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The Great Sutra Treasury - Southern Transmission 19
Humankind is the most ferocious species on earth, but also the gentlest; recognizing this helps to generate faith in our capacity for peace and reconciliation. Through the practice of compassion meditation, beginning with loving our own five skandhas—form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness—we heal body and mind: breathing and smiling to our wounds so that the sweet substance of compassion can spread; practicing mindful eating, walking meditation, and sitting meditation as nourishing meals for both body and mind, while living deeply in the present moment.
Facing impermanence and non-self—from the five skandhas, the three notions of self, possession, and coexistence, to the six sense organs and six sense objects—we practice contemplation as taught in the sutras such as the Fire, the Lion, and the Yamaka Sutras, to see that all dharmas are without self, without separate birth and death, helping to gradually extinguish delusion and attain fearlessness. The story of Y Lan—equipped with the tools of mindfulness to calmly overcome an earthquake—illustrates the power of the practice in a life full of uncertainty.