Where is your compassion?

music

Spiritual people, not just Buddhists, often talk about compassion and how important it is to cultivate the spirit of forgiveness, empathy. But most of the time their compassion is misdirected. Let me give an example: Boston bombing. It is easy to sympathize with the victims - of course they deserve sympathy - but how many people can sympathize with the perpetrator? Isn't that the real test?

You show compassion toward the victims because you feel close to them, or because they're part of your 'team' (in terms of nationality, race, whatever), or for whatever reason. Point is, this so-called compassion is simply identification of the ego with something larger - patriotism, mostly, but it could be anything. That's not important. What's important is that it is easy to be compassionate in such cases - no effort is necessary. In fact, Christ said something to that effect: it is easy to love those who love you. Even sinners/tax collectors do that, but it is more important to forgive those who hate you, persecute you.

So the real question is: are we ready to love and forgive the most evil, the most wicked ( and not merely 'send' metta to victims, which is a ridiculously easy thing to do)? Else, our spirituality is bogus.

Lee82

I don't think that is a particularly good example of what you are trying to say. Compassion transcends race or colour, I don't identify with the victims yet feel sympathy for them. It is more about innocence; you feel for the victim against the aggressor. Who is to say that some evil people were not victims? One of the dead could have been terrorising people for years and it is those victims who you would hope now feel compassion for the dead and their family in these times, because relative to the event they were innocent and did not deserve to be a victim. In the fullness of time you may feel compassion towards the aggressor if you learn that it is a failing of society that let him down and changed him into who he became, but on the face of a random act of violence against innocent individuals why does the aggressor deserve compassion?

Invincible_summer

How are you so sure that "spiritual people" don't feel compassion for those who do us wrong?

lobster

Personally I feel metta to these potential marathon running Buddhas, brain surgeon etc who have become killers instead. How can you not. It is such a waste of potential to do good. Such effort, commitment and determination to change the world . . . they did . . . they killed . . . what they could have done . . .
It is like the pain of the demonised. They suffer and share it out . . . it might be all they have to offer . . . a warped and twisted offering . . . :bawl:

music

Lee82 said:

on the face of a random act of violence against innocent individuals why does the aggressor deserve compassion?

Compassion doesn't ask why. It asks how.

The reason isn't important. In fact, even if we conclude that the aggressor deserves no compassion, it is our duty to love and forgive him. it is a command, not a request - like Christ's command - love your enemies and pray for them. Christ wasn't making a polite request. He meant business. Buddha was no different.

person

Yeah, I agree that we need to learn to expand our circle of compassion. Feeling concern about our close ones is very natural. The spiritual path asks of us to work to broaden that circle to include all beings. A simple but powerful argument for doing so is that all beings are like myself in that we all want to find happiness and to avoid suffering.

In the Boston Marathon thread there were a few examples of people expressing sympathy for the younger bomber so I think there are some people here at newbuddhist paying attention. :thumbsup:

lamaramadingdong

To understand all is to forgive all.
French prover

lamaramadingdong

b

riverflow

hahah I was thinking about doing that myself !

karasti

absolutely I feel compassion and sorrow over the perpetrators. Even as a teenager I felt it for Timothy McVeigh as well. Their lives, their families are ruined because of their actions too. The elder Boston suspect had a wife and young child. I feel bad for those who have to go on without their loved ones, and those with such horrible injuries. But those people also have a terrific support system in their loved ones and now the entire country. The living suspect, not so much. I practice metta equally for all the victims, and I consider the suspect to be a victim as well. Of what, I'm not sure. A victim of his brothers crazy ideas. A victim of some type of suffering I can't even fathom. No doubt he is suffering now as well, just like the victims of the bombings. So yes, I feel and practice compassion and metta for him. For his family. For his dead brother and his wife and child. For the people who are so angry. For the people who are afraid. Don't assume things about people you don't know, @music. It is possible to learn compassion for all beings, even the "bad" ones. He was someone before he dropped the backpack on the sidewalk. He is not solely defined as the one horrible act he is suspected of.

how

To view compassion from the vantage point of the Ego is to see others in relationship to oneself. To view compassion through selflessness is to experience the intrinsic interconnectedness of all existence.

A Buddhist practise over time moves one's understanding of compassion from the conditioned limits of mentality to the unconditional expression of the transcendental.

What starts as one reaching out beyond our shell to connect with others shells evolves into understanding that all shells are just the dream we are trying to wake up from..

zombiegirl

I saw this on my fb today...


Sigh. ...I just... can't even...

vinlyn

My answer will not be popular...but it is only my answer...for me...and I am not suggesting others should have the same answer.

I can have forgiveness and compassion for things which can heal and be undone.

But legs blown off cannot be healed or undone.
An 8 year-old's death cannot be healed or undone.

And at least half of the statements that I see people make about forgiveness and metta for everyone is:
a. stated from a distance where it is irrelevant
b. naive
c. pure bull toddy
d. all of the above

I know a lot of you will not agree and will even dislike my viewpoint, and I don't really care much. Someone asked, I answered.

nenkohai

... in the sense that we are all human and something, somewhere, bent these guys' minds... that as humans we can all be susceptible to some level of persuasion that may not be healthy. I'm not saying we can all be persuaded into committing murder, but that we all, inherently (I believe) contain the same "mechanism."
Scary thought, for sure.

person

Geez @vinlyn, always so sheepish. When are you going to come out of your shell and tell us how you really feel.

Jeffrey

@vinylyn, yet it is traditionally taught that the bodhisattvas never give up in trying to liberate sentient beings. They see directly that with awareness practice the moon can come out from behind the clouds. Ignorance caused the boston bombing and ignorance is impermanent.

vinlyn

Jeffy -- I am not a bodhisattva.

zombiegirl

Offering forgiveness and compassion does not mean that he should not be held accountable for his crimes, it means that you don't harbor hatred or resentment toward the individual... that you recognize that no incident is isolated.

He violated our laws and will be punished accordingly. To even consider giving him a free-pass wouldn't be a compassionate response either. I take no joy in the sufferings of others and I take no joy in the punishment of the perpetrator. I just find the situation sad all around. It all comes down to the famous quote comparing anger and the hot coal that I'm sure we're all aware of...

But you're right, as a knee-jerk reaction, I probably would feel differently had mine or a loved one's legs been blown off... but as I've learned with other injustices I've experienced in the past, holding onto anger helps nothing... it only exacerbates. I used to fantasize about destroying the life of the guy who sexually assaulted me... from telling his wife to showing up at his work to just straight up violence... but it never made me feel better. I suspect actually going through with my plans wouldn't either. The reason is because anger is a burden, albeit, a very tempting one. Letting go of anger and forgiving someone doesn't make you weak and it does not mean that you are condoning their actions, it just means that you refuse to carry that burden anymore.

music

vinlyn said:

Jeffy -- I am not a bodhisattva.

Try to become one. Then the journey would have some significance.

lobster

Try to become one. Then the journey would have some significance.

:clap:

You tell 'em @Music . . .
Be as hard on others as you are on yourself . . .

. . . choose to be a little kinder when ready . . .
:clap:

vinlyn

music said:

vinlyn said:

Jeffy -- I am not a bodhisattva.

Try to become one. Then the journey would have some significance.

After you.

seeker242

"Monks, even if bandits were to carve you up savagely, limb by limb, with a two-handled saw, he among you who let his heart get angered even at that would not be doing my bidding. Even then you should train yourselves: 'Our minds will be unaffected and we will say no evil words. We will remain sympathetic, with a mind of good will, and with no inner hate. We will keep pervading these people with an awareness imbued with good will and, beginning with them, we will keep pervading the all-encompassing world with an awareness imbued with good will — abundant, expansive, immeasurable, free from hostility, free from ill will.' That's how you should train yourselves.

Wise people follow the above. Or at least they try to

Cinorjer

I don't want people to be punished. I just want them to stop hurting each other. The violence people do to each other doesn't make me angry anymore. It just makes me sad.

I don't know if that's compassion or I'm just weary.

karasti

Forgiveness is not so much something we give to others, but something we give ourselves so that we can be at peace and move on. Withholding it does more harm to ourselves than it does the person who committed the wrong. Harboring resentment and a taste for revenge doesn't do a single person any good. Forgiveness and peace however, does everyone some good.

Compassion and metta are what they are, regardless of whether someone else thinks it is possible for another person to feel that way towards a "bad person." Just because one person does not feel it doesn't make it impossible for another. I practice it for those who I know in person who have done harm to others (in my family). I practice it for members of my family who are incredibly difficult, for example my cousin who is always lying to and trying to steal from my grandma. Because I can recognize that people who do these things are suffering. You can see it in them immediately if you look.

Sure it is easy to practice it for my children, for my parents. But they aren't the ones that need it.

person

Having compassion for people who harm others doesn't mean we buy them tickets to the Bahamas and say have a nice time. ~ Matthieu Ricard

vinlyn

What @person said reminds me that we may not all have the same definition of compassion. Compassion may take different forms for different people.

music

vinlyn said:

music said:

vinlyn said:

Jeffy -- I am not a bodhisattva.

Try to become one. Then the journey would have some significance.

After you.

Do as I say. Don't do as I do.

vinlyn

^ No danger of that.

music

vinlyn said:

^ No danger of that.

Then you will love and forgive the perpetrators?

vinlyn

No.

I will allow the direct victims -- the amputees, the parents of the dead small child, the campus police officer and his family -- to decide if they deserve forgiveness.

I am sad for the two perpetrators that they wasted their lives and accomplished only death and destruction and pain.

music

vinlyn said:

No.

I will allow the direct victims -- the amputees, the parents of the dead small child, the campus police officer and his family -- to decide if they deserve forgiveness.

See what I mean? If we impose so many conditions, is that compassion at all? And without compassion, our religion is only an empty shell.

nenkohai

What would the non-dualist say?

karasti

music said:

vinlyn said:

^ No danger of that.

Then you will love and forgive the perpetrators?

Yes. That doesn't mean I can love someone who committed such a crime the way I love my own children. I'm not at that point in my practice by any means. But who knows, one day, that could be one of my children. Allowing myself to think of so-called bad people in those terms allows me to have compassion and love for them. I actually have a harder time seeking forgiveness and love for people like the CEOs of insurance companies and oil companies and pharmaceutical companies and ag companiges who repeatedly and purposely put their profit and wealth about the health and well being of millions of people. But I practice, and I try. Because like the bomber, they need it more than most because they clearly have buried their love and compassion for other beings so far down they can't even see it.

music

karasti said:

music said:

vinlyn said:

^ No danger of that.

Then you will love and forgive the perpetrators?

Yes. That doesn't mean I can love someone who committed such a crime the way I love my own children. I'm not at that point in my practice by any means. But who knows, one day, that could be one of my children. Allowing myself to think of so-called bad people in those terms allows me to have compassion and love for them. I actually have a harder time seeking forgiveness and love for people like the CEOs of insurance companies and oil companies and pharmaceutical companies and ag companiges who repeatedly and purposely put their profit and wealth about the health and well being of millions of people. But I practice, and I try. Because like the bomber, they need it more than most because they clearly have buried their love and compassion for other beings so far down they can't even see it.

I meant something like 'agape', not worldly love that a mother may have for her child. That's quite primitive - even chimps are capable of such love. Agape is the sort of love we must aspire for.

Jeffrey

Mooji explains how if you try to work at happiness you become miserable on account of trying too hard. We can see it as ridiculous, like trying to walk normally we get too self conscious.

lobster

Thanks for all the mooji.
Sense, thoughtfulness, a warm heart and enlightenment. Wonderful example of compassion.