Love and Compassion
by Roshi Hogen Berman
Subjective, objective, love and hate, compassion and friendship, antics with
semantics. Rather than love, I believe, from watching the advertisements for
movies, and the 30-minute sit-coms on TV that much of the world is driven by
lust rather than love or compassion. However it is a difficult subject area.
Here are some of my struggling thoughts on this issue.
It is perhaps most important in working with others that we do not develop
idiot compassion, which means always trying to be kind. Since this superficial
kindness lacks courage and intelligence, it does more harm than good. It is as
though a doctor, out of apparent kindness, refuses to treat his patient
because the treatment might be painful, or as though a mother cannot bear the
discomfort of disciplining her child. Unlike idiot compassion, real compassion
is not based on a simple-minded avoidance of pain. Real compassion is
uncompromising in its allegiance to basic sanity. People who distort the path,
that is, people who are working against the development of basic sanity,
should be cut through on the spot if need be. That is extremely important. We
should try to cut through as much self-deception as possible in order to teach
others as well as ourselves. A major problem of the "would be" Bodhisattva is
when having already achieved everything else; he is unable to go beyond idiot
compassion.
The Dalai Lama approaches the concept of Bodhi citta, with much emphasis on
"relative Bodhi citta", where kindness must be "discriminated" with a clarity
that is extremely precise to respond with "authentic" compassion.
BODHI-CITTA (Sk) means Wisdom-heart. It is the aspiration of a Bodhi sattva
for supreme enlightenment to the benefit and welfare of all living beings. The
Bodhisattva renounces all claims to merit that may be forthcoming as a result
of his deeds - transferring such merit to the spirits (hungry ghosts) of earth
and air (beings reborn on other less favor able planes of existence) that may
need such merit to find release from their spirit world - thus learning from
the deeds of the Bodhisattva via the merit he freely gives (showing his
compassion for all other beings - and his self lessness) they may find peace
in their next life cycle.
KARUNA (Sk & Pali): Compassion; active compassion. One of the two pillars of
Mahayana Buddhism; the other pillar being Prajna (wisdom). The 50th of the 52
Mental Factors associated with man's consciousness. May also be rendered in
English as pity.
METTA (Pali): Literally means, "Friendship" however it is most often loosely
translated into English as "Loving Kindness". In a general sense it has the
mood of friendliness as its characteristic; its natural function is to promote
friendliness between beings. It is manifested by the disappearance of
ill-will. When it succeeds in establishing its footing of general friendliness
and affection for other beings it eliminates ill-will from one's thoughts and
character. When it fails, it degenerates into selfish affectionate desire. The
true "feeling" of Metta cannot be easily defined in a single English term;
loving-kindness comes close, but does not exactly cover the same ground. The
English word Love also borders on the meaning of Metta, but it also requires
further explanatory comments to support it. Everyone has experienced Love in
the sense that we have such feelings for friends, brothers, sisters, relatives
etc.; but that kind of love is not Metta. Perhaps if one were to try and
imagine the feeling experienced by a young Mother for her newborn first baby -
which is so powerful that she would willingly give her life to save the child;
that feeling would be very close to Metta. Metta, in Buddhist Doctrine is the
feeling one must first have towards them self; not in a narcissistic sense but
in a sense of being content with who and what one is and assured that every
effort has been made to exercise love and compassion towards all fellow
beings. Then, and only then, can one spread the feeling towards all other
beings in the universe.
METTA SUTTA (Pali) is the Sutta that tells of a love beyond the bounds of that
which the mundane man perceives. The Metta Sutta is known as the scripture of
true friendship and love of a supermundane or abstract nature.
I considered the term "empathy" which is a favorite of mine in that I truly
try to "understand" what another's situation and feelings are in this Samsara
world. However compassion, I think" is a much stronger word than empathy in
that it includes our deep awareness of another's suffering and unlike empathy,
it includes the thought that we want to do something to help them out of their
trouble.
Even considering Metta versus Karuna, although we translate Metta as Loving
kindness, I believe it probably means much more than that. It is just that our
vocabulary is too limited to properly express it meaning in just a few words
much less a single word. Karuna seems a much more powerful word in that it
expresses the Bodhisattva ideal of holding out your hand in metta (friendship
and loving kindness if I may) to all other living beings and sincerely
trying to understand as well as help them out of their suffering.
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