On compassion.

[mr toodly]

Please post your ideas concerning compassion here. Stay away from concrete definitions if possible. I am especially interested in personal experiences.

[woof woof woof]

[ 02. January 2005, 10:01: Message edited by: brian ]

[maclicious]

it's pretty well screwed up these days. It's either misconstrued as someone thinking that they are better than someone else or thinking they know how they feel - sympathy. Or god forbid if it would be seen as empathy then you would really have to prove yourself and your past experiences. Compassion seems to cause more trouble than good, well in this day anyway.

[Salviador]

I think compassion is the realisation that when everyone is happy, things are waaay better, even if it is at some personal sacrifice. Its by no means selfless, you are still getting satisfaction from seeing everyone happy and letting that improve your happiness, i suppose it could be seen as not only stopping a vicious cylce but turning it around?

[Hagakure]

i really like the description above.

kinda fits what im thinking these days.

[Torsten]

there is no compassion without love. if you do something for someone for any other reason than love then that's the reason. eg. if you give/do something because you feel guilty then the reason it to ease your guilt. Similarly, if you do/give something because you hope that the favour will be returned one day then it is not compassion but an investment of sorts.

Compassion is when you do things purely for the love of it, without recognition, without expectation and without rationalisation. eg when you nurse someone on their deathbed even though it is tearing your heart apart, or when you give something to a total stranger who you will never see again and there are no witnesses of your good deed, but you did it for the love of humanity.

True compassion is rare, but when you encounter it it is the epitome of love.

[ 02. January 2005, 23:14: Message edited by: Torsten ]

[maclicious]

Very true torsten, that made more sense than my rantings. True compassion does seem to be rare these days, and it has alot to do with the love that we are capable of sharing or giving. It seems alot of society is self-serving in their compassion but don't allow their love to roam free like they should. Love/compassion is a gift from god that should be shared with other beings whether they be humans, animals or plants. It should never be held up as a counter of how much has been given / received etc, as alot of people do.

I think I'm starting to rant again.

boy I wish people would just love one another.

peace out.

[Torsten]

an interesting phenomenon is how a mixture of real compassion and other forms of giving/doing can combine and achieve great things. For example, in a religious group you may have some people making donations because they feel it makes up for their sins, while others do the weekend church fair because it raises their community profile and amongst all these there are a couple of people who simply do the work for love, but even though they are in the minority the total effect is still overwhelmingly positive and compassionate especially if the truely compassionate people have the lead in how this compassion is applied.

Similarly the current tsunami disaster. Australia is helping mostly Indonesia because Australia really needs to make up for some of the problems it has caused in the region. It isn't true compassion, but rather a political investment. True compassion would mean we would help all affected countries equally. In contrast to this there are some very selfless people who work with the NGOs some of who will in fact be truely compassionate. Others will have their own personal reasons for being involved.

To the Indonesian people who are affected by the disaster it makes little difference whether it is true compassion or an investment of sorts - at least for now.

I am not saying that people who work for NGO's for reasons other than true compassion are any less important. In fact, without them most NGOs would not exist for long. But we need to understand that there is a difference between true compassion and other forms of giving/doing good. It is a sliding scale, ranging from the truely selfless compassionate individuals to governments who tie aid to political or economic concessions. Everyone fits somewhere on that scale.

[Salviador]

I think that there is no such thing as a truly atruistic act. Whether giving to a stranger with no one to watch or nursing someone in their deathbed, you are still doing what your conscience directs you to do, essentially you feel better as a human being if you do this act than if you escape the temporary discomfort.

So i suppose this means that the motivating element of love and hence compassion is, the overriding of other motivators to the conscience?

[ 04. January 2005, 09:06: Message edited by: Salviador ]

[reptyle]

the mahayana definition of compassion is the genuine wish to free all sentient beings from samsara.

this is a selfless wish and is motivated not by wanting to feel good about ourselves but by no longer wanting others suffer. the only thing that guides us to act in ways which are self fullfilling is the ego. genuine compassion is like an antidote to the ego. i read once that love is wishing others to be well, it is not the restrictive attachment that our society calls a relationship.

[nabraxas]

yeah, i agree reptyle.

the embodiment ov compassion being the dalai lama, who maybe an embodiment ov the bodhisattva ov compassion Avalokistevara = Kuan Yin = Kuan Um; Goddess of Mercy who hears the cries of the world. A Bodhisattva who attained enlightenment by means of the faculty of hearing. The name also means 'Sound Regarder.'

rather than escape Samsara & get off the wheel ov re-birth Avalokistevara returns as a new dalai lama to help free others.

[2b]

quote:

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there is no compassion without love

---

Was reading a book last night were they drew an analogie between love and pschosis , if you look at the definition of psychosis and then see if people in love feel that way the similarities are amazing. I don't have the book with me now as I am at work but will bring it in tommorow and try to explain it better in another thread, stay tuned....

[spiralfire]

i tend to lean toward the mahayana def. but personally my idea is that compassion is the state when we act unconditionally (lovingly), that is we place no restriction on our actions and simply do what feels right.

[ 01. February 2005, 14:39: Message edited by: spiralfire ]

[mescalito]

I tend to lean toward the reasoning that a respect for 'life' would eventually lead to compassion.

I've even read the word 'unconditional' in regards to this in recent posts lately but am still unsure what exactly that actually entails.

Though I'm trying to learn

[spiralfire]

Unconditional to me is a state where you are not seeing the world as good or bad, you aren't ranking its parts and giving them labels in order to navigate through it. Instead you navigate with your intuition, or your sense of where you should be.

but i guess you can't communicate that which is without labels (as we rely on labels to communicate, bit of a paradox).