When I reflect on the many practices of bodhisattvas, I am thinking that there must be times when compassion is too overwhelming, and there are simply so many afflictions that we undergo. But to be simple, I like to believe that all relationships are about the mind, which is neither "private" nor "public": that is, it neither exists "out there" in some other world that is beyond my seeing, or "in here". So, the whole idea that we need to save all these beings or do something for everyone---maybe it's not so overwhelming once it's understood that the field of mind is endlessly present. It's not something in the distant future that needs fulfillment but it is what is always unfolding in the now. When this is reinforced, then there is no longer some struggle to reconcile the opposites of public and private.
Put it in a different way: sometimes, you experience the conflict between what you feel and how you think you're supposed to feel, so there is some effort to put on a face. Then you imagine there is this conflict between inner and outer. But in act, even the concepts of inner and outer are just two separate moments, two separate thoughts that don't conflict at all. They are passing moments. One doesn't interact with the other or get in the way of the other. The notion of something I need to do "out there" is only a projection that I created. Whatever is needed to be done is actually what is already present to me in the moments I inhabit.
as if playing a movie in your mind, and you are the writer, the editor, the roles, the director, and now an audience ~ all the appearances are illusion ( Diamond sutra)
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