<span class="chinese-post-title">ལེན་པའི་གོ་རིམ་རང་ནས་བརྩམ། །</span> Begin Sending and Receiving Practice with Yourself

In Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Our own breath seems to be a cycle of releasing and forgetting the self. When we expire I let go, maybe diluting my small self.
And perhaps that dilution, that let go, creates the space that is needed to bring others in. By letting go ourselves (our selves?) we give the opportunity to others to come and share our suffering and for us to share theirs. To start with ourselves creates the conditions for communion.
TO study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be activated by the myriad of things. This actualization - or at least one aspect of it - is the communion that allows compassion.

Upon reading "Training in Compassion" by Norman Fischer