01. Introduction

2025 UK Dharma Celebration

01. Introduction

31.10.2025

We’re here to celebrate Dharma - true protection for our mind. One of the most powerful methods for protecting our mind is compassion. Compassion naturally develops in our mind when we see the suffering of someone we love. We step out of ourselves and wish for them to be free from their suffering. This is a glimpse of our Buddha nature. This is our potential for pure and everlasting happiness. Every living being has this potential. We need to nurture, nourish, protect, and grow this seed of compassion. So that it starts to include more and more beings, to extend it to all being without exception. When we have a realisation of universal compassion, we will have the compassion of a Buddha, which has the actual power to protect and free living beings from suffering.

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When we become a Buddha our happiness radiates eternally as compassion, nourishing all living beings and gradually drawing them into the same state. -HTTYL

There are 2 main causes of universal compassion:

Love for all living beings
Then contemplate their suffering

Then compassion will naturally arise. How to train in love?

A mind of pure love regards others as precious and important. We can regard them as precious by recognising that we need living beings to love, because that’s the only way to develop our Buddha seed.
Just as we need Buddhas to attain enlightenment, so we need all living beings to attain enlightenment. Contemplate the sufferings of living beings - birth, sickness, ageing, death, encountering what we don’t like, parting from what we like. Seeking happiness where real happiness cannot be found. Over and over again.

In the introduction to Modern Buddhism Geshe-la says:

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Each and every living being has the sincere wish to avoid all suffering and problems permanently. Normally we try to do this by using external methods, but no matter how successful we are from a worldly point of view – no matter how materially wealthy, powerful or highly respected we become – we shall never find permanent liberation from suffering and problems. In reality, all the problems we experience day to day come from our self-cherishing and self-grasping – misconceptions that exaggerate our own importance. However, because we do not understand this, we usually blame others for our problems, and this just makes them worse. From these two basic misconceptions arise all our other delusions, such as anger and attachment, causing us to experience endless problems.

We blame the wrong objects. Instead of blaming others we need to blame delusions.

In HTTYL:

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Pure compassion is a mind that finds the suffering of others unbearable, but it does not make us depressed. In fact, it gives us tremendous energy to work for others and to ==complete the spiritual path for their sake==. It shatters our complacency and makes it impossible to rest content with the superficial happiness of satisfying our worldly desires, yet in its place we will come to know a deep inner peace that cannot be disturbed by changing conditions. It is impossible for strong delusions to arise in a mind filled with compassion. If we do not develop delusions, external circumstances alone have no power to disturb us; so when our mind is governed by compassion it is always at peace. This is the experience of all those who have developed their compassion beyond the limited compassion normally felt for those we feel close to into a selfless compassion for all living beings.

Our compassion is like rocket fuel. If we’re struggling with our practice - with laziness, procrastination - we need to develop our compassion.

A powerful method to develop compassion is to use our suffering as a bridge to empathise with and feel the pain of others.

Meditation: taking and giving by mounting it on the breath

02. Meditation 1