I've spent quite a bit of my life as a meditation teacher and writer commending the strengths of love and compassion. So many times people have approached me and said something along the lines of, "I don't know about developing greater love and compassion. Surely that will consign me to only saying 'yes'/ refusing to take a stand/ letting other people be treated unjustly/ being a wimp."
I think these views to some extent are a cultural legacy, the degradation of love to sentimentality and compassion to a root cause of fatigue. It is sometimes difficult to view compassion and loving kindness as the strengths they are. They are viewed too often as secondary virtues at best in our competitive culture ("If you can't be brave or brilliant or wonderful, then you might as well be kind"). But compassion does not imply ducking our responsibilities or shirking our power. Compassion, instead, is a potent tool for transformation since it requires us to step outside of our conditioned response patterns.
Ordinarily, we're so preoccupied with ourselves and defended against the "Other" that we feel continuously threatened and anxious. We forget how connected we actually are and it is this perceived division that creates antipathy and alienation. This limited perspective prompts responses that are less creative with fewer possibilities for happiness.
My friend, Cheri Maples, used this wisdom to help move her own community forward when she was a police officer. Cheri saw that when offenders were exposed to the extended consequences of their actions, their us-vs.-them behavior could shift. When a petty thief was told that because he ripped off a certain gas station, the kid who worked there couldn't support his sister, who could no longer make the rent and ended up on the street, this information shifted the boy's sense of what interconnection actually means. We have a limited awareness of how our actions ripple out into the world, but when we're reminded of how directly our behavior impacts others -- those we know and those we don't -- it changes our minds and hearts. "It doesn't matter what happens to them" shifts to "Oh, actually it does matter because they have many similarities to me." They have vulnerability, they're taking care of people, and they want to be happy. Our common ground expands in the light of attention.
So how do we deal with our outrage? It is indeed natural to be outraged in the face of injustice or cruelty. But when anger becomes a steady presence, it narrows our options, perceptions and possibilities. It burns us up. Unfortunately, many of us are taught to see non-aggression, and the resistance to us-vs.-them thinking, as passivity, weakness, or delusional. In fact, it is an act of courage to step outside our familiar reaction patterns to discover approaches that can shift the dynamic we face.
It's possible to feel outrage when it arises without it becoming our overriding motivation for seeking change. We can learn the art of fierce compassion -- redefining strength, deconstructing isolation and renewing a sense of community, practicing letting go of rigid us-vs.-them thinking -- while cultivating power and clarity in response to difficult situations. Love and compassion don't at all have to make us weak, or lead us to losing discernment and vision. We just have to learn how to find them. And see, in truth, what they bring us.
Cheri and I are doing a workshop at the Omega Institute this September on fierce compassion. Every time I get to explore this with others, I learn so much more myself.
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But they don't. They won't. All hat, no cattle.
As a matter of rational public policy, I think we should scrap our enforcement / incarceration model for drug offenders, and use the money for rehab, recovery, education, jobs.
Why didn't I just put her in a rehab program? Because she'd already walked out of three, she couldn't deal with the confinement, and because she was so bad that nobody I talked to wanted to take her.
So maybe the solution to the problem of homelessness isn't giving stuff to people? And maybe your comment is based on ignorance and judgement?
Of course the flipside is nearly instant exposure to customs and cultures that may seem strange, even distasteful to some. You can use pvp games to form vendettas against those you think are weird or wusses. I've met people who take games Way too seriously. It all goes back to fear of the unknown. Too much 'newness', too much just plain information too fast can make your average human being revert to old school 'flight or fight'. Lashing out just because a thing is unfamiliar.
But if you take the time to step back and look at things from someone else's perspective, slow down the flow and drift in it a while, you'll literally find a whole new world of foods to try, places to wonder over (at least virtually), history, and language, and music, and fashion. Even if you don't like or agree with all of it, hopefully you'll at least learn to keep an open mind, considering how other people think and feel before condemning them as 'different'.
Welcome to the brave new world. Hopefully we'll not only survive, but revel in it.
Cooperation unites and awakens us to our communal identity. Competition divides haves from
have nots and dampens our social identity. The Jerusalem Mother Church shared everything in
common so no one went without(Acts 2:44). Man left to his own devices doesn't share easily
except with kin and tribe. Competition says: I have a right to everything I can grab or catch, the
old hunter attitude. Cooperation says: I have a right to what I need and will share it with those
who also have needs, the planter attitude. Like Cain and Abel, two brothers living side by side-
except Cain, like Capitalism will kill to satisfy its ego needs. Money drives Capitalism like jealousy drove Cain. Compassion drives Religion like feeling connected drove Abel to please God. The choice is always ours, be connected to our divine source or be separated and at war with our neighbor.
Abel had the support of God. Cain had the support of his weapon. Abel died to be remembered as God pleasing. Cain died with a mark he could not erase.
Buddha lived and taught 500 years before Jesus, the teachings of Jesus certainly support the tradition that during the "lost years" Jesus traveled to India and Tibet where he studied Buddhism and is remembered there as "Buddha Issa."
Different words and phrases, different parables, but the essence of the moral and ethical teachings of Buddha and Jesus is identical.
Sharon, if you want to demonstrate fierce compassion, how about you and your friend do one of these workshops in East Harlem, at no charge, for all the young people who are working at the gas station, or McDonald's - or are unable to get a job at all?
One thing to teach it quite another to practice it. ie for all of us not just Sharon.
I am still waiting for one buddhist to ask the next question beyond the origin of suffering. just one.
Religious beliefs are so powerful that whatever their prophet or teacher stated no confirmed follower looks outside that prophets teachings.