Cultivating Compassion

I just finished an eight-week class called CULTIVATING COMPASSION TRAINING, which is taught by Stanford University and was funded by the Dalai Lama among others. All of us have compassion in our pure hearts. The idea is to practice mindfulness and loving-kindness so we can access our pure hearts. When we do this, we make our lives betters and we make the world better. Imagine if everyone, I mean EVERYONE, was compassionate towards each other! It begins with you.

Compassion can be broken down to “com” (with) and “passion” (suffering), so you are suffering WITH someone. Now that might scare you! You might be thinking, “hold on, I’ve got my own problems to deal with. I don’t have the bandwidth to take on others “suffering”. " Okay, let me disavow you of that idea right here and now. Try this on for size: You have UNLIMITED capacity for compassion! That’s right UNLIMITED!

What you might be doing is mistaking compassion for empathy, empathy is when you feel all the feelings of someone who is suffering. Compassion means you’re just there, observing. But it gives you the power to help alleviate their suffering. Imagine someone has fallen down a well, would you climb down into the well to be with them? (That’s empathy). No , you would not. You would get a ladder, a rope, call 911, etc. to help alleviate their suffering (That’s compassion). You could do that all day long-it’s limitless.

Compassion means meeting suffering without resistance. Resistance comes from:

• Fear-What if this is too overwhelming?

• Despair-There is so much suffering! How will I handle it?

• Condemnation-Didn’t this person cause their suffering?

• Timidity-Am I really the person who should help?

• Projection-I’ve got my own problems to deal with! If we project, we drift into grief, pity and anxiety

To be truly compassionate, you have to show more then just empathy. You need to have both the desire and the motivation to end suffering. You have to overcome your tendencies of denial, defensiveness and aversion. Become more accepting of yourself and your own suffering so you can more fully recognize and feel the suffering of others. As you heal others, you heal yourself.

Mindfulness (and mindfulness meditation) helps us connect as equals. This guards us from mistaking sentimental pity (feeling sorry for others; being separate) with compassion. Suffering is universal. If we meet it with compassion, we access our noble capacity.

-Peace-Dan

“The problem with the world is that we draw our family circle too small” Mother Theresa