on a different note I really like this quote from Ram Dass on unbearable compassion (bold and underline by me, italics in the original):
"There is a little statue of the Buddha and it has a little smile at the edge of its mouth and it is called the smile of unbearable compassion. Sounds like a paradox. The smile of unbearable compassion. It is the unbearable compassion. It is beyond bearing and if you were somebody you couldn’t bear it, but you are the universe and that is what you are. You are all of that and it is that balance inside yourself. The smile of unbearable compassion. And that ability to embrace the suffering into yourself, to just keep taking it in and taking it in and look towards it instead of away from it, and look towards it and then take the way in which it reacts in you and keep doing that delicate balancing number, to balance that you still feel the humanity and at the same moment you allow, you don’t sit around judging God like what have you done to me I am a good guy what are you doing this to me for. You don’t apply your rational criteria to the universe because the way karma works is not understandable by your rational mind since your rational mind is a product of karma and a system cannot understand something that is meta to itself. It is a logical impossibility. You don’t hear the full universe.
Here’s where the faith comes and the faith is deepened through your own practices, through your own direct experiences. It’s not belief that someone hands you. It is faith that comes from your own direct experiences. So you learn to keep your heart open in hell. Finally."
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