My test for veracity has always been: How this will settle with a person who is dying? Boundlessness seemed to me to open the door to the true nature of mind that is pointed to in the Heart Sutra.

Compassion has enemies, and those enemies are things like pity, moral outrage, fear.

Most of us are shrinking in the face of psycho-social and physical poisons, of the toxins of our world. But compassion, the generation of compassion, actually mobilizes our immunity.

Since we are already Buddhas, happy and suffering Buddhas, wise and confused Buddhas, we are already Buddha.

To work with Kaz on this kind of project is a fascinating process...He seems to be Dogen himself when offering the translations that we Western collaborators then refine with him.

Kaz came to Switzerland where I was teaching to share with me [Heart Sutra] wondrous insight. There he and I worked on this new translation - with my part being to help render it into a verse form that would be good to chant. Since I have worked with many dying people over the years and often share the Heart Sutra with them, I found this new version that we created together to be so much more accessible to those who were facing death.

I am working on a technical paper on compassion. So I am reading everything I can on the subject, including my own mind and heart.