Take Care of Each Other
“Me, I want to bloody kick this moronic bloody world in the bloody teeth over and over till it bloody understands that not hurting people is ten bloody thousand times more bloody important than being right.”
- David Mitchell, Black Swan Green
I struggled to know where to begin in writing this piece, or any piece, on compassion. As a Buddhist it’s a topic I study daily, returning again and again to essential teachings which point to the necessity of cultivating compassion for the benefit of all beings.
My struggle comes about for several reasons:
1) I do not want to belittle the suffering of anyone. (That wouldn’t be very compassionate.)
2) I do not want to come across as a fundamentalist. (Fundamentalism: also not compassionate.)
3) I do not want to sound like this is about being ‘better’ than others. (How compassionate we can be in any given situation is personal and compassion does not have levels.)
With these intentions set, I would like to share an insight I’ve had. I’ve only recently discovered it for myself, but am in no doubt it has been discovered time and again by many, many others, so I’m not taking credit.
The insight is this: An essential component to cultivating and increasing compassion is in our ability not to see ourselves as separate from any given situation. What I mean when I say this is that we are not an observer of life, even if it feels that way or we think that way. What we do matters, what hurts others ultimately hurts us, and the suffering of others isn’t something happening ‘over there’. An essential ingredient to cultivate compassion is for us to recognise this fact — and it is a fact.
This insight came on the back of contemplating Pema Chodron’s teachings on the subject, specifically what she says in Start Where You Are:
“True compassion does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves but from realising our kinship with all beings.”
Compassion is an act of relating with. Not feeling sorry for, not looking down upon from above, not being ‘nice’ to, but relating as a human being with all other human beings.
This has been on my mind because I’ve recently been told to ‘check my privilege’ when sharing my understanding of the importance of cultivating compassion. To be clear, I’ve not stated that people ‘should’ or ‘need to be’ compassionate. I’ve merely said, in order for us to heal, in order for us to reduce violence, hatred and fear in the world, it’s necessary to cultivate compassion — even for the most difficult people we encounter.
Recognising our kinship with others can be uncomfortable because it means we have to look at qualities in ourselves that we would like to reject; qualities like anger and fear and hatred are deemed ‘bad’, and we try to disassociate ourselves from them. But when we don’t reject them, when we practice compassion by first looking at ourselves and recognising these as very human qualities, we understand the motivations of others. When we understand these motivations, we become more effective in addressing what leads another to commit even the most heinous act.
It is easy to feel compassion for people who matter to us on a personal level, for people we love and appreciate. It can also be easy to feel compassion spontaneously when we are comfortable, when life is going our way, and we have energy and a sense of abundance. When we’re talking about cultivating true compassion, about doing it for the greatest benefit of all beings — like any skill — a certain amount of work is involved.
Being able to have compassion for another is not a sign of privilege — it’s a sign of being able to recognise what contributes to human suffering. To be clear, in this context, and the context in which I was told to ‘check my privilege’ for speaking of the necessity of cultivating compassion, ‘privilege’ is defined as an unfair advantage. An unfair advantage is an unearned benefit given to a person from birth because of a difference that is recognised as more “valuable” according to pre-existing social constructs. These unearned benefits create inequality.
Last time I checked the most active promoters of hatred, indifference and fear were very privileged people. If compassion, the ability to relate, is easier when we have an unfair advantage, then we wouldn’t have a need for movements like #BlackLivesMatter, there wouldn’t be a gender-wage gap, and every building constructed would be totally accessible.
It’s because of an inability or unwillingness to relate that these social constructs exist. Ignorance of how other people experience the world leads to oppression. A lack of compassion is what allows human beings to cause each other unimaginable harm.
When we see that we are intrinsically linked to every single other person, to every plant and animal we share the planet with, we see how what we do matters, and we also understand how shared our experiences are. Aggression is a disease; war, violence, terrorism are symptoms of the disease. Compassion is the medicine. Compassion is the antidote to inequality, apathy and oppression.
When people practice compassion, they do not start wars. They do not abuse others. They do not rape. They do not cause harm. They do not live in fear.
I like to look at the examples set by great advocates for compassion: Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama. All three face or faced incredible atrocities in their lives. They have born witness to human rights abuses, and the capacity humanity has for brutality. And still, they advocated for and are advocating for compassion. They saw that, in order for us to heal, everyone needs to heal. They can see the capacity we have for brutality, but they also see the capacity we have for great kindness and care. They see that, in the most difficult of circumstances, when we relate with, we are at our best.
I suspect I’ve been told to ‘check my privilege’ because people think that I’ve not experienced anything extremely painful at the hands of another, that I don’t know what it’s like to be marginalised or subjected to unfair disadvantages because of pre-existing social constructs. But like I said earlier, if compassion was easy when you have unfair advantages and an ‘easy’ ride in life, Trump’s campaign would look very different.
It’s because of the indifference I’ve faced in my life, because of the harm I’ve felt at the hands of others, that I work to cultivate compassion the way I do. It’s because I don’t, for one second, think that I’m any better than anyone else that I do this. Rather, I recognise my sameness, and I realise that I have a choice to act differently, to not always fall on the side of fear and self-protection. Practising compassion helps me recognise that we must be bigger than our fear, something we are all capable of.
I’m not saying this is easy. It isn’t. But I also know, from experience, that compassion is good for the heart. As Sharon Salzberg and Bob Thurman say repeatedly in Love Your Enemies, when you start really practising compassion, the first person to benefit is yourself.
To cultivate compassion when circumstances are at their most challenging is to genuinely understand the power of choosing to relate — it’s an act of breaking the cycle, of being the one who goes a different route, who doesn’t want to perpetuate a sense of ‘other’, regardless of the fear we feel. And it is because we are intrinsically linked, because we are part of something bigger than ourselves, that this choice benefits everyone.
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Resources:
David Mitchel, Black Swan Green (fiction), pg. 149
Pema Chodron, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living (non-fiction), Preface x
Sharon Salzberg & Robert Thurman, Love Your Enemies: How to Break the Anger Habit & Be a Whole Lot Happier
