Living with Wisdom

October 10, 17, 31, November 14, 2018

Robert Hodge & Laura Good

Note:  Many of the quotations are from Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness: Walking the Buddha’s Path by Bhante Gunaratana (Bhante G.).  The citations will be abbreviated as EMSTH.

Why Live Wisely?

If we want to follow the path to attain peace and freedom from suffering, we need to understand the underlying principles of suffering and what intentions to adopt.

The Buddha stated in the Fourth Noble Truth that the way to end suffering is through the Eightfold Path:  “And this, monks, is the noble truth of the way of practice leading to the cessation of stress: precisely this Noble Eightfold Path — right understanding, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.  These eight steps are translated as “right” which means skillful.  “Right” and “Skillful” will be used interchangeably.  The two steps which address leading a skillful life are Skillful Understanding and Skillful Intention.  These are the wisdom components of the Eightfold Path.

Skillful Understanding

“And what, monks, is right view (understanding)? Knowledge with regard to stress, knowledge with regard to the origination of stress, knowledge with regard to the stopping of stress, knowledge with regard to the way of practice leading to the stopping of stress: This, monks, is called right view (understanding).  (Magga-vibhanga Sutta: An Analysis of the Path SN 45.8)

With Skillful Understanding, we gain knowledge of karma and the four principles of suffering called the Four Noble Truths.

Karma:  Understanding Cause and Effect

As noted in the section on Living a Skillful Life, our behaviors can be skillful or unskillful.  With Skillful Understanding, we know that all actions (thoughts, words, deeds) have causes and effects and that acting in unskillful ways leads to unhappy results and acting in skillful ways leads to happy results. Happy means long lasting happiness not the short-lived happiness obtained through desire or ill-will.  Skillful actions yield internal and external happy results:  how happy you feel (internal) and how happy others feel as a result of your actions (external).

The concept of karma comes up in relation to cause and effect.  Karma refers to how both intentional skillful and unskillful thoughts, words or deeds affect an individual over time.   Karma is not punishment or retribution but simply an extended expression or consequence of natural acts.  Karma more broadly names the universal principle of cause and effect, action and reaction, that governs all life.  The point is that all is connected; no action is totally independent of consequence.  Also, an action now is not binding to some particular, pre-determined future experience or reaction; it is not a simple, one-to-one correspondence of reward or punishment.  In addition, our mind often predicts causes and effects which may not be true.  For example, we may experience guilt over an unskillful action and await punishment which never arises.  That does not mean that there are no consequences to our unskillful action.  It means that we cannot be aware of all the interactions.  Unskillful actions put us at risk.

The Principles of Suffering (Four Noble Truths)

The Buddha said in the Alagaddupama Sutta: “What I teach now as before, O monks, is suffering and the cessation of suffering.”  His approach was similar that of a medical physician dealing with physical illnesses.  Suffering is a disease (dis ease) has symptoms, a cause, a cure and a prescription for its cessation.  The Buddha outlined these principles as the Four Noble Truths.  When we view suffering as a disease, it is easier to address because we can more easily abandon our judgment about our suffering and realize that suffering affects everyone.  Just like flu or cancer, we are all at risk.

The disease of suffering can be summarized as noted below:

Principles of Disease The Disease of Suffering
Symptoms Dissatisfaction, stress, fear, tension, anxiety, worry, depression, disappointment, anger, jealousy, abandonment, nervousness, mental pain, etc..
Cause Wanting life to be other than it is, attachment to an outcome
Cure Stop craving, let go
Prescription The Eightfold Path

Symptoms: Dissatisfaction

Dissatisfaction with what life hands us is universal. We may use other names to describe our suffering:  stress, fear, tension, anxiety, worry, depression, disappointment, anger, jealousy, abandonment, nervousness or mental pain.

Three kinds of experiences cause most of the dissatisfaction for us:  Life Cycle, Change and No Control.

Life Cycle
The life cycle consists of birth, aging, sickness and death.  Each of these can cause dissatisfaction.  For example, when we are born, we want all sorts of things such as being held and rocked.  And when we don’t get what we want we cry (suffer).  During our life, we experience aging and sickness. And finally, we encounter death.   Even though we logically know that we cannot escape death, we fear its coming.  To quell this fear, we turn to pleasures of the senses (seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling, thinking) as a way to escape the inevitability of our mortality.

Change
The mind wants stability and doesn’t like change.  In The Buddha’s Brain, Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius note that the mind evolved with a priority for survival with happiness being optional.  For security, survival  and protection, the mind adopted the following three strategies:

  • create boundaries between you and the world,
  • maintain stability
  • approach opportunities and avoid threats.

While these strategies might benefit survival, they have the potential to cause suffering as all of them lead to isolation, frustration, and narrowing our options for happiness.  Life is change; we can’t avoid it.

No Control
The thought of not being in control can cause immense suffering.  What makes us think that we are ever in control?

“If we were really in control of our lives, we’d have no reason to be dissatisfied. But we’re not in control. Time after time we don’t get what we want, and we get what we don’t want.

We want our perfect job, perfect office, perfect boss, and perfect pay to continue forever, but they change, and we have no say about why or when. We want to keep our loved ones, but no matter how tightly we cling to them, someday we’ll be separated. To stay healthy we take herbs and vitamins, work out, and eat right, but we still get sick. We want to remain young and strong and hope that old age will happen only to others, but years pass and we discover that our body has other plans. Whatever ideal situation we’re in, we naturally wish to hold on to it. But we have no control over the law of impermanence. Everything exists by consent of this law, and we have no protection against it.”  (EMSTH p. 39)

Cause:  We want life to be other than it is.
The cause of suffering can be explained very simply:  we want life to be other than it is.  We long for something else.  We have expectations of outcomes that are in direct conflict with what life is giving us.  This “fever of unsatisfied longing” is often referred to as craving or desire.  This craving does not and cannot lead to lasting happiness, the peace that we seek.

The most familiar type of craving is what we get from our six sense bases (body, eyes, ears, nose, tongue and mind).  As Goldstein notes, “All of these desires are just our usual engagement with life – enjoying and wanting what is pleasurable, avoid as best we can what is disagreeable.”  This engagement is never ending.  As the Buddha noted, “…people who are not free from lust for sensual pleasures, who are devoured by craving for sensual pleasures, who burn with the fever of sensual pleasures, still indulge in sensual pleasures; the more they indulge in sensual pleasures, the more their craving for sensual pleasures increases and the more they are burned by the fever of sensual pleasures, yet they find a certain measure of satisfaction and enjoyment in dependence on the five cords of sensual pleasure.”  MN 75

Cure:  Stop craving, let go

As we learned, craving (wanting) is the cause of suffering.   Cravings arise constantly.  It is when we cling to a craving that suffering arises.  Clinging is attachment.  When we attach to a craving, we are in a trance, unaware of other possibilities and the effect that this craving is having on our life.  It is not just wanting life to be other than it is, it is being attached to the concept, life should be other than it is.  We then become dissatisfied and obsessed with the should.  We have choices – continue the obsession, do something (act), or let go.  Continuing the obsession with out acting just increases the suffering.

The good news is that with motivation, there can be freedom from attachment (clinging).  Freedom from attachment is not a onetime letting go but something to be practiced each time craving arises.  This is letting go many times, moment to moment.   It is helpful to realize letting go can happen because all phenomena are impermanent.  After the Buddha gave his first teaching, one of the monks stated that “All that is subject to arising is subject to ceasing.”   However, when our attachment to a desire (craving) falls away, there is a tendency to attach to another.  This can lead to an endless cycle of attachments.  Sumedho noted, “I was brought up in America — the land of freedom.  It promises the right to be happy, but what it really offers is the right to be attached to everything.”  (The Four Noble Truths by Ajahn Sumedho p.38)

Sumedho asks us to reflect frequently on “All that is subject to arising is subject to ceasing.”  “I would like to emphasize how important it is to develop this way of reflecting.  Rather than just developing a method of tranquillising your mind, which certainly is one part of the practice, really see that proper meditation is a commitment to wise investigation. It involves a courageous effort to look deeply into things, not as analyzing yourself and making judgments about why you suffer on a personal level but resolving to really follow the path until you have profound understanding.  Such perfect understanding is based upon the pattern of arising and ceasing.  Once this law is understood, everything is seen as fitting into that pattern.”  (The Four Noble Truths, p. 39-40)

What would it be like if there were complete cessation?  As Moffitt notes, “Thus when there is cessation, your mind no longer burns in response to the arising of pleasant and unpleasant in your life…Your mind is willing to be with what is true in the moment and isn’t disturbed by it.”  (Dancing with Life p. 155) 

Prescription:  The Eightfold Path

Although the cure for suffering is letting go of craving, it requires a comprehensive approach.  The Buddha described eight steps that are combined into three components: wisdom, skillful living, and mindful practice.

Living with Wisdom (2 steps):
Skillful Understanding: gaining an understanding of what life is really about.
Skillful Intention: practicing generosity, loving-kindness and compassion.

Living a Skillful Life (3 steps):
Skillful Speech:  not lying, speaking harshly
Skillful Action:  following the five precepts

  • Abstaining from killing.
  • Abstaining from stealing.
  • Abstaining from speaking falsely.
  • Abstaining from sexual misconduct.
  • Abstaining from misusing intoxicants that cloud the mind.

Skillful Livelihood:  engaging in activities that support your spiritual path and which do not harm yourself or others.

Living Mindfully (3 steps):
Skillful Effort: developing wholesome mental states.

Skillful Mindfulness:  seeing things as they really are.

Skillful Concentration:  being able to focus on the task at hand.

For further reading:
Gunaratana, Bhante, Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness: Walking the Buddha’s Path, Wisdom Publications 2001 

Skillful Intention

“And what is right resolve? Being resolved on renunciation, on freedom from ill will, on harmlessness: This is called right resolve.  (Magga-vibhanga Sutta: An Analysis of the Path SN 45.8)

Note:  Resolve means to be decided on a course of action.  The term Skillful Intention will used as the name of this step as the purpose is to be resolved three intentional skillful mind states.  The three mind states will be termed as letting go (renunciation), loving-kindness (freedom from ill-will), and compassion (harmlessness).

What are your skillful intentions in life to attain peace, happiness and freedom from suffering?  The Buddha, as noted above, recommended three intentions to master: letting go, loving kindness, and compassion.  These intentions if practiced skillfully are the antidotes to the obstacles to mindfulness noted in the Practice of Mindfulness:  A Guide.  These intentions replace our unskillful thoughts of desire, aversion, dullness/drowsiness, restlessness/worry, and doubt.

Each of these intentions will be described below.

The Intention of Letting Go
This is the opposite of desire, attachment or clinging. As Bhante G. states, “It (Letting go) is generosity in the highest sense.” (ESTMH p. 58) There are five categories of attachments for letting go.

  • Our attachment to material objects
  • Our attachment to people and physical form
  • Our attachment to experiences
  • Our attachment to beliefs
  • Our attachment to fear

Attachment to material objects

We attach to materials objects and don’t want to let go mentally or physically.  How can you let go of material objects?  Take an inventory of your material objects and see how you are attached to what you own or what you desire.  Try to do this without judgment.  Be open to looking deeply at what it would be like to cease your attachment to specific objects.  This does not mean that you give everything away; it is just that you correctly view material objects as just phenomena.  You see through mindfulness that all phenomena are impermanent, unable to give lasting satisfaction, and of selfless nature.  How can you be so attached to that which is impermanent and always changing?  And which you don’t really own!  Know that it is impossible to be with something if you are constantly trying to keep it.

There is also the opportunity to look at your intention about material generosity.  What attachments do you have to practicing generosity?  What keeps you from giving?  If you do give, do you expect something in return such as recognition?

There is great benefit to giving.   “If people knew, as I know, the fruits of sharing gifts, they would not enjoy their use without sharing them, nor would the taint of stinginess obsess the heart. Even if it were their last bit, their last morsel of food, they would not enjoy its use without sharing it if there was someone else to share it with.”  The Buddha (Iti 26)

The medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides listed eight levels of generosity:

Giving grudgingly

Giving less than you should, but doing it cheerfully

Giving after being asked

Giving before being asked

Giving when you do not know the recipient, but the recipient knows you

Giving when you know the recipient, but the recipient does not know you

Giving when both the giver and receiver are unknown to one another

Enabling the recipient to become self-sufficient and no longer in need of giving

These levels do not imply right or wrong.  They merely illustrate ways to reflect on generosity.

What is your intention of letting go of material objects?

Attachment to people and physical form
Clinging in relationships, even good ones, is something to be aware of because it causes suffering.  We may call it love.  However, this is love in the sensual sense. We aren’t loving but want to be loved or in control.  True love is defined as the refusal to separate, to make distinctions.  Love is the will to share your happiness with all.  (Nisargadatta) In other words, unconditional love.

There is also attachment to our physical form; the motivation being that we can be more attractive to others or be immortal.  Our body is always changing; we have no control over that process.  We cannot control our sensations.  The next sensation might be pleasant or unpleasant.  All we can do is be aware of potential clinging to these thoughts about our body.

What is your intention in letting of clinging to people and physical form?

Attachment to Experiences
An experience arises when our consciousness comes into contact with one of our senses making contact with a sense object.  We cannot cling to experiences but only to our memory of that experience, distorted as it may be.  As we practice mindfulness, we come to realize that this “experience” is just another thought or phenomenon that arises in the mind. and that the “inner self” is also just a thought.  We move from what seems to be to what is.  We see that all phenomena share the three characteristics of impermanence, inability to provide lasting satisfaction, and selfless nature.  Experiences only exist as memories.  In essence, what are we clinging to?  Just thoughts and memories.

What is your intention in letting of clinging to experiences?

Attachment to beliefs

As we go through life, we accumulate beliefs.  Belief is defined by the Oxford dictionaries as “an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof.”  We mistakenly create and/or adopt beliefs in order to feel secure, happy and peaceful.  Alan Watts defines beliefs as the insistence that truth is what one would wish it to be; that it must be compatible with our preconceived ideas and wishes   Watts characterizes having beliefs as grasping at life rather than just living life.  In other words, we live the belief not life.  The belief becomes our “fixed view” not open to question or investigation.  Through holding beliefs, we become more rigid and inflexible.  We lose our freedom.

What is your intention in letting of clinging to beliefs?

Attachment to fear
What is fear?  Fear is worry, anticipation or uncertainty about what might happen in the future.  We are anxious that we won’t get what we want in the future or that we will get what we don’t want in the future.  In other words, we want life to be other than it is.

Fear is the mental formation that arises from our processing an experience.  Fear is aversion to what might or might not happen and it causes restlessness and worry, one of the five obstacles to mindfulness as noted in The Practice of Mindfulness:  A Guide.

When we are aware of fear arising, we can mindfully reflect on the experience that triggered it causing the unpleasant feeling (body sensation) and our perception (mental impression) from our mind comparing our memories and beliefs and predicting dire consequences.

The benefits of committing to the intention of letting go.
The intention to let go is a commitment to seek the joy and freedom of nonattachment.

“The Buddha’s instruction to abandon clinging translates into caring without demanding, loving without imposing conditions, and moving toward your goals without attachment to outcome.”  Phillip Moffitt. Dancing with Life: Buddhist Insights for Finding Meaning and Joy in the Face of Suffering (p. 102).

How do we let go?  Letting go at the core is really letting go of our conditional processing (feelings, perceptions and mental formations) by mindfully seeing what really is.we  This second step of the Eightfold Path is simply adopting the intentions of letting go, loving kindness, and compassion.  How we practice these intentions will be addressed in the forthcoming section on Living Mindfully (Skillful Concentration, Skillful Mindfulness, Skillful Effort).

The Intention of Loving-Kindness

 

 

The Intention of Compassion

“By nature’s design, we all recoil from pain. Suppose you’re cooking dinner with brand-new cookware and mistakenly pick up that fancy, all-metal, oven-ready pot lid, forgetting to use a pot holder. It’s only natural that you drop the lid in a clamor as you yank your hand away. The haste of your recoil probably spares several layers of skin. And so it may seem with suffering of all sorts. Your first instinct may often be to look, leap, or pull away, or otherwise hang back. Increasing your distance from the source of pain can seem like the best way to spare yourself the added suffering that may come from being too close to it.  Compassion does just the opposite. It moves toward suffering, not away from it. It seeks connection, not distance. Compassion is what rouses the father who, without a moment’s thought, rushes toward his bloodied child after a playground accident, scooping her up in his arms to comfort her and attend to her wounds. It fuels the hospice volunteer, who reads poetry to the gentleman she met just last week who’s facing imminent death from colon cancer. It can move you to gently place your hand on a coworker’s arm, as you absorb her recounting of the difficulties her family is now enduring. Indeed, the latest evidence from studies of primates (both human and nonhuman) suggests that compassionate responding like this is just as natural, just as hardwired, and just as beneficial to our species as is our evolved instinct to recoil from burning sensations and other forms of physical pain.

Compassion is love. It flowers when you recognize some kind of physical or emotional pain within the other person. I dare say that no human experience is purely 100 percent good. Life experiences are instead virtually always some rich amalgam of good and bad. Think of it as a vibrant tapestry, in which the gilded threads of love and good fortune are interwoven among the darker threads of pain, sorrow, and loss.

Equally true, no human experience is purely 100 percent bad, nor need it be. Even the heaviest of human experiences—sudden grief or joblessness, natural or human-orchestrated disasters and other brushes with mortality—can be lightened appreciably when you recollect simple truths such as “this too shall pass” or “I’m not in this alone.” Indeed, such braiding of adversity with hope and love, of destructive with more reassuring emotions, is the secret to resilience. Resilient people are the ones who bend without breaking and who eventually bounce back from even the most difficult life challenges. Instinctually, they can see some form of light in the darkness they face. In study after study, my collaborators and I find that it is precisely this infusion of positive emotions into negative emotional terrain that drives resilient people to bounce back.”  Barbara L. Fredrickson, Ph.D Love 2.0 How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become (p. 140)

Compassion means to be with, feel with, suffer with.  The key word is “with.”  In order to be with ourselves or others, we need to be mindful, paying attention moment to moment to what is. When we do that, we “let ourselves be touched by life, and our hearts naturally become more open and engaged.”  (Tara Brach Radical Acceptance p. 222) Bhante Gunaratana defines compassion as “the melting of the heart at the thought of another’s suffering.”

“The world suffers. But most men have their eyes and ears closed. They do not see the unbroken stream of tears flowing through life; they do not hear the cry of distress continually pervading the world. Their own little grief or joy bars their sight, deafens their ears. Bound by selfishness, their hearts turn stiff and narrow. Being stiff and narrow, how should they be able to strive for any higher goal, to realize that only release from selfish craving will effect their own freedom from suffering?

It is compassion that removes the heavy bar, opens the door to freedom, makes the narrow heart as wide as the world. Compassion takes away from the heart the inert weight, the paralyzing heaviness; it gives wings to those who cling to the lowlands of self.

Through compassion the fact of suffering remains vividly present to our mind, even at times when we personally are free from it. It gives us the rich experience of suffering, thus strengthening us to meet it prepared, when it does befall us.

Compassion reconciles us to our own destiny by showing us the life of others, often much harder than ours.

Behold the endless caravan of beings, men and beasts, burdened with sorrow and pain! The burden of every one of them, we also have carried in bygone times during the unfathomable sequence of repeated births. Behold this and open your heart to compassion!

And this misery may well be our own destiny again! He who is without compassion now, will one day cry for it. If sympathy with others is lacking, it will have to be acquired through one’s own long and painful experience. This is the great law of life. Knowing this, keep guard over yourself!

Beings, sunk in ignorance, lost in delusion, hasten from one state of suffering to another, not knowing the real cause, not knowing the escape from it. This insight into the general law of suffering is the real foundation of our compassion, not any isolated fact of suffering.

Hence our compassion will also include those who at the moment may be happy, but act with an evil and deluded mind. In their present deeds we shall foresee their future state of distress, and compassion will arise.

The compassion of the wise man does not render him a victim of suffering. His thoughts, words and deeds are full of pity. But his heart does not waver; unchanged it remains, serene and calm. How else should he be able to help?

May such compassion arise in our hearts! Compassion that is sublime nobility of heart and intellect which knows, understands and is ready to help.

Compassion that is strength and gives strength: this is highest compassion.

And what is the highest manifestation of compassion?

To show to the world the path leading to the end of suffering, the path pointed out, trodden and realized to perfection by Him, the Exalted One, the Buddha.”

The Four Sublime States:  Contemplations on Love, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy and Equanimity

By Nyanaponika Thera

Two types of compassion:  compassion for ourselves and compassion for others. 

Compassion for ourselves
When we personally suffer we may have thoughts of fear, anxiety, anger, loneliness, and self-criticism.  Our bodily sensations include pain, headache, contraction, stomach upset, lassitude, and crying.  We may feel self-pity, feeling that what has happened to us is unfair.  This can lead to resentment or bitterness, and to feeling more isolated and alienated.

“Self compassion is feeling that what has happened to us is unfortunate, whereas self-pity is feeling that what happened to you is unfair.  In this way, self-pity can lead to resentment or bitterness, and to feeling more isolated and alienated.  In contrast, self compassion often leads to increased feelings of connectedness.   Self-compassion is what helps us forgive ourselves when we’ve fallen short; it’s what prevents internal criticism from taking over and playing across our face.….In this way, self-compassion is critical to emanating warmth.”  “Self compassion is how much warmth we can have for ourselves, especially when we are going through a difficult experience.”  Olivia Fox Cabane, The Charisma Myth (pp. 84-85)

When we cause suffering in others, “Feeling compassion for ourselves in no way releases us from responsibility for our actions. Rather, it releases us from the self-hatred that prevents us from responding to our life with clarity and balance.”  Tara Brach Radical Acceptance (p. 207)

“I realized that genuine compassion can never come from fear or from the longing to fix or change. Compassion results naturally from the realization of our shared pain. It manifests as we grow out of our own sense of separateness, isolation, and alienation.” Bayda, Ezra. Being Zen: Bringing Meditation to Life

“Self-compassion delivers an impressive array of benefits:  decreased anxiety, depression, and self-criticism: improved relationships and greater feelings of social connectedness and satisfaction with life; increased ability to hand negative events: and even improved immune system functioning.”   Olivia Fox Cabane, The Charisma Myth (p. 86)

“Our practice is about the transformation of consciousness that makes compassionate responsiveness the default setting of our lives. Compassion requires both openness and equanimity. It requires learning to let things in without drowning in the difficulties and without being overcome by sorrow. It means learning to simply be with the truth of things as they are. This is the great gift of mindfulness that opens us to compassion. Being with the truth of what is present is what we do every time we open to our own pain or difficulty. As we practice opening to and coming close to the suffering in our own lives with compassion, we then have greater strength and courage to be with the suffering of others.”  Goldstein, Joseph. Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening (pp. 327-328).

Compassion for others

It is impossible to have compassion for others without love.  We can’t be with others wholly if we let conditions such as anger and hate get in our way.  Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj defined love as the refusal to separate, to make distinctions.  When we pay attention to others, we recognize their vulnerability and suffering.  We realize that they want peace and happiness just as we do.

When we are in a trance of unworthiness, desire, or fear, we are totally absorbed in our own world. We shut others out and whatever perception we have of them is unreal.  “Once someone is an unreal other, we lose sight of how they hurt. Because we don’t experience them as feeling beings, we not only ignore them, we can inflict pain on them without compunction. Not seeing that others are real leads to a father disowning his son for being gay, divorced parents using their children as weapons. All the enormous suffering of violence and war comes from our basic failure to see that others are real.”  Tara Brach Radical Acceptance (p. 229).  We withhold our kindness.

Another pitfall of the unreal is when we compare ourselves to unreal groups, we lose sight of their suffering.  “We also compare the groups we belong to—Americans, Russians, Republicans, Democrats, Christians, Muslims, and so on—to other groups.  That’s why we tend to wear the mantle of our group affiliations on our sleeves (or our car bumpers).  Our sense of self is imbued with social labels that define us and make us feel safe and accepted within clearly defined boundaries.  Although a sense of belongingness can be found within these group identities, it is still limited.  As long as we’re identifying with subsets of people rather than the entire human race, we’re creating divisions that separate us from our fellows….Sadly these divisions often lead to prejudice and hatred…..Group identity lies at the root of most violent conflicts—whether it’s a scuffle between two local high school football teams or a full-scale international war.”  Kristen  Neff Self Compassion, p. 67-68)

An example

“Imagine you’re stuck in traffic on the way to work, and a homeless man tries to get you to pay him a buck for washing your car windows. He’s so pushy! you think to yourself. He’ll make me miss the light and be late. He probably just wants the money for booze or drugs anyway. Maybe if I ignore him, he’ll just leave me alone. But he doesn’t ignore you, and you sit there hating him while he washes your window, feeling guilty if you don’t toss him some money, resentful if you do.

Then one day, you’re struck as if by lightning. There you are in the same commuter traffic, at the same light, at the same time, and there’s the homeless man, with his bucket and squeegee as usual. Yet for some unknown reason, today you see him differently. You see him as a person rather than just a mere annoyance. You notice his suffering. How does he survive? Most people just shoo him away. He’s out here in the traffic and fumes all day and certainly isn’t earning much. At least he’s trying to offer something in return for the cash. It must be really tough to have people be so irritated with you all the time. I wonder what his story is? How he ended up on the streets? The moment you see the man as an actual human being who is suffering, your heart connects with him. Instead of ignoring him, you find-to your amazement-that you’re taking a moment.to think about how difficult his life is.  You are moved by his pain and feel the urge to help him in some way. Importantly, if what you feel is true compassion rather than mere pity, you say to yourself, There but for the grace of God go I. If T d been born in different circumstances, or maybe had just been unlucky, I might also be struggling to survive like that. We’re all vulnerable.

Of course, that might be the moment when you harden your heart completely–your own fear of ending up on the street causing you to dehumanize this horrid heap of rags and beard. Many people do. But it doesn’t make them happy; it doesn’t help them deal with the stresses of their work, their spouse, or their child when they get home. It doesn’t help them face their own fears. If anything, this hardening of the heart, which involves feeling better than the homeless man, just makes the whole thing that little bit worse.

But let’s say you don’t close up. Let’s say you really do experience compassion for the homeless man’s misfortune. How does it feel?  Actually, it feels pretty good. It’s wonderful when your heart opens–you immediately feel more connected, alive, present.

Now, let’s say the man wasn’t trying to wash windows in return for some cash. Maybe he was just begging for money to buy alcohol or drugs–should you still feel compassion for him? Yes. You don’t have to invite him home. You don’t even have to give him a buck. You may decide to give him a kind smile or a sandwich rather than money if you feel that’s the more responsible thing to do. But yes he is still worthy of compassion–all of us are. Compassion is not only relevant to those who are blameless victims, but also to those whose suffering stems from failures, personal weakness, or bad decisions. You know, the kind you and I make every day.

Compassion, then, involves the recognition and dear seeing of suffering. It also involves feelings of kindness for people who are suffering, so that the desire to help–to ameliorate suffering–demerges. Finally, compassion involves recognizing our shared human condition, flawed and fragile as it is”

Kristin Neff Self Compassion (pp 9-10)

The intention of compassion is powerful and has many benefits.  Are you willing to make that commitment to practice this intention?