“If you want to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” -Dalai Lama
This moment is a good time to understand compassion and its incredible power, as we collectively experience its welling up after being shown the tragic photo of a migrant father and his young daughter. We are witness to state-sponsored child abuse in our country, and the fire of so many now is fueled by a response of compassion.
Though there are many other responses, including outrage, pity, blame, and even indifference, it is wise to understand compassion and its incredible power, so that we can cultivate this quality of heart and mind that can move mountains.
What is compassion?
The Latin etymology of “compassion” is “co-suffering,” and involves “feeling for another.” It is considered a precursor to empathy, which is the “feeling as another.” Essentially it is the desire to alleviate the suffering of others.
Though compassion is usually associated with having an emotional sensitivity to suffering, it can also be based on more intellectual ideas such as justice, fairness, and responsibility to and for others, due to the oneness of all things. In such cases, to act with compassion could be considered rational in nature and its application considered sound judgment or wisdom.
The substance of compassion is expressed in patience, wisdom, kindness, steadiness, warmth, and a deep commitment to the well-being of another. Expressed in a social context it is called altruisim.
A very elevated expression of compassion is mercy, which is defined as “forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one's power to punish or harm.”
What compassion is not
There is a fine and yet so very essential difference between pity and compassion. Pity is the feeling of sympathy or sharing in the suffering of another human being or an animal. To experience this feeling, we must have experienced it ourselves and it is something we would not want to feel. As a result, with pity, we respond to suffering at times with aversion and from a place of sorrow, which doesn't help the other being.
In the case of compassion, there is the feeling of mercy, empathy, and a desire to help the suffering person or animal, and responds from warmth and care.
Compassion differs from co-dependency has to do with the motivation. Compassion is motivated by a desire to help, whereas co-dependcy is motivated by a desire to appease or rescue another.
Here are three tips for truly understanding compassion and its incredible power:
1) You are wired for compassion, and must be fully present to experience it.
“We are each made for goodness, love and compassion. Our lives are transformed as much as the world is when we live with these truths.” -Desmond Tutu
We are wired for compassion because we have a beating heart! The collective research of several fields of science has proven that the heart is the major center of intelligence in human beings. Cardiologists have discovered that sixty- to sixty-five percent of the cells of the heart are not muscle cells as had been previously believed, but neural cells that are identical to the neural cells in the brain. Called the neural heart, these cells operate through connective links called ganglia and with the same axonal and dendritic connections that take place in the brain, and they require the very same kinds of neurotransmitters found in the brain.
Molecular biologists have discovered that the heart is the body's most important endocrine gland as it responds to our experience of the world. A major hormone, ANF (Atrial Neuriatic Factor), is produced and released by the heart and profoundly affects everything that happens in the limbic system, or what is often referred to as the “emotional brain.” This includes the hippocampal area where memory and learning take place. When it comes to assessing a situation, your heart has a lot more wisdom to share than your mind, if you choose to listen to it.
This may explain that long before scientists discovered these things, poets and mystics were already clear about the heart’s innate wisdom and courage. In fact, courage is from the French word for heart, coeur.
It is this wisdom and courage of the heart that leads to compassion, but in order to access this, you must be present enough to listen to your heart. If you are too busy, stressed, or otherwise cut off from your own inner experience, you will not be able to access compassion and its incredible power.
We must slow down and allow ourselves to be moved by suffering if we are to activate the motivation to help alleviate and prevent it. If you have decided that the suffering of the world is too much to bear, and you refuse to know what is going on, you are missing a tremendous opportunity to contribute through your own compassion.
2) Compassion for others begins with you.
“Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves.” -Pema Chodron
One of the most important qualities that you can cultivate toward yourself and others is the powerful quality of self-compassion. It will help you in the darkest and most stressful moments to step back and relate to yourself as if you are a dear friend. Self-compassion opens the door of heart awareness, that allows you to deeply care for others.
It is natural for human beings to bury or avoid their pain for as long as they can. This suppression is done at a great cost, because you cannot fully experience the wholeness of who you are without putting your arms around the exiled parts of you and bringing them “home” to yourself.
Being nonjudgmental is the key to working with our own pain. There are often hurt and angry parts of us that must be seen as long-lost children who need to be loved. Tara Brach, a Buddhist teacher and author of the book Radical Acceptance, says,
Clearly recognizing what is happening inside us, and regarding what we see with an open, kind and loving heart, is what I call Radical Acceptance. If we are holding back from any part of our experience, if our heart shuts out any part of who we are and what we feel, we are fueling the fears and feelings of separation that sustain the trance of unworthiness. Radical Acceptance directly dismantles the very foundations of this trance.
Through our own experience with suffering and cultivating an atmosphere of openness toward it, we can begin to accept and be with others and ourselves in a more open, kind, and understanding way. Our own personal challenges then become the bridge that leads us to compassion for others.
3) Compassion moves mountains.
“Compassion is the greatest form of love humans have to offer.” -Rachael Joy Scott
Compassion helps you to see with new eyes that everything you think is “out there” is really a reflection of you. You are no longer separate from all that is. Einstein spoke about this “optical delusion of consciousness” as a prison, saying that “our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
Compassion matures us as human beings, and connects us with our loveseed, that nugget of infinite goodness within. It can move you to do remarkable acts of kindness and generosity without getting burnt out, as you might if you were co-dependent. With true compassion, you can find that dynamic balance of meeting your own needs and the needs of others by fulfilling your vow to yourself over and over again, with compassion. This develops the muscle of discernment. As soon as you are out of compassion with yourself, you are no longer able to be there for others, and it is time to turn your attention to yourself.
The desire to make a difference in the world is such a beautiful and powerful impulse that arises from mature compassion. When it is awakened fully, you begin to experience a sense of a global heart, which is the felt sense that we are all made of the very same substance, moving through time on this green planet, and it is up to you to care for it.
Tonglen meditation
There is a powerful and utterly beautiful Tibetan meditation practice called Tonglen, that can help you understand compassion in your entire being. You can use tonglen to transmute suffering into something that contributes to the world. I have captured its essence here:
To begin, sit comfortably, close your eyes and let your body and mind settle. Allow yourself to feel relaxed and open.
Set an intention or say a prayer that you may be of service as you open to your own suffering and that of others.
Begin by breathing in whatever you are feeling—fear, agitation, anger, resistance—and accepting it. On the exhalation, breathe out well-being.
Clear your mind by bringing awareness to what is agitating you and breathing it in, accepting it with kindness. Then, as you exhale, give yourself some spaciousness. Do this breath until you are calm and alert.
When you feel settled, begin the second stage of the practice, which is establishing a rhythm of breathing. On your inbreath, imagine that you are inhaling heavy, hot, black air into your open heart. On your outbreath, visualize exhaling light, cool, white air. Continue with this pattern—breathing in heaviness and breathing out lightness—through your open heart. The heaviness is suffering; the lightness is well-being.
Now bring your awareness to the pain of the many others who find themselves suffering in a similar way. In the same way you did for yourself, imagine that you are inhaling heavy, hot, black air into your open heart. On your outbreath, visualize exhaling light, cool, white air. Continue with this pattern—breathing in heaviness and breathing out lightness—through your open heart.
Return to your own suffering again, breathing in the pain and breathing out the lightness.
This practice takes a lot of courage. You might find yourself resisting breathing in the suffering. If so, you can breathe in your resistance as hot, heavy smoke. You can breathe in alienation, pity, boredom, arrogance, confusion, grief, or clinging—whatever flavor your suffering of the moment takes. Then breathe out willingness, softening, peace.
Greet all of it with loving kindness and acceptance.
The prayer for compassion
If you would like to cultivate a practice of compassion, I suggest you sit quietly and read this prayer for compassion every day for 30 days. My experience has been that my heart becomes far more grounded in my own goodness, and I am able to access more hope and joy in the midst of the madness at the surface of our human existence.
May all beings be free from suffering.
May all beings be happy.
May all beings realize the joy and beauty of their own true nature.
