OUR MIDWEEK MEDITATION: COMPASSION
Compassion is that which makes the heart of the good move at the pain of others. It crushes and destroys the pain of others; thus, it is called compassion. It is called compassion because it shelters and embraces the distressed
~ The Buddha
Whenever there is a disaster in the world, natural or otherwise, it does a curious thing – it brings out the best in us.
All of us stop for a moment, don’t we, and feel a mixture of gratitude that we and our loved ones are safe, and sorrow for those suffering from the earthquake, tsunami, bushfire, flood or, in the case of Hurricane Sandy, hurricane.
New York workers prepare for the onslaught of Hurricane Sandy. Image via Reuters.
It’s then that our natural compassion comes to the fore. And yet, curiously, compassion, the virtue of empathy for the suffering of others, is not necessarily as readily available to us at other times.
In our ordinary, everyday lives it seems – on the face of it – that we have less need of compassion than at those times of crisis, be it family, community, or world-wide.
The etymology of compassion is Latin, meaning co-suffering; whereas empathy is the more simple attribute of understanding, compassion contains the desire to stop the other person’s suffering.
Deepak Chopra writes in his book Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul of the Tibetan Buddhist monks who developed ‘compassionate brains’ as the result of practicing a meditation on compassion, thereby transforming a spiritual quality into physical manifestation, erasing the split between body and soul.
Compassion: a Victorian firefighter cares for a koala left homeless by bushfires. Photo by Russell Vickery via smh.com.au.
But why are some people more compassionate than others? Why is it that psychopaths allegedly have no compassion, and are able to inflict cruelty without even the comprehension of what they are doing?
Chopra wonders whether even psychopaths might be brought to understand the nature of compassion through a change of brain activity.
To become compassionate, or more compassionate takes practice …as does every emotion, both good and bad.
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4 Responses to this article
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ro.watson October 31, 2012
Compassion for self and other sentient beings can shield us from harm. I love that photo of the firefighter holding the burnt koala’s paw while giving the koala a drink of water. Thank you.
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helenbea November 1, 2012
Well said and timely, thankyou Candida. Compassion is an expression of love outside the understanding of pop culture which is a driving force in conformity and sameness. As you say, compassion is about acceptance whereas pop culture is about rejection, measurement, judgements, criticisms.
The stripping away of the edifices of the material world when natural disasters lay bare the land and its people, can only bring a fresh perspective…if people open hearts and minds to the experience.
