Day #54

Today’s favourite poses: Snake, Dog, Bird

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 15

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from The Dalai Lama’s Book of Wisdom – The Essential Teachings)

We need to cultivate a compassion that is powerful enough to make us feel committed to bringing about the well-being of others, so that we are actually willing to shoulder the responsibility for making this happen. In Buddhism, such compassion is called ‘great compassion.’ The point is emphasized again and again that great compassion is the foundation of all positive qualities, the root of the entire Mahayana path, and the heart of bodhichitta. Likewise, Chandrakirti says in his Entry to the Middle Way, that compassion is such a supreme spiritual quality that it maintains its relevance at all times: it is vital at the initial stage of the spiritual path, it is just as important while we are on the path, and it is equally relevant when an individual has become fully enlightened.

Generally speaking, compassion is the wish that others should be free of suffering, but if we look into it more closely compassion has two levels. In one case it may exist simply at the level of a wish – just wishing the other to be free of suffering – but it can also exist on a higher level, where the emotion goes beyond a mere wish to include the added dimension of actually wanting to do something about the suffering of others. In this case, a sense of responsibility and personal commitment enters into the thought and emotion of altruism.

Whichever level of compassion we may have, for the development of bodhichitta to be successful it must be combined with the complimentary factor of wisdom and insight. If you lack wisdom and insight, when you are confronted with another’s suffering, genuine compassion may arise in you spontaneously, but given that your resources are limited, you may only be able to make a wish; ‘May her or she be free of that pain or suffering.’ However, over time, that kind of feeling may lead to a feeling of helplessness because you realize you cannot really do anything to change the situation. On the other hand, if you are equipped with wisdom and insight then you have a much greater resource to draw on, and the more you focus on the object of compassion, the greater the intensity of your compassion will be and the more it will increase.

Because of the way insight and wisdom affect the development of compassion, the Buddhist literature identifies three different types of compassion. First, at the initial stage, compassion is simply the wish to see other sentient beings freed from suffering; it is not reinforced by any particular insight into the nature of suffering or the nature of a sentient being. Then, at the second stage, compassion is not simply the wish to see another being free from suffering, it is strengthened by insight into the transient nature of existence, such as the realization that the being who is the object of your compassion does not exist permanently. When insight complements your compassion it greater power. Finally, at the third stage, compassion is described as ‘non objectifying compassion.’ It can be directed towards that same suffering being, but now it is reinforced by a full awareness of the ultimate nature of that being. This is a very powerful type of compassion, because it enables you to engage with the other person without objectifying him or her, and without clinging on to the idea that he or she has any absolute reality.