[halyshitzob]

I was reflecting on love and compassion, both in the wider sense and also in the more personal relationship sense. Buddha taught the Four Immeasurables and in Theravada chants we have the Buddha's words on loving- kindness from the Karaniya Metta Sutta.

In Mahayana there is also the Bodhisattva vow.

Do we get too clingy and romantic about it all ? I guess we have to do the best we can and develop with our practice, but it seems to me that compassion and loving kindness walk hand in hand with patience and equanimity rather than being dewy- eyed, clingy, romanticism. In the past I've experienced the greater view going down the pan big time with others, and with myself, when situations inevitably collided with dealing with some of the hasher realities of life in one way or another.

I found a Thich Nhat Hahn quote :


"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."

http://www.katinkahesselink.net/tibe...nh-love-q.html
i'm sure TNH is a truly wonderful person and obviously far more advanced than myself -and I do understand this approach ....but it also seems very romantic and unrealistic. It appears to me that one needs to be a fairly advanced practitioner to have the penetrating awareness that encompasses a deeper non-emotional understanding of another person and their needs

How many people are able to actually "go inside" another? Is there in the meantime a likelihood that we will be projecting our own ideas of how that person appears to us through the mist of our own emotions rather than the way that they actually are?

As for compassion being to 'suffer with'...in the past, I've spent some of my time crying in private and ''suffering with'' others with difficulties of one kind or another when I've been working with them in a professional role,.. but that's not really compassion, its emotional attachment. Indeed personal suffering of that nature is the kind which surely we need to understand and overcome whilst still having the abiity to empathise with others.

Additionally, in more personal relationships, if there is emotional (and maybe physical) abuse, sometimes one just needs to recognise and walk away from it rather than try to 'get inside' the other person and allow it to continue under the umbrella of "love". Through making the mistake of once wanting to 'help' and 'save' another in an abusive relationship I was involved in myself, I got dangerously near to losing my life.... which was a bit of a bummer whilst it was all happening!

So do we need careful word choices, definitions and practice strategies in these areas ? I think so. Otherwise we're just swapping one kind of emotional activity for another. Additionally, if 'helping' others is clouded with emotional obscurations then we become a 'do-gooder' without wisdom - and then we're not helping others at all and even harming ourselves, because of our own ignorance.


I'd be interested in hearing your own thoughts about love and compassion.