In our previous discussion with Clive Holmes, we talked about what compassion is and is not. Among the many marvellous explanations and analogies Clive shared with us, my favourite description is:
“Compassion is the skill of helping others without getting overwhelmed by their — or your own — emotions.”
We also discussed that compassion isn’t suffering together, as the word’s Latin origins suggests, nor it is separating yourself from others’ suffering. Since we are here to dig deeper, I’d like to ask Clive about what seems like a paradox: if we are not suffering together and yet we are not separate from others, how can we position ourselves to be compassionate?
Good question. One vital aspect to understand eastern philosophy is not often written in the books. It’s what I call ‘the wisdom of paradox’.
A paradox is when two contradicting things happen at the same time, right? Like the Chinese idea of the Yin-Yang. If you study the Yin-Yang symbol closely, you’ll notice that Yin always has the Yang in its centre; and Yang always has a little bit of the Yin in the middle. Compassion is a bit like that; it’s a paradox. It is a kind of paradox that you’re completely listening to the other person’s suffering but at the same time, you’re able to do what is necessary. You’re not overwhelmed by your — or the other person’s — emotions. So it’s like the ultimate union of your head and your heart within your body.
Your head gives you some perspective, like a crane flying above the forest so that you can clearly see everything down below. Yet at the same time, your heart remains open to what’s happening on the floor of the forest. That’s the paradox.
Compassion is training the heart as well as the mind.
Training your heart so that it won’t be overwhelmed by emotions. Training the mind so that you don’t become arrogant or pitying.
Sounds like a delicate balance. Can you elaborate on how we can train our hearts?
Start simple: have a pause, slow down. Meditation, for instance, is a great way of training the mind to recognise what is happening and then to choose not to react to things, but to respond with awareness.
Untrained minds tend to react without thinking, without empathy for how the other person feels. But if you train the mind with meditation, then you can learn how to respond to what is happening while it’s happening. And if you train your heart in compassion, then it won’t close down. You’ll gain the courage to help others without fear of getting hurt.
Doing exercises on kindness and compassion can also help you to train your heart and develop the skills to help others. It’s not enough just to want to help others; you also need to know how you can help — that’s what I mean by skills. It’s the wisdom of the heart.
Wisdom of the heart — that phrase really speaks to my heart, although my mind is about to jump in to say wisdom belongs only to the mind. It’s fascinating to observe how the ego works! Can you please describe what you mean here by wisdom?
Sure. Imagine two hungry dogs fighting for a bone. They may even hurt each other to get the bone, right? However, two human beings have the intelligence to share the bone. So wisdom, like compassion, is a skill. Not only that — wisdom often arises with compassion.
Wisdom can also mean seeing how everything is interconnected. For instance, here in Scotland, I feed the birds every morning. Sometimes the rabbits come to eat the bird food, too. Wisdom, in this case, is to remember that those birds will be singing 5,000 miles away when they migrate in winter. That it’s important that someone feeds them. And that’s why I say:
Compassion opens the doorway to wisdom.
It’s important to open that door to wisdom, so that we can see whatever we’re going through, we’re not alone, we’re not isolated.
So how do you differentiate wisdom from knowledge?
At university, I studied philosophy, and one of the philosophers I studied was called Wittgenstein. He was an incredibly rich person, who gave away all of his money to charity, so he really lived the life of wisdom you might say. Back in the 1950’s, Wittgenstein’s prophecy was that with technology, people would have too much knowledge but not enough wisdom.
Knowledge is the accumulation of facts; whereas, wisdom has the element of compassion in it. Knowledge can divorce you from reality because you’re living in your head, you know your facts; whereas wisdom is being a fully integrated human.
Wisdom is the heart’s intelligence, whereas knowledge belongs to the mind.
Only through the unification of these two, the head and the heart, can you become a fully integrated person and establish integrity. Integrity comes from the Latin word integer, meaning ‘intact’. Like being one.
When your head and heart are not aligned, you are at war with yourself. Your thoughts may be going one way, while your feelings are running the other way. Maybe your head is criticizing your feelings.
With wisdom, which arises along with compassion, you can end this war and become one again.
Wow, beautifully said. Thank you for sharing your knowledge as well as your wisdom with us, dear Clive Holmes. Until the next discussion!
