[bromgeksan]

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

I agree here... it speaks with what has been guiding Thich's personal doctrine... "Interbeing". It is rooted in some Zen schools that are near the Chinese Cha'an version. It is an important doctrine because it points to something that can be experienced in the day to day world but it has became, too, a very odd stuff of all the New Age mysticism and can end in the kind of interpretations about love and compassion quoted here.

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 ability to empathise with others.

Very true Aloka...

I feel that there is no need and it is no right to "suffer with" even at the sight of interbeing. Every person is responsible of her/his suffering and "suffering with" do not help by any means... In my own experience, when people suffers and is aware of her/his suffering... then she or he asks for help... and the way to help is to show them the way to overcome her or his suffering... with the aproach of what Buddha taught.

Buddha taught the Four Immeasurables

I have found that dispassion is the best way to understand and to reach love and compassion in its truest nature. To practice dispassion is to practice love and compassion.

Good issue Aloka,

Thanks