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What is the difference between love and compassion?
lobster
Crusty Veteran
Who loves chocolate? Your partner, your kid, your teacher?
Is compassion love without attachments?
Wouldn't that be . . . expansive . . .?
:wave:
Is compassion love without attachments?
Wouldn't that be . . . expansive . . .?
:wave:
2
Comments
I think if one is honest, when you love someone, you also find compassion comes very naturally. But if you don't love someone, you have to work at the compassion. Once you develop compassion for them, does it mean you love them? I guess that can happen. I've never had it happen, not yet.
Compassion is the activity of the world as the all accomplishing wisdom.
Here is the greenriver killer video, well the small section with the forgiving part anyway.
I study them a lot too, I have seen a few documentaries on him before and it is weird how normal he seems. When he talked about the things he did, it is as he was talking about going shopping or cleaning the dishes, something mundane and normal. He couldn't even remember most of the peoples names or faces, they were just objects to him that needed to be discarded in the end, something that a lot of serial killers share.
Anyway this should not turn into a thread about serial killers, you can see from that video the value and humanity of compassion, it even strikes the killer himself. Like I said if you see the full 45 minute documentary, he is totally stone faced throughout his trial until that man who looks like Santa Claus forgives him.
I'm surprised I haven't seen the whole video, we watch A&E channel a lot. I will have to look it up online if it's available. I thought the same thing, Santa Claus in rainbow suspenders, lol.
I wish I could say I've been a personal witness to a lot of great acts of compassion. I've seen some but a lot of them rather than being true compassion come across as being more of a pity, more " whew, I'm so glad it's not happening to me" which just is not the same at all.
When we were in high school, my best friend was bullied a lot by a snotty girl in our class. A couple years ago, she found him on Facebook and laid out a very long and heartfelt apology and my friend immediately forgave her. Even that was something to see, knowing how he felt about the way she had treated him for so many years.
If you want to watch the entire episode here is the link
It was just last year that he told me about a class action lawsuit that he was in. I knew that, like me, he was raised Catholic. But what I didn't know was that there was a priest that molested him when he was very young (before we ever met). Everything made more sense to me in light of this. But he never told me about this before.
Now, don't get me wrong--a harmful action like that doesn't let someone off the moral hook just because they were molested themselves when they were younger too. I'm not making excuses for anyone. But my point is that no actions spring up out of a vacuum. They do not originate sui generis from one individual-- whether the actions create horrendous damage or are wonderfully beneficial.
Something that has been on my mind today is that people are not 'good' or 'bad' or any one final thing. In my Buddhist practice, I've always thought of no-self (i.e. no independently existing, permanent, essentialised self) in reflecting upon myself. But this is true of others too--and I think this is a Buddhist basis for compassion.
When we judge someone as 'good' or 'bad' we are defining them by identifying a particular activity (or set of activities) with who they are essentially. If we have a bad experience with someone (or witness it) we think, 'That guy is a jerk.' The important word there is the misleading word 'is.' Whether we are aware of it or not, we have set this person's life in stone--they are a jerk, forever.
But the truth is no one IS any one thing. This may be good news, for us and for everyone. Because it means we can change course--for the better or for the worse. I like how Thich Nhat Hanh talks of compassion as watering seeds that are present in different people. We all have different mixes of beneficial and harmful seeds in us. And there is no final balance sheet that one can draw up and keep score to say their bad acts outweigh their good acts (besides, how would we even know the totality of a lifetime worth of acts?).
The point is to cultivate the beneficial seeds--not only in ourselves, but in others. We can't just write of someone as a hopeless case because no one is 100% pure grade evil all the time, for once and for all. Even Hitler had a fondness for dogs and children.
Again, none of this is to let anyone off the hook for their actions, but judgement means identifying someone as 100% a jerk, or a saint, or a whatever. This tendency to essentialise people, to set an identity in stone, to ultimately define them by identifying them with certain actions is the very antithesis of compassion. Compassion is realised through no-self, impermanence and emptiness--not only in 'me' but in all beings.
I'm not sure I have expressed my thoughts as clearly as I would like, but I hope what I'm saying makes sense. It was a sort of mini-revelation to me this evening.
And more strictly on topic, to echo @karasti 's sentiment, one does not have to love someone to have compassion. Acts of compassion may occur between two people who don't even know one another. You can't love someone you don't know. But you can have compassion for anyone and everyone, if you can learn how to be open.
Love is to sincerely wish happiness for others.
I think....
Metta practice is expression of love for oneself thru repeating the phrases "may i be happy, etc."
And Metta also extends kindness (aka compassion) for oneself with the phrases "may my suffering be eased, may i be at peace, may i be safe, etc."
And we direct this practice toward ourselves and others - so there is no distinction to whom specifically our intent of our action of love and compassion is directed. Our intent is impressed on both ourselves and others - and actually transcends ourselves and others - as we are not separate, we are all connected - one.
Is the difference between compassion and love, that love is the internal quality/experience and compassion is the projection or practice of love? Related to this, are Buddhists passionate enablers of compassion/love or dispassionate? If so is @Daiva right and the object, the sun (of love) shines on, not dependent on the nature of the object . . .
otherwise we seem to be describing conditional love . . . not spiritual?