Tag: compassion

Practice Compassion

The Dalai Lama has written a whole book on compassion, which I believe I read over 10 years ago. I like his quote as the true feeling of compassion for others will in fact benefit them and yourself. In this post I want to make a case for adopting compassion, and how it is one of the most important virtues in life.

The Merriam Webster definition:

compassion

noun

sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it

I like this very brief yet powerful definition of compassion. Breaking it down a compassionate person has sympathetic consciousness for others distress and a desires to do something about it. You might also phrase it as a sympathetic awareness for the distress that others are experiencing. There are a number of synonyms for sympathy, but you also might phrase this as a compassionate person has a caring awareness of the suffering of others and wants to alleviate it.

Most of us can be compassionate when it comes to family members, friends, and often with people that think like us, but true compassion is not just for those you love or agree with. True compassion, even for those we don’t agree with means we have expanded our world view to all sentient beings. To be compassionate is a virtue, an unselfish expression of your better self. When your first reaction to things you do not agree with is negative, you are being judgmental, which is one of the biggest impediments to compassion. This propensity to judge others often comes from an inflated ego. Your thoughts may include viewing others as wrong, stupid, uninformed, unintelligent, and of course viewing yourself as better than everyone else or least those you judge.

If you recognize suffering in others and actually decide you want to do something about it, you are practicing compassion. In our very imperfect world there are many opportunities to be compassionate. Some examples may include:

  • Chronic conditions (cancer, heart disease, etc.)
  • Starvation
  • Disease (pandemics)
  • Mental illness
  • Death
  • War such as Russia’s invasion and destruction of Ukraine
  • Racisim and oppressing people based on sexual preference

There are no shortages of pain and suffering in our world, some of this may be very close to home for you. If you are a Buddhist, Christian, Jew, or Muslim you most likely have been taught compassion as part your doctrine or religion. Of course practicing compassion is not limited to a philosophy or religion, as an agnostic you may also be as compelled as anyone else to feel the pain and suffering that surrounds us and want to act. One could make the case that compassion is a universal virtue.

If you think you are a compassionate person, then you may realize the difference between empathy and compassion is about the action or lack of it. You can empathize with the plight of others, but if you do nothing about it you are not compassionate. This isn’t inherently bad and maybe it is a step in the right direction. The fact that you have empathy for others is better than as the quote above states you are just an observer. For most of us our heart is in the right place, but we don’t take that next step because we are so wrapped up in our own troubles, that we can’t take the time to act on the empathy we feel. Maybe we just don’t know how to help.

One of the things we have seen over the past couple of decades in the United States is that Americans are less inclined as in the past to belong to a religious entity like a church. You might ask why does this matter? Well in the past the church was a place that reinforced compassion as a virtue and maybe more importantly provided avenues to practice it by supporting numerous charities and causes. From the article on the web “America is losing its Religion” some of the statistics are shocking:

By the numbers: Gallup poll released last week found just 47% of Americans reported belonging to a house of worship, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% as recently as 1999.

  • The shift away from organized religion is a 21st century phenomenon. U.S. religious membership was 73% when Gallup first measured it in 1937, and stayed above 70% for the next six decades.

Context: The decline in membership is primarily driven by a sharp rise in the “nones” — Americans who express no religious preference.

  • The percentage of Americans who do not identify with any religion rose from 8% between 1998 and 2000 to 21% over the past three years, while the percentage of nones who do not belong to a house of worship has risen as well.

If religion as we know it continues to decline over the next couple of decades, what will replace it? Now you may be agnostic and feel that religion is unnecessary, but surely there will be a void of some sort, and those religious institutions that survive will have less to work with in terms of acting upon their compassion. The need for our society to practice compassion is not decreasing, in fact it is most certainly increasing. The vast income and wealth inequality has only forced more of our world wide population into poverty and often into homelessness.

If you have an awareness of all the suffering in this world and want to act upon it look at your own community. I don’t have all the answers, but there are food banks, homeless shelters, and other charitable organizations that my provide an avenue for your compassion. I feel that if we don’t act things are going to get progressively worse.

References

America is losing its religion

Three Decades Ago, America Lost Its Religion. Why?

In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace

Clinging to a sense of self

Selflessness

Identifying yourself as a role

Think of all the roles you play in your life, from mother or father, provider, democrat or republican, atheist or christian. May be you are a student, doctor, lawyer, policeman, drug dealer, psychiatrist, software engineer, accountant, salesperson, American, Indian, Chinese, South African, Brazilian, Canadian, or Italian. Whatever you think you are you have over the years created this way of identifying who you are by one of these roles or associations. Our sense of self is often all wrapped up in what we do, the roles we play, and who we associate with. This sense of self is of course impermanent as life changes and results in changes in your roles.

Clinging to these roles

Clinging to a sense of self and then creating an ego based on your roles makes for a very limiting existence. Are you really one of the roles you play everyday? I know people who have been crushed by the loss of a job or a spouse because their whole identity was wrapped up in that job or person. There sense of self was all about some external factor and their life seemed over when this association was broken. Carrying around some false sense of ego and self only limits your happiness and separates us as human beings. You are not what you do for a living, you are not a political party affiliation, you are not where your ancestors came from, and you are not a culmination of all the roles you play each day.

Fruits of selflessness

I was reading the Wise Heart by Jack Kornfield this morning and there was a quote by Dipama Barua “In my mind there are only three things: loving kindness, concentration, and peace”. These are the fruits of selflessness, not of someone burdened by the self. As you approach each day think about the times your behavior and thoughts are tied to this sense of self. Does this false sense of self result in happiness?

A role is a role not you

As someone who has lived too many years thinking that my sense of self is what I did for a living; I’ve begun to realize I was terribly wrong. The more you can separate the roles you must play from who you really are, the more joy and openness will permeate your life. Being selfless doesn’t mean you don’t have a sense of your own value as a human being, but it does mean you can now focus on thinking for yourself and you can be more open to valuing others.

Namaste

Right Intent

In my last post I wrote about Right View which is the first step of the Eightfold Path. As you recall the Right View helps us see things as they actually are. The second step is called Right Intent, and builds upon Right View. Right Intent means that you are committed to the path and you are passionate about pursuing it. To have Right Intent also means that you understand the equality of all life, and practice compassion for all living things, including yourself. Without Right Intent you have little chance of following the path. With Right Intent you begin your journey with passion and compassion, and the realization that it is your own desires that are the cause of your suffering.

if-your-compassion

Namaste

 

Sitting on the mat

Sitting on the mat

I was sitting on the yoga mat today meditating as is my custom in the morning after my yoga practice, and I had a couple of thoughts. Like so many of you I find myself thinking about my next conquest, role, position, material thing, or maybe just what lies ahead that day. I always try to turn off the noise when I meditate, either by forcing a thought pattern that will override all these future oriented thoughts, or sometimes I just try to sit and listen. I’m getting to be about 75% sucessful at this most days, but it’s not yet perfect. If you cannot just sit and listen to the sounds around you and drown out the chatter in your mind then you might try focusing your mind on the following themes:

  • Now – Think about now just sitting on your mat, tell yourself there is only this moment. You might repeat the phrase “live in the moment, now is all we have” or something like that.
  • Compassion – You may also consider just thinking about compassion. You might say to yourself “I will be compassionate with everyone I encounter today”.  In addition to this you might say to yourself “I will seek to understand and not judge”. Again use your own words, just focus on the theme of compassion and the words will come.
  • Grateful – A third method I use is to just spend some time reciting a running list of what you are grateful for.  This might include your family, spouse or significant other, children, friends, pets, dwelling, your work, your health, or anything else that you are grateful for.

Often I use all three themes during meditation. When it is all working you feel in the moment and you are enjoying just sitting there. You may find that this is one of the most wonderful moments in your day, when you are really present and not working towards something or for someone else. You will also find that sitting on the mat as I call it prepares you for the challenges of the modern world, making it all a bit more easy to be mindful during whatever chaos comes your way.

Namaste