion, we can have a genuine experience that we can then apply to all sentient beings.