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Mindfulness and compassion

zenonezenone
edited January 2010 in Buddhism Basics
Hello,

I'm a very theoretical kind of guy and I'm wondering why mindfulness, or non-judgemental present moment awareness, would lead to increaes in compassion and empathy. So far I've come up with two potential explanations:

(1) mindfulness will lead to an increased awareness of the suffering that is inherent in all existence.
(2) mindfulness will lead to a decreased sense of self as existing separate and apart from other beings and the universe.

I know there is no substitute for direct experience, but any elaboration or additional thoughts on this matter would be very much appreciated.

Comments

  • fivebellsfivebells Veteran
    edited January 2010
    Both of your speculations are true, but not quite in the way that you probably imagine. Compassion is a natural component of basic awareness which gets obscured by reactivity. It is simply the awareness of and identification with suffering. What gets in the way of this is a deep tendency to view the world from a self/other perspective, which leads to a tendency to shore up some notion of an enduring personal existence and personal agency, and a fear of nonexistence and nonagency. We develop patterns of reactive behavior and cognition to protect ourselves from this fear. But the patterns themselves imply the thing we fear, so we turn attention away from the patterns, and then they operate unconsciously. Mindfulness develops the capacity for attention to every detail of our lives, including these patterns. When these patterns have to operate in full awareness, they fall apart. As they fall apart, (1) patterns encouraging ignorance of suffering lose their hold on us and (2) the self/other viewpoint collapses, because it's supported by these patterns. This process progressively uncovers the natural compassion of basic awareness.
  • fivebellsfivebells Veteran
    edited January 2010
    Oh, and if you're a theoretical guy, you might like the book Disciplines of Attention, which covers this tendency to ignorance in very fine-grained detail, and relates it to Freudian psychoanalysis. It's a hard book, but very good and closely argued. Also hard to find. You will probably have to get it by interlibrary loan.

    This stuff is also covered in the "Karma and Dismantling Belief" chapter of Wake Up To Your Life.
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