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Developing and cultivating compassion.
The_Fruit_Punch_Wiza
Veteran
I think a problem I have been having is I have trouble building much needed compassion because to a degree I find it hard to feel genuine compassion for someone who willfully creates the causes and conditions that lead to their painful circumstances. It's easy to empathize and feel compassion for someone whose situation was not brought upon themselves, but when a situation or circumstance is a result of willful choices and effort and I cannot seem to build genuine compassion for that person.
For example I can't feel compassion for someone who hurts someone else intentionally because I feel like not only are they thinking wrong, but they take effort into making their circumstances painful. So I have a real stumbling block in generating compassion for them. Any helpful tips?
For example I can't feel compassion for someone who hurts someone else intentionally because I feel like not only are they thinking wrong, but they take effort into making their circumstances painful. So I have a real stumbling block in generating compassion for them. Any helpful tips?
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Comments
So perhaps if you show them how they are bringing pain onto themselves....that is already a way of being compassionate.
But I have no idea. I come to buddhism after a life of believing in tough love, and exposing people's flaws to themselves...so maybe I'm wrong.
Be honest about your own flaws. Do you have some attachment that you are not ready to let go? Do you have a bad habit? Is there something others don't like or hate about you (often a sign of ignorance)?
Obvious mistakes other make over and over can be understood in terms of the subtle mental mistakes we make over and over.
I suppose understanding is the key. If you understand, you're less likely to judge.
Can you give a specific example?
If you want to feel genuine compassion for them, you have to let go of the image, and simply realize that the person is acting only as nature would have them act.
J. Krishnamurti spoke a lot on this topic.
You are not a closed system so it's not them over there and me over here. Maybe that's a good place to start.
I suggest looking next to the Dictionary, and comparing "compassion" with "mercy."
They're very, very close. One huge contrast to be seen between the two words, however, is mercy is not earned.
Mother – I plead for mercy for my son.
Napoleon – This is his second offence and justice demands death.
Mother – I know what justice demands but I am asking for mercy.
Napoleon - He does not deserve mercy.
Mother – If he deserved mercy it would not be mercy.
Napoleon capitulated and let her son live.
noun
sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others : the victims should be treated with compassion. See note at mercy .
ORIGIN Middle English : via Old French from ecclesiastical Latin compassio(n-), from compati ‘suffer with.’
mercy |ˈmərsē|
noun ( pl. -cies)
compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one's power to punish or harm : the boy was screaming and begging for mercy | the mercies of God.
• an event to be grateful for, esp. because its occurrence prevents something unpleasant or provides relief from suffering : his death was in a way a mercy.
• [as adj. ] (esp. of a journey or mission) performed out of a desire to relieve suffering; motivated by compassion : mercy missions to refugees caught up in the fighting. I'm convinced that you are in the overriding majority there. Also, there are times when things done are so heinous that probably only a Gandhi could feel compassion. Compassion is not a mere faculty; it is an art that we learn as we live, but only if we so choose. Loving-kindness (Metta) meditation is a good place to start tackling these demons that affect us all sometimes.
seriously though...how can you not feel compassion? To feel pain is the result of ignorance and to cause pain is the result of ignorance. To quote jesus "they know not what they do." They're like children in their ignorance.
*confusion*
I don't know, this is the trouble I am having. I cannot rationalize away the ignorant hurtful acts of others, I know what wisdom, morality, and mental development means, and with that in mind it's just impossible for me to say that another person who willfully harms another has the same level of wisdom, morality, and mental development as another person. It's like comparing the Dalai Lama with Hitler and saying that they deserve the same circumstances when honestly I don't think they do. The Hitlers of the world brought their pain upon themselves. I can't get the compassion working either without making it feel hollow.
I think it is knowledge, not ignorance that is making me suffer, because don't get me wrong, I don't wish any harm on these people because like me, they just want to be happy, but I do know that they've done something harmful on purpose and will reap what they've sown and I feel like it they were completely responsible for how they ultimately end up (suffering).
In the same way, you can feel empathy towards people who are in jail, but that doesn't mean you want them to just be released. I am not quite sure what compassion in situations like that looks like though.
That is actually very helpful, but doesn't that mean that my values are preceding the regard I have for the pain of others?
That's no good.
And I do, and it does. I would rather it not have happened in the first place.
True indeed. It happens.
So it is normal for compassion to come with painful feelings? That's really an interesting way of putting it. So I guess I need to increase my pain tolerance?
No idea. (>_<)
We definitely are, but how does that rid one's indirect conceit in believing one has less delusion than another?
Oh, then I might actually be getting better at it. And here I was thinking I wasn't developing much lately in practice. I thought I was backsliding or something. I guess this frustration increase is normal.
Yeah, that's a tough one. And particularly, it's difficult to have compassion for someone who is evil (let's not mince words) and appears to be winning. And the people who you list -- Hitler and the rest -- appear to have gotten out of life easy, compared to the amount of suffering they inflicted on others.
When I started to take the teaching to heart, I did not start with people like Hitler. There was a local story of a gunman who was sent with some others to kill a man in his apartment. In front of his family. The victim's seven-year-old daughter stood in front of her father, to protect him. So the gunman shot him through her.
My job was to cultivate compassion for the gunman, I figured. And this took years. In the end, I came to see him, and other such people, a certain way.
Imagine a small child who hates someone. So he makes a puppet of that person out of his hand, argues with it, and finally stabs it repeatedly. When the puppet is bleeding heavily enough, the child exclaims, "Ha! Ha! I win!"
This is hateful thinking. When we think hatefully about someone, the image we have of them is composed of the substance of our own 'soul.' This is easy to see:
Perhaps you've had the experience of having an argument, in your mind, with someone who isn't really there. And you don't need to think up what 'they' say. Their image in your mind has the reply ready.
Now, unless you're telepathic, that means that you yourself are generating those replies. So that image is you. It's a puppet that you're working. Then when you hate the image of someone in your mind, you're hating yourself.
If you believe in Karma, you know that, over the long run, the gunman did himself even more harm than he did the little girl or her father. Therefore it is correct to have compassion for the gunman.
It's not easy to have that perspective, because such consequences are not available to the senses. Meditating on cause and effect in this lifetime helps get the view.
Buddha bless,
Conrad.
PS.
I recently talked to a friend who hates a certain political figure. It doesn't matter who. I agree with my friend's politics, but when he started talking about how deeply he wishes X to have a slow, agonizing, horrible death, I demurred.
He was into it, so I let him blow off steam. When he was out of energy, I told him: "The fact is that you can't hurt X. You can, however, hurt yourself."
Stop hurting yourself. Have compassion even for people who hurt you and those you love. It's bad enough that they hurt you. There's no cause to add to it.