What is compassion? Compassion is the wish that others be free of suffering. It is by means of compassion that we aspire to attain enlightenment. It is compassion that inspires us to engage in the virtuous practices that lead to Buddhahood. We must therefore devote ourselves to developing compassion.
EMPATHY
In the first step toward a compassionate heart, we must develop our empathy or closeness to others. We must also recognize the gravity of their misery. The closer we are to a person, the more unbearable we find that person’s suffering. The closeness I speak of is not a physical proximity, nor need it be an emotional one. It is a feeling of responsibility, of concern for a person. In order to develop such closeness, we must reflect upon the virtues of cherishing the well-being of others. We must come to see how this brings one an inner happiness and peace of mind. We must come to recognize how others respect and like us as a result of such an attitude toward them. We must contemplate the shortcomings of self-centeredness, seeing how it causes us to act in unvirtuous ways and how our own present fortune takes advantage of those less fortunate.
It is also important that we reflect upon the kindness of others. This realization is also a fruit of cultivating empathy. We must recognize how our fortune is really dependent upon the cooperation and contributions of others. Every aspect of our present well-being is due to hard work on the part of others. As we look around us at the buildings we live and work in, the roads we travel, the clothes we wear, or the food we eat, we must acknowledge that all are provided by others. None of these would exist for us to enjoy and make use of were it not for the kindness of so many people unknown to us. As we contemplate in this manner, our appreciation for others grows, as does our empathy and closeness to them.
We must work to recognize our dependence on those for whom we feel compassion. This recognition brings them even closer. It requires sustained attention to see others through less self-centered lenses. We must work at recognizing their enormous impact on our well-being. When we resist indulging in a self-centered view of the world, we can replace it with a worldview that takes every living being into account.
We must not expect our view of others to change suddenly.
RECOGNIZING THE SUFFERING OF OTHERS
After empathy and developing closeness, the next important practice in our cultivation of compassion is an insight into the nature of suffering. Our compassion for all sentient beings must stem from a recognition of their suffering. One thing very specific to the contemplation of suffering is that it tends to be more powerful and effective if we focus on our own suffering and then extend that recognition to the suffering of others. Our compassion for others grows as our recognition of their suffering does.
We all naturally sympathize with someone who is undergoing the manifest suffering of a painful illness or the loss of a loved one. This is one kind of suffering, in Buddhism called the suffering of suffering.
It is more difficult to feel compassion for someone experiencing what Buddhists refer to as the suffering of change, which in conventional terms would be pleasurable experiences such as the enjoyment of fame or wealth. This is a second kind of suffering. When we see people enjoy such worldly success, instead of feeling compassion because we know that it will eventually end, leaving them to experience disappointment at their loss, often our reaction is to feel admiration and sometimes even envy. If we had a genuine understanding of suffering and its nature, we would recognize how the experience of fame and wealth are temporary and how the pleasure they bring will naturally end, causing one to suffer.
There is also a third and more profound level of suffering, which is the most subtle. We experience this suffering constantly, as it is a by-product of cyclic existence. It is in the nature of cyclic existence that we are continuously under the control of negative emotions and thoughts. And, as long as we are under their control, our very existence is a form of suffering. This level of suffering pervades our lives, sending us round and round in vicious circles of negative emotions and nonvirtuous actions. However, this form of suffering is difficult to recognize. It is not the evident state of misery we find in the suffering of suffering. Nor is it the opposite of our fortune and well-being, as we see in the suffering of change. Nevertheless, this pervasive suffering is most profound. It permeates all aspects of life.
Once we have cultivated a profound understanding of the three levels of suffering in our own personal experience, it is easier to shift the focus onto others and reflect upon these three levels. From there we can develop the wish that they be freed of all suffering.
Once we are able to combine a feeling of empathy for others with a profound understanding of the suffering they experience, we become able to generate genuine compassion for them. We must work at this continually. We can compare this process to the way in which we start a fire by rubbing two sticks together. To get to the smoldering point, we know that we must maintain a continuous friction to ratchet up the temperature to the point where the wood can catch fire. Similarly, as we work at developing mental qualities such as compassion, we must diligently apply the mental techniques necessary to bring about the desired effect. Going about this in a haphazard way is of no real benefit.
LOVING-KINDNESS
Just as compassion is the wish that all sentient beings be free of suffering, loving-kindness is the wish that all may enjoy happiness. As with compassion, when cultivating loving-kindness it is important to start by taking a specific individual as a focus of our meditation, and we then extend the scope of our concern further and further, to eventually encompass and embrace all sentient beings. Again, we begin by taking a neutral person, a person who inspires no strong feelings in us, as our object of meditation. We then extend this meditation to individual friends and family members and, ultimately, our particular enemies.
We must use a real individual as the focus of our meditation, and then enhance our compassion and loving-kindness toward that person so that we can really experience compassion and loving-kindness toward others. We work on one person at a time. Otherwise, we might end up meditating on compassion toward all in a very general sense, with no specific focus or power to our meditation. Then, when we actually relate this kind of meditation to specific individuals we are not fond of, we might even think, “Oh, he is an exception.”
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