Most of us find it easy to feel kindly towards the defenseless, but not towards those who intentionally cause harm. Yet these people need our compassion. The Buddha taught that, because each of us experiences the consequences of our own acts, those who behave with cruelty and malice will reap the greatest misery and pain.
From “No time to lose” by Pema Chodron.
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There is something very similar in the Bible, about how it’s easy for anyone to love their friends and family members, but loving one’s enemy take a lot more spiritual strength.
Sue
May 16, 2007 at 9:17 pm |
Not only those that are cruel, but how about those we see as not in need of compassion: can one be compassionate towards Bill Gates?
May 16, 2007 at 10:53 pm |
Sure, the vast majority of people we encounter are neither particularly cruel nor particularly kind. Or they are both of those things in different contexts. So are you questioning how easy it is to be compassionate towards those very neutral or perhaps even “arbitrary” people? Isn’t that the third step in metta meditation?
Bill Gates? Well – does he really need my compassion? I suppose so, in the same way that all sentient beings – including myself – do. Certainly I find it easier to feel compassion towards a Bill Gates than I do towards a neo-Nazi type. I suppose I need to work on that. Not that I will ever condone Nazi-style behaviour. But there is still a way of feeling true compassion for them, as long as you believe in karma! (as in my opening quote on this thread). If you don’t believe in karma, the good old-fashioned-Eastern (ie. not New Age) way, then there hardly seems to be any point in practising or feeling compassion towards sociopaths and so on in the first place.
(I do believe in old-fashioned karma…)
May 17, 2007 at 10:37 am |
I always have reservations about the concept of compassion. These days everybody (yeah I know that is a generalisation — so just about everybody) views compassion as consisting of feeling sorry for the ‘recipient’ and then if possible ‘giving’ them what they want or desire, or what we perceive they want or desire or need.
The best definition of compassion (I reckon) is still the one Rob Nairn uses, but which I seem to recall having initially come across in a book or teaching by a Lama (but I have not been able to find the source or original reading again) and that says it is “the discerning ability to help in an appropriate manner”. So it is not sentimental syrupy nonsense, nor is it about making yourself feel better.
And far too often one of two things happens. Either the giver has a guilty conscience and now wants to make him/herself feel better, so they are only ‘giving’ grudgingly, or it becomes a top-down ‘giving’. And then ultimately I usually also see the entire ego aspect coming into play. The giver wants to be seen to be giving. (Incidentally the giving can also consist purely of voicing your feeling about someone or a situation. So merely telling others how sad you are about the situation in Rwanda or wherever, that alone can be a case of wanting others to ‘know’ that you care or worry.) If you truly feel compassion for a situation (or being) then just get on with doing whatever you are able to do, and if there is nothing that you can do (for whatever reason) just quietly say a prayer or blessing for the situation.
The power of thought (or visualisation, and sending energy) is enormous. So realise that even people like Bill or George need all the compassion and assistance you can muster, not necessarily for their own benefit, but for the sake of the rest of all living beings. And even though there are those who commit unbelievably atrocious acts against other living beings (on a daily, and minute by minute basis, even as I am wring this) that does not mean that I should not ‘feel’ for the recipients/victims, nor for the perpetrator.
And even though I know that my feeling for the victim is not going to make much of a difference, nor is it going to necessarily change the perpetrator, I ensure that I am being mindful, and even more significantly that I do not loose my ability to recognise wrong when it is done. And finally most importantly I remind myself that regardless, I should never loose hope that the wrongdoer can be rehabilitated.
There are far more situations I encounter where there is nothing that I can do for either the victim nor the wrongdoer, than there are situations where I am able to be of benefit or change. But that does not mean that I stop seeing/recognising these situations or acts of wrongdoing. And always, the very least I can do is visualise how it should ideally be (as far as my or society’s ideal goes) and chant a mantra or prayer for change.
But I always feel compassion for the perpetrator, because I know that they are acting in accordance with what the Buddha said was human beings’ greatest shortcoming: ignorance and delusion. Ignorance is not having had access to the information or details (of importance), and delusion is having had access to the relevant detail, but not having understood it correctly.
The most important aspect for me, though, comes in in accepting that I will not be able to necessarily do anything much about anything. Accepting, and letting go. But I never loose hope, never.
Oh, and as for Karma, the ‘equation’ is very simple: action plus cause equals result. And action is anything we think, speak, or do, and cause is the intention or emotion with which we do the action, and result obviously then is the outcome. So no airy fairy nonsense about ‘luck’, fate, kismet or predetermination — you ’cause’ your own luck!
In terms of science and quantum physics they are slowly also coming to realise more and more just how interconnected, and sometimes codependent, everything (all phenomena) is. Everything will ultimately balance itself out. Whether you want to believe that or not, whether you like it or not, it just is (like that)!
May 18, 2007 at 9:19 pm |
I agree that we need to recognise the difference between right and wrong, and not be so overwhelmed by compassion that we are blinded. If we can’t see where someone else is going wrong, we probably can’t believe or acknowledge that we do wrong either.
I also agree that half the time, those situations which really rouse our compassion tend to be those which we can do nothing about, in practical terms. Like the war in the Middle East, or the father whose children burnt to death recently because he had installed security doors in his house, and when the fire broke out they couldn’t get the security doors open. He watched them die, with their pleas for help ringing in his ears. This is the kind of thing that makes one feel completely helpless – and yet as you say, there are always prayers and visualisations… and perhaps these are more important than we realise.