Cultivating Compassion, p 5

Just imagine if we were really the servant of an actual person. Imagine if we were under their power, we did not have our own autonomy. Imagine if this person told us what to do, and we didn't have any freedom of our own, and we had no ability to make our own choices. Imagine if we were under the constant watch and the power of another person. This is something that would bring great suffering. If we were in that kind of situation, this would be an experience of immense suffering. That is easy for us to understand.

The fact is that the mind is also like a servant. This mind of ours is a servant to negative emotions. The negative emotions are always the ones who are leading the way, who are telling us which direction to go. We have no ability but to follow the negative emotions, to follow after the negative emotions. They're always the ones who are telling us what to do, how we should act, where we should go.

We are right now in a similar situation: we are the servant to negative emotions. Recognizing this about ourselves should bring about an experience of self-compassion. We feel compassion arising for our situation and we give rise to that and we have the wish to be free. This experience of self-compassion can be so powerful and so important: we recognize the situation, we recognize that our minds are under the power of the negative emotions, and we have the wish to be free from that. This is the experience of self-compassion, the rising of self-compassion, the wish to be free from this form of suffering that we find ourselves in.

We can look to this individual level, to this mind under power of the afflictive emotions. Then we can look to the entire world, and see that the way the world operates is very similar, it's following the same pattern of being under the sway of the negative emotions.

All of the turmoil, all of the suffering we see in the world, can be traced back to the experience of the mind under the power of the afflictive emotions. Because the mind is under the power of the afflictive emotions, so much effort is put into work, our activities become so full of effort and and striving, we are always needing to do more and more and more, and work more and more. Yet our minds are never satisfied.

We have so many things for our physical bodies. We have so many ways of experiencing happiness for the physical body. We have different kinds of clothing, we have an endless variety of foods and delicacies that we can eat, and we have so many different kinds of buildings and houses that can make us feel secure. But our minds are never satisfied. There is no end to this desire and need for more. Why is that? Why do we have that? Why do we have that unending desire? Not only is desire insatiable, but this desire turns into competition. We begin to compete with each other. Different companies or different groups want to compete and outdo each other. They need to have more and more and more.

There's no end to the amount of work, no end to the amount of striving that we have to do to try to satisfy desire. Our bodies experience harm from this, our minds experience harm from this. It becomes very taxing for both our physical and mental selves. This unending desire brings about great suffering. This is all based in the mind and the fact that we are under the power of the afflicted emotions. It's just like drinking salt water. The more we drink, the more thirsty we become. Our thirst is never quenched.

We need to look at this situation. We need to look and remind ourselves that our minds are currently like a servant or attendant of the afflicted emotions. What a relief it would be to liberate this mind, to free ourselves from negative emotions, to have freedom. This word freedom… maybe this word no longer has as much power here in the West. But for me, when I was growing up and I lived in a world where certain words and ideas couldn't be said, then the word freedom had great meaning. Here in the West we have freedom. We have the ability to do whatever we want, but it's become a word that no longer has power. But this word, if you understand what it means, has a very great meaning and it's especially meaningful when we apply it to freedom of mind, the liberation of ourselves from afflictive emotions.