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Why would a Buddha be Compassionate?
Chrysalid
Veteran
It might sound like a stupid question, but bear with me.
If a Buddha is a person who sees reality for what it really is. Who lacks a sense of permanent self, who sees and knows the origin of suffering etc etc. I can understand why s/he'd be serene and content, but why have compassion and loving kindness for other sentient beings as opposed to indifference?
If s/he sees the world as it truly is, they see that love and compassion are concepts generated by human beings, that the universe by nature is amoral and lacking in compassion/love, why would they still identify with human emotional concepts based on empathy?
If a Buddha is a person who sees reality for what it really is. Who lacks a sense of permanent self, who sees and knows the origin of suffering etc etc. I can understand why s/he'd be serene and content, but why have compassion and loving kindness for other sentient beings as opposed to indifference?
If s/he sees the world as it truly is, they see that love and compassion are concepts generated by human beings, that the universe by nature is amoral and lacking in compassion/love, why would they still identify with human emotional concepts based on empathy?
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thats our nature.
Why is the salt taste salty?
The idea of how to express compassion, that is a concept. The thought "I must be compassionate because I'm a buddha" is a concept.
But if one IS compassionate, that isn't a concept. See my point?
Simply put, Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and those who are inclined to generate metta naturally have compassion for suffering beings. The universe is not amoral by any stretch of the imagination, according to the obvious teachings contained in the Four Noble Truths and The Eightfold Path.
And (supposedly, according to the teachings) it's compassion that arises naturally when enlightenment is reached, not neutrality.
Not really...
Love and compassion aren't real, you can't distill a vial of love or a gram of compassion. They are ways of acting, and they are based on empathy. If we couldn't empathise with others, we wouldn't even think of helping another in distress. I can understand that a Buddha could eliminate hate, anger, etc, but I can't quite grasp why the process wouldn't also eliminate empathy and compassion. It seems odd to me.
I don't see how the 4NT and 8FP negate the idea that the universe is amoral. An asteroid obliterating a city or a landslide engulfing a town aren't acts of hate or love on the part of the universe, they are just events that are lacking in morality. Humans may have a sense of morality originating with our social nature, but that sense of morality is an illusion rooted in the concepts of self and other. A Buddha would surely see past the illusion to the innately amoral nature of events.
Same thing with love, compassion, hate, anger, fear. Its not tangible, but it is real. When you feel hate, it is real. When you feel love, it is real.
The concepts occur when we try to quantify our hate and our love, when we try to define it. When we say "I gave that homeless person a dollar, that must be love." Now you have a concept about love. But when you actually give him the dollar, and you felt something...that emotion wasn't a concept, it was something real that you felt.
...
Then the Blessed One, having understood Brahma's invitation, out of compassion for beings, surveyed the world with the eye of an Awakened One. As he did so, he saw beings with little dust in their eyes and those with much, those with keen faculties and those with dull, those with good attributes and those with bad, those easy to teach and those hard, some of them seeing disgrace and danger in the other world. Just as in a pond of blue or red or white lotuses, some lotuses — born and growing in the water — might flourish while immersed in the water, without rising up from the water; some might stand at an even level with the water; while some might rise up from the water and stand without being smeared by the water — so too, surveying the world with the eye of an Awakened One, the Blessed One saw beings with little dust in their eyes and those with much, those with keen faculties and those with dull, those with good attributes and those with bad, those easy to teach and those hard, some of them seeing disgrace and danger in the other world.
Unconditioned Love isn't emotional - its the unconditioned basis of everything.
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:cool:
How do you know he obliterated a sense of self?
Perhaps he simply realized what his true self was: love and compassion.
That has generally been the view, at least in the West, of human nature..especially according to philosophers like Hobbes. But there is an opposing view that it's the other way around, that human beings are inherently compassionate and loving, with the strong potential to be so right there. But we "unlearn" this, and learn to be selfish, etc. I read an interesting book called <i>The Art of Happiness</i> by a cognitive psychologist in collaboration with the Dalai Lama in which he discusses these differing view of human nature. He also claims that western psychologists are starting to lean more toward the latter view, fwiw.
All praise must go to Dr. Alexander Berzin! His website rivals that of Thanissaro, IMO.
In fact, I like it better.
>.>
<.<
It just happen to be that we are love, and once you remove the defilements, thats whats left.
observing animals and humans in general works well to draw conclusions about their current state.
Not so well to draw conclusions about enlightenment in this case.
In Buddhism, I've heard it said, there is a small sentence that goes, "It can't be helped." Always liked that.
Blue sky is blue -- it can't be helped.
Others did this, and told you that this is what happen.
They told you "don't speculate and think about it too much, don't take my words for it either, just try it for yourself!"
(The Buddha and all spiritual leaders message in a gist)
Well, they were reborn a human. This means that they still have certain emotional and cognitive obscurations keeping them here in samsara. Selfishness, I think, could fall under either of the categories of obscurations.
Emotional: greed to have things for your self, for example
Cognitive: misunderstanding of the illusory nature of self/other
Either way, you are born with a body in this realm of form. You must lug this body around for your entire life. You have to use this body to accomplish things. This body is where your sense organs are located. Even the mind (at least) seems to be located about the body. You have to take care of it because it breaks down if you don't. Some might call this selfish. But it comes with having a body too.
Buddhahood would be easy as well by that assessment.
The teachings I've attended given by Ajahn Sumedho of the Theravada Forest Tradition.
You can listen to a talk he gives on Unconditioned Love here:
http://www.dhammatalks.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=105:unconditioned-love&catid=34:dhammatalks&Itemid=6
Kind wishes,
D.
Maybe compassion is self-interested too.
If your ethics are cr*p, your meditation will also be cr*p.
However, I can't see how that relates to Nirvana, which apparently includes seeing the world how it truly is.
Even beginners like myself can see that actions aren't by nature good or bad, compassionate or malevolent, but that it's our intentions and reactions to those actions that render them in the appropriate form that we can recognise them as compassionate or not.
That Buddha retained his compassion suggests to me that, despite seeing the true amoral nature of phenomena, he chose propagate one state of being and the related set of actions over letting things be as they were. I find it difficult to reconcile that.
Let me ask you a question in return. Why do you get up in the morning? Why do you work, pay the bills, perhaps raise a family? Why have children at all, if the universe doesn't care if they live or die? The way you put it, you have no reason to do anything but take as much as you can for the brief time you're here. And, that is pretty much how a lot of people believe. And, they go through their selfish life suffering because of it. People have tried that way of living, and found nothing but suffering in the end.
All that you say about an amoral universe might be true, but it's irrelevant. Rocks don't suffer, but people do. Rocks don't care if you suffer, but I care. The universe has a destiny but no purpose. It's just what it is. I have a purpose, because of what I am. The Buddha's 8-Fold path leads me to this purpose kicking and screaming sometimes, but here I am. Help all beings.
A Buddha has compassion. There's no because. As soon as you insert a because, it becomes something you do instead of what you are.
Hope this helps.
And for someone who sees that the universe doesn't care, not only understands it but actually experiences that cosmic indifference first hand. From whence does there compassion arise? The only place I can think is their human empathy. And if it arises from their human empathy, how can they have true detachment from the source of suffering?
Infants seem self-ish because they act out of a basic need to survive. The cry because they are hungry and they cry because they feel the need for protection. This is a basic instinct of every animal.
Your forgetting another basic animal behavior: care and protection of their young, or care and protection for their pack. Animals express compassion just as humans do.
And I don't know how you could possibly judge any animal as "greedy". What animal do you know that hordes food beyond its means? And even if it did...how do you know it did so with selfish intention?
I see what you are saying.
Perhaps he saw this too. Perhaps he saw exactly what you are saying, that everything is inherently amoral.
But maybe then he said...well what am I to do now? What reason do I have to live if any action that I take in this world is an expression of a self?
Maybe he just said: I will express compassion.
And it encompassed his entire being.
But...who am I to be saying this? I know nothing.
Easy, see?
But according to Chrysalid, this love that you talk about is just another human emotion and it's human emotion that gets put aside once Buddhahood is attained, or so he (she?) would say.
I don't agree, but I just can't bring a logical argument or an authoritative source to this.
Yes all is one. The buddha not only knows this but feels it. Nothing is more or less important then the other. If a blade of grass is to die, I am to die as well.
This is the entire purpose of the 8-fold path. Ignorance, which gives rise to delusion hatred and greed, is the natural state for all sentient things, and it is the cause of all human suffering. The Buddha is compassionate, because through his empathy and compassion for all living things he has sought to free life from the bondage of suffering.
You have a choice to make.
Be compassionate, and perfect your loving-kindness and wisom, thus liberating yourself and attaining enlightenment and Nirvana.
Or ignore the teachings and remain "neutral," thus ensnared by ignorance and plagued by the suffering of Samsara.
If you don't believe this to be true, then you do not believe in the Buddhist path. Which I don't judge you for, you simply can't refute the basic teachings and still be considered a follower of the 8-fold path.
"2. Samma-Sankappa — Perfected Emotion or Aspiration, also translated as right thought or attitude. Liberating emotional intelligence in your life and acting from love and compassion. An informed heart and feeling mind that are free to practice letting go."
(Italics mine.) So I think that we have it right there- Right or Perfected Emotion or Aspiration, number 2 of the Noble Eightfold Path, rendered as "acting from love and compassion".
So I'm satisfied with that. It's there in the Noble Eightfold Path.
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/8foldpath.htm
If a free mind truly "lets go", how does it retain love and compassion?
Playing devil's advocate for the sake of discussion.
There's no logical or "reality-based" truth of compassion that I know of.
Now, backing up, the end of suffering is dependent on the cessation of desire. Suppressing an emotion is dependent on the desire to not have a specific emotion. Your current view is lacking the fundamental insight of a mind that could give rise the question "if everything is empty and upon enlightenment one transcends suffering and desire, then why don't enlightened ones starve to death?"
I recommend the contemplation of anatta (not-self) to obtain right understanding.
The way I see it, the Buddha's message is essentially a therapeutic one. What matters to him is the alleviation of suffering. Everything else is secondary. Compassion is conducive to happiness, so we cultivate this quality. Developing insight into the nature of things is conducive to happiness also, so we cultivate this insight. The Dharma is the ultimate flowering of the Buddha's compassion.
And this is expressed in the Noble Eightfold Path as taught by the Buddha, which includes a compassionate attitude and compassionate acts.
In other words we see another possibility and we long for it for our selves and others. The first is wisdom mind which is at union with compassionate mind. Trungpa Rinpoche called this the solid stable supporting moon of compassion which traditionally is masculine in Tibetan culture. At union with the insightful cutting wisdom sun of the mind which was given femine principle in Tibetan culture. A sword the hilt would be the moon and the blade the sun. A torch the handle is the moon and the flame the sun.
Even non-Buddhas are compassionate but the compassion is distorted by grasping onto thoughts etc. That is why we feel compassion but in some circumstances something is blocking it. Eg. 'glad its not me' 'overwhelm' 'laugh at them' 'pity' etc....
In your heart of hearts if you know how to liberate someone from suffering wouldn't you do it? Wouldn't you agree someone would have to be effed up if they wanted others to suffer and they must have a lot of baggage ie distortions?