After this class, I hope you understand the way Empathic Joy revitalizes Compassion, and thus our relationship to suffering.
We're going to talk about what gets in the way of Empathic Joy. We've talked about the practice of compassion in detail, this week I want to touch on the role of the ego or identity. This is particularly important if we find jealously, greed or the comparing mind taking shape.
Last week's video deconstructed how the ego gets in the way of our direct experience. When jealousy, greed or the comparing mind shows up, it really comes back to us letting go of our ego.
These are the primary elements. They can be useful when comparing the experience of joy and compassion. Each practice has a tendency to feel unique. We can harness the contrast to strengthen each of the other practices.
Here's a way to think about the relationship between joy and compassion. In this graphic, the two are embedded in each other. At any give time, we want to be able to access compassion or joy, depending on the situation we find ourselves in.
These next three slides summarize an article from Nyanaponika Thera (1901-1994). Originally from Germany, he moved to Sri Lanka during the Nazi regime.
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He's worked on some seminal books with the Buddhist Publication Society in Sri Lanka.
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Here's a link to the document referenced here.
