The initial writings here are about how compassion needs a voice. This is because we don’t talk about it, we don’t share our views, we don’t learn from each other – except on that rare occasion when you get to spend time with someone who models compassion. There is this “hidden” idea that compassion just doesn’t need to be talked about. Then why did all the great heroes of compassion talk about it? The voice of compassion is absent from most human service establishments in the Western world. It is time to change that.
If we agree that the voice of compassion needs to be heard then we need to become knowledgeable about compassion, develop stronger compassion, and hold on to the possibility of developing compassion to the levels of our compassion heroes. Compassion is the desire and willingness to relieve suffering. Compassion can be considered to be a combination of both empathy and wisdom. Empathy is the process of hearing suffering and it can be developed to the point of becoming “one” with another person. Wisdom is knowing how to act to decrease suffering, which can also be developed to a point of expertise. Highly developed empathy plus expert wisdom equals strong well developed compassion.
These ideas about the development of compassion do not mean that I think there are measurable stages that we can complete one after the other, or that we can rest upon our development assured that a stage gas been completed. Compassion and spirituality are linked together and they are both ephemeral phenomena. They can be experienced, and sometimes mutually shared. The phenomena can be described and the processes experienced also described – from a point a view. And it is possible to say that certain experiences are closer to “oneness” with another person (compassion), or the divine (spirituality), than other experiences. But this is simply an indication of a process of personal development and not a hierarchical progression through some series of stages.
The idea of a personal journey of developing compassion which includes "states" (brief experiences) or "stages" (permanent shift in awareness) is useful only to the degree that it helps the person visualize the journey. This visualization can help us to hold in view the POSSIBILIY that there is “deeper compassion” and “deeper spirituality” ahead as we move to sit in “oneness”. This is not the same as saying “I have completed the third stage and I am now ready to move to the fourth” or even more dangerous “I see you are at the third stage, well I made it to the fourth”.
The point of possibility awareness is that it is a self directed PROCESS of personal development based on one's current "self" awareness (in what we have been discussing, how one defines compassion), one's awareness of potential to grow (in this case using compassion in a new way, or understanding it in a new way), and attention to the moment as connected to both (one’s movement toward oneness). This process of possibility applies to us all, even though we may be blind to it sometimes. If there is a deep radiant compassion that can touch the fibers of all living things simply by being, if we can become this, walk this, live this every moment, then are we not also living the possibility every moment? The concept of infinite compassion is not new and not my idea. It has not been presented here yet because it is a very advanced concept difficult to grasp. Yet it fits well with the ever present, and ever shifting, focus of compassion possibility. It also doesn't fit well into stage theory. What is an infinite stage?
Stage theory is about putting things into categories. The more one breaks things down into categories and pieces the more risk there is to becoming attached to those categories, and then attaching others to those same descriptors. This is known as an explanatory system. There is a sacred mystery in the process of developing compassion and spirituality. There is a “cloud of unknowing” that can be experienced but is very difficult to describe. These are diaphanous phenomena, wisps of the intangible, and the more we seek to grasp them within an explanatory system the more we risk losing our union with them. I am trying hard NOT to write in that direction, but rather to describe phenomena associated with experiences. Yet I am fully aware that I too, like so many mystic writers before me, am tied to the constraints of language and my cultural heritage. Whatever I present will be another explanatory system, written for these times, for this culture, like it has been done over the past.
Some basic steps in the process of developing compassion have been described. The first was describing the need to be a voice for compassion. This can be done from whatever compassion understanding you may have. It is about contributing to a shift in the way our culture views the processes of relationship and healing. It is giving voice to something that should not be silent for it is important to our survival. After this first step some guidelines were presented on forgiveness and on how to act for better relationships. These can be considered some of the foundations for building a stronger compassion. Then there was a discussion of the death of self. This is also a part of the foundation of building a stronger compassion: take off your own shoes before you try to walk in another’s.
The process of “Sitting with Suffering” and practicing forgiveness apply to the often spoken comment, “You have to have compassion for yourself before you can have compassion for others”. But it is important to know this path of understanding one’s reactions to inner suffering is only ONE of two paths leading to a deeper sacred compassion. The other path is through a transcendence of “self”. This is the death of self, the movement toward emptiness, and then oneness. These are two paths leading to the same place – the compassion space.
This conception of two paths can be considered part of how we have historically defined spiritual development. One path, sitting with one’s suffering, is linked to the old ascetic path of spiritual development. The other path, letting go of “self”, transcending self, or knowing EMPTINESS, is linked to the mystical path of spiritual development. Both of these spiritual paths of development can lead to a deeper compassion development. A deeper compassion development leads to spiritual development. In harmony they can both lead to the same place.
“The true realization of emptiness is impossible without the perfect practice of compassion, while no compassion can ever be perfect without the realization of emptiness” (from “The Way of the Bodhisatva”).
This small quote summarizes the key points, and also turns our gaze away from the explanatory system (including the one I am writing) and toward the mystery that lies within experiencing compassion in union with emptiness. This is a theme present across cultures and at the core of many great religions. The union of compassion and emptiness can become the focus of possibility and lead to the personal development of stronger compassion.
