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Compassion
Wisdom23
Veteran
I have several questions on compassion i would like to ask your opinion on.
When i look around i see so much misery and pain it also seems that everyone is suffering in someway. So would the Buddhist idea of compassion suggest i help or try tp help them? If so this seems a huge task and almost makes me feel it is a to greater task for me to take on. Who do i prioritise to help or do i? How would i go about it? Or is it a case of just being sympathetic and empathetic towards other people's suffering.
Secondly there is always i feel the one person you feel ever so hard to be compassionate to. For me it would be a bully who picked on me every single day of my school life. should i be compassionate to him? How would one generate such compassion?
Or is compassion just a byproduct of the process of letting go and i should focus on this rather than smaller qualities?
Thank you for your time and your input would be greatly appriciated.
When i look around i see so much misery and pain it also seems that everyone is suffering in someway. So would the Buddhist idea of compassion suggest i help or try tp help them? If so this seems a huge task and almost makes me feel it is a to greater task for me to take on. Who do i prioritise to help or do i? How would i go about it? Or is it a case of just being sympathetic and empathetic towards other people's suffering.
Secondly there is always i feel the one person you feel ever so hard to be compassionate to. For me it would be a bully who picked on me every single day of my school life. should i be compassionate to him? How would one generate such compassion?
Or is compassion just a byproduct of the process of letting go and i should focus on this rather than smaller qualities?
Thank you for your time and your input would be greatly appriciated.
0
Comments
Bullies and compassion for the more difficult cases comes with time and practice. Your job is not to save THE world, the possibility is to save your world.
Gently does it . . . :wave:
So perhaps a good starting point would be to examine what it is you or I or anyone else is actually talking about. I don't pretend to know what "compassion" is, but I do think it is a good idea to do whatever I do with care and attentiveness ... and then correct the errors.
I don't think that being "sympathetic and empathetic towards other people's suffering" amounts to much. Not saying it's bad, but what practical good is it? It doesn't help anyone, and there are so many people who can be helped. It's sort of like 4 people sitting around playing cards, someone says "isn't it a shame about the people starving in Africa. Whose deal is it this hand?"
I think you actually have hit it on the head when you talk about prioritizing who to help, while adding in thinking about what you as an individual can actually accomplish. For example, I have an elderly neighbor, 79 years old, living close to the cushion financially, but every Wednesday she works for 6 hours at the local homeless soup kitchen. She sees a need where she has the ability to accomplish something to alleviate suffering. I'm more of the make financial contributions type of person, and each year I collect a list of all the charitable contributions I'm asked for, and look for a few other organizations that seem worthy to me; then I sit and prioritize the degree of need I perceive, and begin writing checks on Thanksgiving Day for that year. I don't give as much as I used to due to retirement income, and I probably could give more, but it's a fair chunk of money. There are people I visit and keep in touch with more for them than for me; sometimes I just want to check on their well-being. There are even a couple of people who I don't find very likable, yet they think I'm being a very good friend to them...so I guess even that is compassion on a small scale.
In terms of people who have "wronged" you, I personally wouldn't go seeking them out. But if they wanted to make amends, I would be open to it, and generous about it...with some degree of wariness. On the other hand, over the past couple of years, I have made amends to some people I had wronged. And would a couple more if I knew how to contact them.
But different people have different viewpoints on what compassion is, so I think you will find a variety of answers to your questions.
One compassion technique is to take all the blame on yourself and give victory to others. Chogyam Trungpa has a book on the lojong slogans called Training the Mind. The topic is compassion, basically. You really can do this. Try the book it's amazing if you have room to read a new book. There are other books I am aware of but haven't read like Lama Surya Das' book about the bodhisattva path.
Instead of allowing myself to beat them at their level, I am made to see that it makes more sense to hope they beat me on mine. If they one day see the error of their ways, they could help a lot of people with whatever time they have left just by being extreme examples. I think it depends on what is being let go of. I think compassion is a byproduct of seeing past the individual level of reality to the universal.
I don't put a bandage on a cut finger because I know how it feels to be cut or because I feel sorry for it. I put the bandage on because it is a part of me in need of healing.
As far as compassion in general, seize the opportunity when it presents. It'll present everywhere if you are open to it. The chance to help an old lady carry something to her car. Stop and let pedestrians cross the street. Pick up a stray animal and bring to a vet or shelter if you can. If you notice a neighbors trash was dumped by a dog, clean it up for them. Offer to pick up groceries for an elderly neighbor who usually has to take a cart on the bus. Bring some money to the school and ask them to put it into the lunch account of a child who needs it. And so on. There is just as much need of compassion in your daily life, all around you, as there is for the people who suffer greatly around the world. For sure you can donate or do things to help them. But the most immediate impact will be in the immediate world around you. The smallest things can make the biggest difference.
Compassion is allowing the illusory boundaries that separate us off from the rest of existence to dissipate. Here, self & others lose validity so that working with all suffering is the practice. Here, empathy, sympathy, tenderness & benevolence simply unfolds free of the dream of self.
@Wisdom23, when you talk about a person who is hard to have compassion for, it reminded me of my sister-in-law. She always has a angry demeanor and is very defensive, quick to argue. She has said mean things to and about various members of my family. However, the more I learned about her, I realized how much psychological torture she must be going through everyday. She's constantly vying for her mother's approval against her sisters. She's always worried that my brother will leave her. She's defensive because she always feels that everyone is attacking her. How horrible must that be. One day, she came to visit my mom with my brother. I happened to be there. I'd usually be slightly angry that she's around, but that day, I thought of all the crappiness she must feel almost every second of her life, and I just decided to walk by casually, smile and say hi. I don't know for certain, but that may the only nicety she got that day.
What I've heard about bullies is that they have to have learned that behavior from somewhere, and most of the time it comes from someone at home who is bullying them. They can't fight back because they are just a kid and whoever's bullying them is much bigger, so they have all this pent up frustration that they release on someone they CAN bully. If you're not being bullied at home, it's a good chance the bully has a much shittier life than you do. Or another way to look at it is, being bullied by someone in your own home, a place that is meant to be safe, is much worse than being bullied by someone at school. There's a good chance that the pain that the bully put you through, the bully himself has experience at least twice that amount of pain. My main point is that bullies just don't come out of thin air, they are spawned from a very dark and painful place.