Compassion

I plan to discuss compassion today with you; I would really like to have some of you share your stories of compassion in your lives. Different traditions vary in how they interpret compassion, but it generally has to do with the process of feeling the suffering of others and acting in some way to alleviate that suffering. In Buddhist teachings, compassion is the awareness of the suffering of others and the wish for it to end. Loving kindness is the act of extending the deepest love to everyone without exception and without prioritizing those we are closest to.

Before we get to compassion we must start with some sense of connection or attunement with another. We have the idea that the other is suffering in some way because we know what it feels like to suffer. This common experience links us to the other. The child is frightened and cries and the mother knows that the child is afraid. The child is angry and cries and the mother knows she is angry. The mother knows this because she has been frightened and she has been angry many times in her life as well. The mother can distinguish among different emotions and needs such as hunger, anger, sadness, fear, and can usually do something to alleviate the suffering of the child. An attunement occurs when a mother senses that her child is hungry and offers her the breast. An attunement occurs when the mother senses the child is afraid and comforts her. Without some ability to attune, it is difficult to imagine that any of us could have survived the long dangerous period of fragile dependent childhood.

Once attunement is established, if the other is suffering or in need, then emotions arise. I may sense the other person is sad and past memories of sadness emerge within myself. I may sense that the other person is frightened and past memories of fear arise within me. If I would like to develop empathy, which I would define as the ability to feel what the other is feeling without judgment, then I must come to terms with my own emotions. If these emotions are connected to unresolved memories, especially if they are traumatic memories, then some self-reflection is needed in order to develop empathy. If I do not do this work, then I will likely begin to feel sympathy for the other. I would define sympathy as a feeling of pain due to my perception of the suffering of the other person. This pain is strongly connected to my own unresolved emotions. So I feel this pain, attribute it to the other suffering person, and then feel sorry for the other person. What does it mean to “feel sorry for” another person? In effect, I am feeling sorry for myself, and I am projecting that feeling onto the other person. So here we have a suffering person who comes to me for relief, and instead of sending loving kindness, I interrupt their suffering by sending my own pain to them. So instead of projecting loving kindness, I am projecting my own unresolved feelings. This is my definition of sympathy.

At this point there are two common directions that we can take. The first ends up with rage. It generally goes like this: The suffering person picks up my projected unresolved feelings. The person is probably not conscious of what is occurring and may express some ingratitude, or may shower me with more complaints or worries. At this point, I may feel upset that the person doesn't appreciate my efforts and I may turn my sympathy into pity. Pity, by my definition, is sympathy with attitude. The added “attitude” is usually some sort of anger and in extreme cases, an actual hatred. So now we have a suffering person who comes to us for some comfort, and we send them hatred, we put them down basically for feeling pain. We see them as less than us, as “pitiful.” As a result, we feel a little better about ourselves. We can hold onto our unexamined belief systems about our own past, our own experiences of being victimized, and we can hold ourselves as better than the others whom we define as “pitiful.”

When we hear certain political movements decry those at the bottom of the socio-economic structure and blame the poor for the poverty or cheer the idea of letting an uninsured sick patient die, this is just one further step beyond pity. It is the anger and hatred being expressed absent the memory of the pain. The attunement, sympathy, and pity are forgotten and all is left is the anger, the hatred, the blaming which very easily turns to rage. This is an inevitable result of our tendency to embrace this pattern: attunement, sympathy, pity, blame, hatred, rage. The bad news is that whenever we find ourselves feeling pity toward another suffering human, we are strengthening this pattern.

The second direction is that of outrage. Again we start with an actual attunement or feeling of connection toward another suffering human. We encounter our own unresolved pain, or unexamined belief systems, except this time we get stuck in the feeling of helplessness. We remember feeling helpless in the face of abuse or neglect, or in the inevitable life experiences where our desires or wants were not acknowledged or met. We experience self-pity. We again feel sympathy for ourselves and for the person, but our focus is now on those in power who allowed this person in front of us to suffer. We are outraged. It isn’t this suffering person’s fault. In fact this suffering person is as helpless as we feel we were. So we do feel a sort of attunement toward the other, but we do so at the suffering person’s expense. We deny any power or agency to this suffering person and focus totally on those beings “out there” who are responsible for this terrible injustice. Once we embrace outrage, we have discounted the suffering person as totally and in as damaging a way, as the rage route.

To oversimplify, if we look to the large political situation in this country, the conservatives have chosen rage, and the liberals have chosen outrage. Each direction is ultimately discounting of those who are suffering, and both are dangerous and are contrary to compassion and loving kindness.

What is the good news? I believe that pattern described is not the natural vital flow that is intregal to the best of what we are as humans. Rather, I believe that the natural flow is quite different and goes from attunement to empathy to compassion, completely skipping sympathy. I will describe this process.

Going back to the example of the mother and infant, we see a lack of sympathy. The mother notices the child’s need and moves to meet it. The mother is empathetic because she has felt hungry or frightened or angry as well. However, in this case there is little or no thought involved. The child is hungry, the mother offers the breast. The child is frightened, the mother offers a hug of comfort and support. The child is uncomfortable, the mother changes the diaper. The child is tired, the mother rocks the child to sleep. The mother does not think of the child as helpless because the child is not helpless. The child knows how to cry. The mother doesn’t think of the child as ungrateful, because the child laughs and coos. The mother sees the child as precious and powerful, even though from an objective point of view one notices that the child needs constant attention and care to simply survive the day. The objective observer might conclude that the child is therefore dependent and fragile, but the mother rejects this hypothesis. Again without thought, the mother knows the child to be a powerful being who brings love and purpose to her life; she does not see the child as an ungrateful drain on resources.

When the mother is profoundly attuned with the child, she is full of compassion; she is living compassion; she is compassion embodied. The mother goes quickly and seamlessly, without thought, from attunement to empathy to compassion. So what are the characteristics of compassion that we can learn here? First and foremost, it is a profound acknowledgement of the powerfulness of the other. The mother does not offer the breast because she sees the child as helpless or powerless; she offers the breast because she sees that the child is hungry and the breast is full of sweet milk. The second characteristic is a willingness to share. The mother does not see the child as needy, rather she sees the child as requiring something that she can provide. In fact the child is not needy if the breast is offered when it is needed. All of us in this room require a constant source of clean air with a certain percentage of oxygen. This requirement does not make us needy. The fact that we require air doesn’t make us weak or minimize our many strengths, skills and abilities. We do not see our need for air as a dependency. Rather it simply is who we are; we are air-breathing creatures. So in summary two attributes of compassion are3 acknowledgment of the powerfulness and agency of the other and a willingness to share resources without cost or negotiation.

I would argue then that compassion flows naturally and vitally from connection. It is not necessary to learn to be compassionate. Unless we create a blockage, we will be compassionate always and without effort. How do we do this? It is actually quite simple. When we first feel a connection to another and perceive that the other is in pain, we may feel uncomfortable feelings from within ourselves: sadness, fear, anger, disappointment. At this point, in order to prevent the emergence of sympathy, we must courageously face those uncomfortable feelings and claim them as our own. It may require taking a deep breath; it may require taking a moment or several moments with ourselves. This requires a courageous self-reflection. Hopefully, this self-reflection will lead to empathy toward the other and self-compassion. Eventually, this will naturally flow into compassion for the other person. When we embrace compassion while in the presence of another, the original attunement is amplified and the door is opened to many possibilities. For example, such a compassionate attunement tends to create a safe place where the other may be able to face his or her own uncomfortable feelings, move through these feelings, and develop self-compassion.

One issue that often comes up is that generous-hearted people find themselves sharing or giving more than they really want to. I would maintain that this is usually because they are experiencing sympathy rather than compassion and the giving is emerging from resentment or guilt. When we are in compassion, we will know whether there is something we can share. At times, we will know that the suffering person is wanting to feed off of our energies and we will know that this would be going against compassion toward ourselves and we would not do so. Our refusal to provide what is being asked would however not be done with anger or resentment. Rather it would be from an acknowledgement of the powerfulness and agency of the suffering person, knowing that to provide what is being asked would be to deny that powerfulness. On the other hand, if the person is hungry and I am sitting down to a meal, then the natural response would be to invite the person to the meal.

There is much more than can be said on this topic, but I would like to stop here and entertain questions and comments, and perhaps some of you would like to share an experience of compassion or the lack thereof.

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