Compassion wishes beings to be free from their suffering. If we donʼt really believe that they can be free-that deep freedom, security, well-being, and joy is a real human possibility-our compassion tends to lapse into despair. Then it is not a liberating force for anyone. Compassion becomes a liberating force when we know the freedom that it wishes for beings to be real.

…[T]he complete realization of enlightenment is experienced communally, embodied in joyous communion with many others through the wise love that wills deepest freedom for all. To be fully enlightened is to have fully unleashed the liberating power of such enlightened qualities, so that they spontaneously bless and evoke the corresponding goodness dormant in the hearts of many other beings.

In our meditation, we are discovering the innate buddha that has been hidden within our minds and bodies all along, a great capacity of unconditional love and pure awareness that discerns and resonates with the corresponding capacity that is hidden within all others. This is the dawning of pure perception.

Through non-conceptual meditation, we start to sense the vast nature of goodness that had been hidden by our ego-clinging. And we sense that this is equally true for all the others around us. Together we have been lost from our true nature and together have suffered for it. From this recognition flows tremendous loving compassion for all beings equally.

Wise compassion reverences the inner worth of every single person. But it also sees into the layers of their suffering, including the suffering they create for themselves and others through ego-centered thought and action. Wise compassion confirms the intrinsic dignity of persons even when it confronts the harmful ways that they think and act. Such compassion challenges people in the ego-centeredness while upholding their fundamental goodness.