Elements

I sometimes like to look at my own life's development in terms of the elements. When I was growing in the womb, I was like the amniotic fluid in which I resided. I was unconscious, flexible, fluid, malleable. After being born, my body gradually hardened and stiffened. From rubbery newborn, I became a dynamic and aggressive toddler.

Growing from baby to child to adolescent is a hardening process, a process of individuation and forming of more rigid boundaries. More like stone plow than water, as a young adult, I learned to fend off rejections and other assaults on my self image. I plowed a path into a work life. I honed the blade of my plow against the rocks of prejudice, materialism, class and ignorance.

It was familiar and easy to continue to harden as I approached middle age. A certain amount of financial stability made me less dependent on social supports and networks. I had a fixed idea of where my life would go as a plow in the secure, walled field of my life.

The AIDS epidemic represented a boulder far stronger than my plow. It shattered that hardened me. The resulting congregate person, pieced together initially from the old hardened me, fumbled along for a short while. No straight furrows through the intense, changing morass of the epidemic could be plowed. So, I dissolved into it, became part of the soil of the epidemic itself.

By working within the devouring beast, which was decimating my community and my own life, I gradually learned that being more like water than stone worked better for me. Working my way back to the fluidity of my pre-conscious, amniotic self has been a form of liberation. Rebirthing, perhaps.

My practice is leading me gradually to that end point at which I will concretely become like water, like air...simply water vapor, dust and dissipated electromagnetic energy. I believe that approaching that end point, awake and alive, without struggling with the elemental realities of being is perhaps the height of what is means to be human. I also believe that any person who does this will inevitably become a mindful and compassionate creature.

Perspective

My key to compassionate behavior is always realizing my own perspective is uniquely mine.

My upbringing, my genetics, my body chemistry, my body architecture, my neural wiring...these are what make me who I am and how I perceive reality. Even if I had an identical twin, my twin would have different perspective from me, because my twin would be seeing through his own eyes and hearing with his own ears and feeling with his own touch. His experiences would be different from mine. That would shape a different perspective, no matter how much we would share in common.

In stressful situations, I have to fall back on my practice to take a deep breath and find this key to compassion. And, as I age, life becomes more stressful on a basic biological level. Practice offsets much of the biological stress. Yet, in my interactions with those who are not committed to practice of any kind, I must rely on compassion to avoid conflict and promote peaceful coexistence.

Trying to leave my own perspective for even an instant is very hard at times. Doing this regularly by consciously trying to learn the perspective of others is another building block of my practice. This does not necessitate accepting the values of others. It simply entails listening and trying to understand.

The most compassionate behavior toward some people I encounter, after I listen and observe them to understand their perspective, is to walk away from them without any interaction whatsoever. Occasionally, I realize that the most compassionate behavior is to simply continue to listen, to offer a smile, a comment or some form of concrete assistance. Sometimes, the compassionate choice is to accept the concern and help of another.

When I center my own perspective on compassion, while trying always to be mindful of the realities of the moment, I find that peace and harmony, both internal and external, are quite achievable with work and persistence.