Use code SUMMERPRACTICE for a 25% discount on all On Demand Courses through August 31.

Is there compassion for the self? Go deep. Is compassion the end of self?

With Christopher Titmuss recorded on May 23, 2021.

Found our teachings useful? Help us continue our work and support your teachers with a donation. Here’s how.

The Dharma flies with two wings – compassion and wisdom. Compassion emerges from a liberated wisdom. That happens when constructs in the mind lose their significance. The emptiness of self and the emptiness of dependency on feeling tones take priority. This talk also explores the contraction of compassion into self interest. The liberation of compassion reveals the dissolution of ‘I’ and ‘my.’ Today’s teaching offers a reminder of the meaning of ‘acting out of compassion’.

Listen to the audio version below, or click here to download the mp3.

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Willa Blythe Baker

    Belonging: The Dharma as a Journey to Connectedness

    Behavioral scientists have long known that human beings are wired for connection. But recent studies show that in the wake of the social isolation imposed by the Covid crisis, the world is experiencing a spike in loneliness. In such times of isolation — physical or felt — how can meditation help? What do the Buddha’s…

    Read More

  • Nathan Glyde

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nathan Glyde – Week of May 23, 2022

    This week’s topic is An Enigma Inside A Mystery. We typically freeze in amazement or feverishly search for causes when we suffer dukkha (life’s tension). We’ve probably all experienced how these reactions exacerbate the problem. The Buddha taught that dukkha is a puzzle that can be solved: it doesn’t have to be a mystery. We can learn the resolution that brings us from bewilderment to marvellous release by paying quiet attention to the pattern of the difficulty.

    Read More

  • The freeing of human consciousness: from seeing the world ‘out there’, separate and alien, to directly knowing, feeling, and living the intimacy of all things

    The Shurangama Sutra, which points out the foundations of Zen practice, discusses the essential nature of mind as the “primal essence of consciousness that brings forth all conditions.” Implied is the heart-mind (citta) both profoundly intimate with all things while at the same time free and independent of all things. How is it to live…

    Read More

  • Zohar Lavie

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of 01 June, 2026

    This week’s theme is: Joy in Practice; gladdening the heart in service of awakening

    Joy, gladness and delight are important factors on the path. They arise as fruits of the practice, but they are also skills that can be cultivated and developed. This week, we will reveal, align with and nourish these liberating qualities. Tasting for ourselves their impact on experience, in service to the wellbeing of all beings.

    Our Dharma Library thrives through collective generosity. Your donation helps sustain this offering for our entire community.

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Christopher Titmuss – Week of 17 February, 2025

    We’re delighted to have Christopher Titmuss guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May they support and deepen your practice.

    This week’s theme is: Deep Psychology Of Karma

    Join us as we explore the Buddha’s profound teachings on karma (kamma in Pali), a central aspect of Buddhist teaching that’s often misunderstood or overlooked. Christopher will guide us in examining karma not through abstract theory, but through our own direct experience and practice.

    Together, we’ll investigate the intimate connection between our intentions, actions, and their results – both in meditation and daily life. We’ll look deeply into what creates binding patterns of karma, both wholesome and unwholesome, and discover what actions can free us from these patterns altogether.

    Our Dharma Library thrives through collective generosity. Your donation helps sustain this offering for our entire community.

    Read More

  • Dave Smith

    Mindfulness and the Addiction Economy

    Our devices have become weapons of mass distraction, we have lost the attention economy and now we are living in the addiction economy. Everyone is addicted, we all know it, few will admit it, yet we all seem to accept it. Turning inward and taking an honest look at our dissatisfaction and facing what fuels…

    Read More