Compassion

Nigel Jones
Jul 20, 2017 · 3 min read

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. — Khalil Gibran

A shorter version of this article appeared as ‘We really are made of stars’ in the Jersey Evening Post on 20 July 2017.

I f there is to be any real progress, it will be by compassion. Compassion, not punishment, not carrots and sticks, not clever management, not fiscal responsibility, and certainly not revenge, is how we move forward. Those other things can keep us where we are; they can stop our greed and our lies from backsliding us more deeply into trouble.

Compassion is not sympathy or pity. It is not even care or concern, and it is certainly not leniency or tolerance. Compassion starts with the felt understanding that we are all emanations of the same thing. Chips off the same old block.

On the physical level, we are all stardust: we are all made of the same atoms that were forged in the stars before even our planet was born. Practically, if we were to have eaten nothing but food that grew on Jersey’s rich and fertile soil, then there would be a real sense that we are literally emanations of those fields, presently running around on two legs and making rather a lot of noise, but one day to be laid back gently under the soil that gave us life and substance. Every wild animal — each mouse or hedgehog, sparrow and gull — has this physical reality of place, but we are so clever that our food probably came from all over the world. For millions of years up until about a hundred years ago, we were creatures of place too. We may not literally be so now, but it does not change our nature.

People easily get confused when you talk about consciousness, probably because for many of us our consciousness is filled with endless busy thoughts, and we identify with those thoughts. Some people literally think that they are their thoughts, or even the sum of their opinions, or of their memories. But I’m talking about the listener, the inner awareness that is aware of the thoughts, the sights and sounds, and the physical sensations too. When we learn to meditate, or enter a deeply prayerful state, most people find that this listening awareness is a lovely, quiet and gentle thing in its own right. My understanding is that we have this awareness in common with all the fellow beings of our land and planet too. The awareness that looks out through my eyes is exactly the same as that looking out through yours, and the same is true of the cat on the wall, the bird in the bush, and the dolphin out in the bay.

There’s an old Jersey expression that I used to hear a lot, in strong Jersey accents from my elders as I grew up, ‘Ah, you’re like me, eh?’ Never was there a truer word.

Compassion, to me, is knowing that each one of the people, animals and others that I meet each day are just like me. We are fallible, and error-prone, but also fun-loving and playful. Each of us is imbued with the same longing, to see our dreams come true, to find the peace of ages, to be respected, and to be looked after. As we falter and fail, we need support, when we soar and succeed we yearn to bring others along.

Compassion, based in our actual and total oneness of being, is really the love that gives us life. Living in compassion means that more for me is also more for you; it fills my cup at the same time as it fills yours. Searingly compassionate love is not an optional extra, it is the stuff that we are actually made of.

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Nigel Jones

Written by

All living things are intimately and very snugly connected together, and we always have been.

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