THE NATURE OF COMPASSION

 

Having gone beyond the mind-made opposites, you become like a

deep lake. The outer situation of your life and whatever happens

there is the surface of the lake. Sometimes calm, sometimes windy

and rough, according to the cycles and seasons. Deep down, however,

the lake is always undisturbed. You are the whole lake, not just the

surface, and you are in touch with your own depth, which remains

absolutely still. You don’t resist change by mentally clinging to any

situation. Your inner peace does not depend on it. You abide in Being

— unchanging, timeless, deathless — and you are no longer

dependent for fulfillment or happiness on the outer world of

constantly fluctuating forms. You can enjoy them, play with them,

create new forms, appreciate the beauty of it all. But there will be no

need to attach yourself to any of it.

When you become this detached, does it not mean that you also

become remote from other human beings?

On the contrary. As long as you are unaware of Being, the reality of

other humans will elude you, because you have not found your own.

Your mind will like or dislike their form, which is not just their body

but includes their mind as well. True relationship becomes possible

only when there is an awareness of Being. Coming from Being, you

will perceive another person’s body and mind as just a screen, as it

were, behind which you can feel their true reality, as you feel yours.

So, when confronted with someone else’s suffering or unconscious

behavior, you stay present and in touch with Being and are thus able

to look beyond the form and feel the other person’s radiant and pure

Being through your own. At the level of Being, all suffering is

recognized as an illusion. Suffering is due to identification with form.

Miracles of healing sometimes occur through this realization, by

awakening Being-consciousness in others — if they are ready.

Is that what compassion is?

Yes. Compassion is the awareness of a deep bond between yourself

and all creatures. But there are two sides to compassion, two sides to

this bond. On the one hand, since you are still here as a physical

body, you share the vulnerability and mortality of your physical form

with every other human and with every living being. Next time you

say, “I have nothing in common with this person,” remember that you

have a great deal in common: A few years from now — two years or

seventy years, it doesn’t make much difference — both of you will

have become rotting corpses, then piles of dust, then nothing at all.

This is a sobering and humbling realization that leaves little room for

pride. Is this a negative thought? No, it is a fact. Why close your eyes

to it? In that sense, there is total equality between you and every

other creature.

One of the most powerful spiritual practices is to meditate deeply on

the mortality of physical forms, including your own. This is called: Die

before you die. Go into it deeply. Your physical form is dissolving, is

no more. Then a moment comes when all mind-forms or thoughts also

die. Yet you are still there — the divine presence that you are.

Radiant, fully awake. Nothing that was real ever died, only names,

forms, and illusions.

The realization of this deathless dimension, your true nature, is the

other side of compassion. On a deep feeling-level, you now recognize

not only your own immortality but through your own that of every

other creature as well. On the level of form, you share mortality and

the precariousness of existence. On the level of Being, you share

eternal, radiant life. These are the two aspects of compassion. In

compassion, the seemingly opposite feelings of sadness and joy

merge into one and become transmuted into a deep inner peace. This

is the peace of God. It is one of the most noble feelings that humans

are capable of, and it has great healing and transformative power. But

true compassion, as I have just described it, is as yet rare. To have

deep empathy for the suffering of another being certainly requires a

high degree of consciousness but represents only one side of

compassion. It is not complete. True compassion goes beyond

empathy or sympathy. It does not happen until sadness merges with

joy, the joy of Being beyond form, the joy of eternal life.