Maezumi Roshi often started a talk by saying, “I just want to encourage you.”

This at a time when we had endless cause for disappointment. We always have endless cause for disappointment, don’t we?

But around that time we had earthquakes, big earthquakes, riots, deadly riots, we had the karma of Vietnam, Nixon, and Reagan. We had protests where the national guard shot and killed college students. We had the cold war, the nuclear arms race, we had oil embargoes, we had the Iran hostages, we had so many assassinations, so very many assassinations.

The world is a crumbling place.

But I want to encourage you. Encourage you to do what? Just keep going. Face reality. Stay present. Love one another. Do the next thing. Stay awake. Stay aware.

This awareness is what you are, what you really are, what we sustain and maintain. Even when you feel most unmoored, uncomfortable and afraid, beneath it all is this awareness, this presence, that is your wisdom and your refuge.

I know that many of you, like me, gave a lot to this election. Money, time, faith, hope, optimism, even certainty, however false.  And now we feel empty. Bereft. Even betrayed, with nothing more to give. But there is something we can give, and it’s the fruit of our practice.

As a standard of giving, we say that the best thing to give is no-fear. No fear is infinite compassion. Compassion is not sympathy or pity. It is feeling the pain and feeling the fear of another. How do we do this?  When we don’t have our self-centered ideas, worries, doubts, judgments, what-ifs, and what-thens, then what we give is no-fear. There is nothing more important for us to give right now than that.

A student asked a great teacher, “I am very discouraged. What should I do?”

The teacher answered, “Encourage others.”

This message is from a dharma talk I gave last week. You can listen to it at this link. I offer it to you as encouragement, and by accepting this gift, you encourage me. That’s how this works. That’s the only way any of this works.