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The topic of compassion is one that has puzzled me since I've been studying Non-Duality.
Prior to my exploration of Non-Duality, I had placed a high value on kindness, empathy, consideration and tact.
But, according to my understanding of Non-Duality, all suffering is an illusion. Another person's treatment of me has no power to affect my feelings. If I do suffer as a result of their behaviour, it's only because of the interpretation I put on it.
The implication seems to be that the reverse also is true. I can be as much of a jerk as I like. If other people don't like that, it's their problem.
On the other hand, several Non-Duality authors state that, once you see that we're all One, you feel that whatever you are doing to someone else, you're doing to yourself. So you automatically treat everyone with respect.
Well, be that as it may, I signed up for the Charter for Compassion's Facebook group, and I started seeing the inspirational quotations that they posted. The one below really jumped out at me:
Sometimes I feel overwhelmed. But I try to work one day at a time. If we just worry about the big picture, we are powerless. So my secret is to start right away doing whatever little work I can do. I try to give joy to one person in the morning, and remove the suffering of one person in the afternoon. That’s enough.When you see you can do that, you continue, and you give two little joys, and you remove two little sufferings, then three, and then four. If you and your friends do not despise the small work, a million people will remove a lot of suffering. That is the secret. Start right now.
Sister Chân Không (1938), Vietnamese pioneer of socially engaged Buddhism
I decided to try Sister Không's suggestion. Almost instantly I experienced a few fascinating results.
As I set myself the assignment of identifying the one thing that I could do in the morning or afternoon, I found that I forgot my own troubles.
If someone was "suffering" from a long list of woes, I did not feel obliged to solve all of his or her "problems." I just thought, "What is one thing I can do to cheer him/her up or make him/her feel more supported?"
Sometimes the thing I managed to identify required a lot of effort on my part, but often it was very small -- giving directions to a couple of tourists who had a lost look about them, helping an elderly woman get her shopping bag from the store to her car, and so on.
As I focused on fulfilling the assignment I'd set myself, I found myself forgetting if the other person was nice or nasty. That is, I found myself effortlessly giving my little bit of help or smiling or saying "Hello" even if the other person was a bit grizzly or grumpy or frustrated or impatient.
After doing this exercise for a short while, it occurred to me that it was a type of meditation. In meditation, one does something to quiet what Richard Hittleman calls the ordinary mind which, in turn, helps one to sense one's connection with what he calls the Universal Mind. So one focuses on one's breathing, or one repeats a single word or phrase over and over again, or something like that.
It seems to me that focusing on Sister Không's assignment has the effect of quietening the ordinary mind. I've found myself so busy doing the homework that I've had less mental energy left over to worry, to judge, and so on.
Well, whatever the intellectual explanation, I've found myself much happier since taking on this exercise. So much so that I would say that compassionate acts might even be viewed as selfish! I'm enjoying this so much that I'm doing it for my own sake rather than the other person's!
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