Quotes about Compassion

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.

Spirituality, a defended person has no room for love or compassion—he is too busy defending himself.

The healing of our present woundedness may lie in recognizing and reclaiming the capacity we have to heal each other, the enormous power in the simplest of human relationships: the strength of a touch, the blessing of forgiveness, the grace of someone else taking you just as you are and finding in you an unsuspected goodness. Everyone alive has suffered. It is the wisdom gained from our wounds and from our own experiences of suffering that makes us able to heal. Becoming expert has turned out to be less important than remembering and trusting the wholeness in myself and everyone else. Expertise cures, but wounded people can best be healed by other wounded people. Only other wounded people can understand what is needed, for the healing of suffering is compassion, not expertise.

Make me strong in spirit,
Courageous in action,
Gentle of heart,

Let me act in wisdom,
Conquer my fear and doubt,
Discover my own hidden gifts,

Meet others with compassion,
Be a source of healing energies,
And face each day with hope and joy.

What is most important is to go deep into ourselves and discover the loving kindness and compassion of the buddha within - the awakened nature we all possess.

Compassion is the answer to our question.  Power is not an answer, but the begging of the question.

Compassion vs. Power.
In life, beginning in infancy, we seek compassion.  Yet, we see power all around us, so we are curious.  We are offered compassion, but suspect that power is better.  So, when power is offered or available for taking, we often forget that compassion is the answer to our question.  Power is not an answer, but an endless question.

Wisdom is like the breath.  We have to replenish it constantly.

Neither genius, fame, nor love show the greatness of the soul. Only kindness can do that.

If you're going to care about the fall of the sparrow you can't pick and choose who's going to be the sparrow. It's everybody.

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

Like birds landing on a tree top together, and then dispersing, we are together for a very short time, so it makes sense to live in harmony, in unconditional friendship.

Change that does not lead to liberation from fear, greed and delusion is not wholesome.  Furthermore, any change that does not yield more compassion and loving-kindness for yourself and others is a waste of precious life energy.

He is man whose heart is spirited and eyes are wet each moment on account of the sorrow, compassion, virtue, beauty, and nobility that decorate this world.

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.

When your fear touches someone’s pain it becomes pity; when your love touches someone’s pain, it becomes compassion

There should be a balance between material and spiritual progress, a balance achieved through the principles based on love and compassion.

One of the basic points is kindness.  With kindness, with love and compassion, with this feeling that is the essence of brotherhood, sisterhood, one will have inner peace

We have now received the mandalas of the Ultimate Tantra
That are so very difficult to gain in our aeon.
Your kindness is overwhelming, and impossible to repay.
Now until I gain enlightenment,
Lord, let not your compassion forsake me.
Upon your distracted and agitated disciples like me,
Lost in states of uneasiness and confusion,
We beg you always to look with compassion.

Understanding and Love are not two separate things, but just one. To develop understanding, you have to practice looking at all living beings with the eyes of compassion. When you understand, you cannot help but love. And when you love, you naturally act in a way that can relieve the suffering of people.

Is there some meaning to this life?
What purpose lies behind the strife?
Whence do we come, where are we bound?
These cold questions echo and resound
through each day, each lonely night.
We long to find the splendid light
that will cast a revelatory beam
upon the meaning of the human dream.

Courage, love, friendship,
compassion, and empathy
lift us above the simple beasts
and define humanity.