There are various ways to use this reflection. One of them is to look at examples in your life and also to look at examples in other peoples' lives in which the balance of compassion and equanimity was important, and when is was in balance and when it was not in balance. To give you an example of two very extreme cases on each end of the scale; one is Mother Teresa when she first went to India. She had a lot of compassion for the poverty and the sickness and so on, but her compassion stayed balanced with equanimity so she went about trying to do something, intelligently trying to get support, raise money, build hospitals and so on. So her compassion was very balanced, very strong, with equanimity and it produced much benefit for many people.
Now an example when compassion was strong but there was no equanimity is 5 or 6 years ago in the United States; there was a bombing in Oklahoma City and two guys evidently arranged this bombing and one of them had been a honored soldier in the United States army. He had been given an honor for his good service. From what I read, he had a lot of compassion of a sort for the American people, he felt that America was going the wrong way. And he wanted to alarm or "wake up" America as to the direction it was going in. But the way that his compassion went was into aversion. It went into blowing up a building, killing over a hundred people. So this was a case where seemingly this person had a type of compassion for an issue which is quite relevant in the world today, and yet it went into aversion. Mother Teresa's compassion stayed strong with equanimity and helped many people.
So inwardly and outwardly we can do this type of reflecting about ourselves and our life, and looking at others' lives outside. What are some examples? We look into our own past. When did we need this balance? Was it in balance or was it not in balance? And we try to examine different situations when we were in balance. We try to remember what happened, we look at situations when it was not in balance, when our compassion went into anger on one side or grief on the other. We try to understand how it went off balance and by examining these experiences in our life, and also examining it outwardly, we get more of an understanding of how important this relationship is and how to work with it.
The issue of to care and not to care has been something that we can reflect upon separately and yet there is another aspect of this reflection in which we want to look at life and really make more decisions about what we care about. A lot of people care about things that just aren't very important, aren't very important at all. People will have nervous breakdowns, planning, say, a big wedding anniversary because it is so important, so important and yet the day comes, people have a bit of sharing together and the day goes. Yet some people get totally wiped out with anxiety just to arrange a party. And yet very few people will actually consider the deeper aspects of their life and the death moment .
So what is more important to care about? When and if you are back in the West, what is most important to care about? Is a TV show important? Is a magazine important? Is going to watch a "footy game" important, or whatever else?! Are these things important? Or is there something else more important to think about? I think earlier Rosemary talked about direction, having a direction in our life this is very important. To care and not to care. What are we going to care about? Are we going to care about our direction in life or are we going to care about a kind of frivolous entertainment in our life, what are we going to care about more? These are important things to reflect upon.