Quotes about Compassion

Journeying god, pitch your tent with mine so that I may not become deterred by hardship, strangeness, doubt. Show me the movement I must make toward a wealth not dependent on possessions, toward a wisdom not based on books, toward a strength not bolstered by might, toward a god not confined to heaven. Help me to find myself as I walk in other's shoes.

--A Praise Poem of Ghana

In deep self-acceptance grows a compassionate understanding. As one Zen master said when I asked if he ever gets angry, 'Of course I get angry, but then a few minutes later I say to myself, 'What's the use of this,' and I let it go.'

The essence of love and compassion is understanding, the ability to recognize the physical, material, and psychological suffering of others, to put ourselves "inside the skin" of the other.  We "go inside" their body, feelings, and mental formations, and witness for ourselves their suffering.  Shallow observation as an outsider is not enough to see their suffering.  We must become one with the subject of our observation.  When we are in contact with another's suffering, a feeling of compassion is born in us. Compassion means, literally, "to suffer with."

Pain is a message asking for our help.

There is a space between self and other where the boundaries melt. Where being myself means being attuned to others. Where being in sync with those around me means finding my self of worth.

Otheresteem is--quite simply--a word to describe the view you have of another person. Even more, the feeling that view brings out in you. The value you can find in that person. Otheresteem is high when you like what you see in the other, both in the present and the imaginable future. You find that person to be capable of improvement, worthy of it.

Remember and have no doubt!  The God who can punish us for our sins is also capable in His limitless mercy of absolving us from our sins.  There is no heavy sin or curse that cannot be redeemed by deeds and prayer.

Father Arseny

Nelson Mandela once remarked that he befriended his jailers, those grim, khaki-clad overseers of his decades of hard labor in a limestone quarry, by "exploiting their good qualities." Asked if he believed all people were kind at their core, he responded, "There is no doubt whatsoever, provided you are able to arouse their inherent goodness." If that sounds like wishful thinking, well, he actually did it.

For at the center of all spiritual traditions is the beacon of a truly radical proposal: Open your heart to everybody. Everybody.

Every now and then, I'll meet an escapee, someone who has broken free of self-centeredness and lit out for the territory of compassion. You've met them, too, those people who seem to emit a steady stream of, for want of a better word, love-vibes. As soon as you come within range, you feel embraced, accepted for who you are. For those of us who suspect that you rarely get something for nothing, such geniality can be discomfiting. Yet it feels so good to be around them. They stand there, radiating photons of goodwill, and despite yourself you beam back, and the world, in a twinkling, changes.

You can be sad for others but you don't have to take on their pain.

Those who have no compassion have no wisdom. Knowledge, yes; cleverness, maybe; wisdom, no. A clever mind is not a heart. Knowledge doesn't really care. Wisdom does.

There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels for someone, for someone, pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echos.

All major religious traditions carry basically the same message, that is love, compassion and forgiveness the important thing is they should be part of our daily lives.

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.

A friend told me of visiting the Dalai Lama in India and asking him for a succinct definition of compassion. She prefaced her question by describing how heart-stricken she'd felt when, earlier that day, she'd seen a man in the street beating a mangy stray dog with a stick. “Compassion,” the Dalai Lama told her, “is when you feel as sorry for the man as you do for the dog.”

Once, at a seminar, I heard a Westernized lama say that a meditator's state of mind should be like that of a hotel doorman. A doorman lets the guests in, but he doesn't follow them up to their rooms. He lets them out, but he doesn't walk into the street with them to their next appointment. He greets them all, then lets them go on about their business. Meditation is, in its initial stages, simply accustoming oneself to letting thoughts come and go without grasping at their sleeves or putting up a velvet rope to keep them out.

Sometimes when I begin tonglen meditation, I feel a wild surge of resistance, a fear of (there is no other way to put this) contamination. The unhappiness of others feels contagious: I don't want to inhale their cooties. But when it “works,” the practice is so rewarding that I'm ready to throw myself in again. To stop dodging people's misery and discord, to discover that I can give of myself with each breath and not feel depleted (in fact, to feel oddly nourished) is a revelation. When I can stay with it, I notice I don't feel so guarded; my borders seem more porous. I'm less inclined to hold people at arms' length. I admit to sometimes finding tonglen a challenge that I don't have the spiritual chutzpah to meet. But at best I find the technique radically simple and simply radical: an imaginative leap into otherness.

I happened to be present one of the first times Tibetan meditation master Chögyam Trungpa sprang this bizarre sounding practice on an unsuspecting Western audience. One student of yoga had raised his hand and asked, with some bewilderment, why it wouldn't be better to imagine breathing in love and light and breathing out all negative impurities. Ricardo, the creator of environmentally benign industrial processes, would have appreciated Trungpa's unhesitating reply: “Well, then you'd just be like a polluting factory, taking in all these good resources and spewing out your gray cloud on everyone else.”

I used to think that people who regarded everyone benignly were a mite simple or oblivious or just plain lax—until I tried it myself. Then I realized that they made it only look easy. Even the Berditchever Rebbe, revered as a man who could strike a rock and bring forth a stream, was continually honing his intentions. “Until I remove the thread of hatred from my heart,” he said of his daily meditations, “I am, in my own eyes, as if I did not exist.”

When you are compassionate with yourself, you trust in your soul, which you let guide your life. Your soul knows the geography of your destiny better than you do.

Despite our differences, we are all in this together. No act of kindness or compassion goes unnoticed. To change the world, take compassionate action within your immediate sphere of influence. To change yourself, start by being still and making time just to listen.

No one wishes for crisis, but when crises come, they can call forth our best impulses, those of compassion, courage, creativity, and community.  And if there are crimes and evils hidden in the dark places of our society and the darker places of our consciousnesses, all the better they come to the surface to be seen, understood, confronted, and healed.  If our generation is called to bear a burden of that healing, it is a powerful calling and honor and one within our capability.

The end of suffering happens in this very moment, whether you're watching a terrorist attack or doing the dishes. And compassion begins at home. Because I don't believe my thoughts, sadness can't exist. That's how I can go to the depths of anyone's suffering, if they invite me, and take them by the hand and walk them out of it into the sunlight of reality.

I've taken that walk myself.

It's not your job to like me - it's mine

The essence of compassion is to copy how you relate with your child (in your relationships with others). The problem is how much you want to be the head of the family or the ringleader of your friends. You know, if that ambition is not there, but you have a genuine willingness to share, that is precisely the concept of sangha, or the Buddhist community, in traditional terms. You are willing to be friends with everybody, but at the same time you are not particularly taking credit. You don’t make people depend on you. Everybody can stand on his or her own feet. The ideal of helping is to make others independent of you. You help them to become more independent rather than making them addicted to you.

Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an ordination of character which determines the relatedness of the person to the whole world as a whole, not toward one object of love”

I would like to comment on the God fiber within each living thing. This essence, this fiber of love and grace, runs in every vein, no matter how deeply buried. Each person has a God fiber, whatever their actions or hurt they have caused you or others.

Ask yourself: at which level can I give love?

1. Love the oneness in those people with whom you can truly be yourself, can find comfort in their thoughts, can feel supported in your own discoveries, and can feel loved unconditionally.

2. Love the shared friendship in those who are eager to be with you and learn from you.

3. Love from a distance those people who enjoy conversation only at the social level, and discourage what you would consider more meaningful conversation.

4. Love the God fiber in those people who make it difficult or impossible for you to be with them, care about them, or honor their path.

If people need to grow at their own rates, then you might ask, "In what way is it your opportunity to help others grow spiritually?" And I can offer two answers: first, it is appropriate to share your views when someone asks, and second, allow that you may know more of the situation, have greater insight into both the nature of the problem and the solution, than you might share with that person. A true spiritual teacher knows more than he or she necessarily verbalizes, using temperance and love to be guided to say what is appropraite without showing off his or her knowledge or saying what would not arise from the greatest care, kindness, and compassion.