COMPASSION AND HUMANITY
I do not believe in God and even if there were one I
cannot see how his/her existence is in any way relevant to the lives of
living things. I believe in karma and that we are captains of our own
destiny. This essay attempts to show how karma operates in our lives and
of how we can become more compassionate.
We have karma which ripens as internal karma and some
which ripens as external karma. The opportunities which come to us in life
are like doors which open or close for us. This is the ripening of
external karma. Our response to these opportunities is critical and is
predetermined to some extent by our own internal karma.
The opportunities which come to us in life are very
interesting in their own right and we fail in general to truly see them as
they are. They reveal a lot to us about the nature of karma. As we grow up
we become interested in certain things and yearn for progress in some of
them, such as mathematical skill or artistic ability. Some things we
succeed in just as if a door is being opened for us. In some we fail just
as if that door stays closed. It might be sport or mechanical skill,
science etc. In this way our interest is deepened and validated and we
then go a stage further with it. By contrast, there are those things we
try hard at but which never really happen for us and which we usually end
up abandoning. Only people with great determination will succeed in such
areas of their lives. Very few people keep battering away at a door which
remains consistently closed for them.
As a net result of this process we can see that it
comprises a sort of natural selection process in which our innate skills
are repeatedly pitched in against external forces in what appears to be a
quite random process. It is true that great artists, engineers, writers
and scientists often say that their interest was focused right from early
childhood, just as if they were already soaked in the subject from birth.
For most other people their is a subtle unawareness about their innate
talents, interests and abilities. Most of us are oblivious of our natural
talents and only become conscious of them dimly through the schooling
process, during which we gradually become attracted to certain subjects
over others. We tend to move along with those things we succeed in the
best or those we fail in the least. We also live in a world of human
relationships, and it is often these which case most frustration and
unhappiness. Success and failure can also cause problems in this area of
our life.
Certainly we evolve through our experiences and thus at
a profound level we become a product of them. Yet at another profound
level we are innately what we are, even from birth and never change very
much at all in spite of our experiences. Thus we are twin beings — nature
and nurture both being correct. Through our intereactions with the world
and with people, we can come to know that mysterious discourse between
internal and external karmas, which is our destiny or fate. But it is a
creative fate not an entirely fixed or predetermined one. We contribute to
its flowing forwards like a river of our own making.
The internal karmas ultimately have dominance because it
is not so much what life throws at us (external karmas), but how we cope
with them that decides our true level of happiness. Happiness means being
contented with yourself, happy with the way you are. It is a state of not
hating anything and not desiring anything, a balance point. Our happiness
ultimately comes from within and is thus determined by the internal
karmas, and not very much by the externally-acting karmas and life
experiences. This is the opposite to what we might think.
Many people tend to think that getting the externals of
our life right brings lasting joy and happiness, like money, good job,
good relationships, etc. But there are those people who have terrible
misfortune, failure and tragedy in their external life and yet who remain
inwardly quite calm and contented. Such people kind of prove this karmic
rule. There are also those with everything in their external life just
right and highly successful, but who still have an internal unhappiness
and restlessness, and an inability to become truly content with themselves
the way they are. They cannot seem to throw off certain hatreds and
certain desires to reach the balance point of true happiness. These people
also prove this rule.
Some people much of the time, and many people some of
the time, seem doomed to experience very bad things in spite of the
helpful advice and actions of others, which they might come to regard not
as kind help, but as just so much senseless talk in a dream or as
patronising arrogance. People thus have to be ready to use the compassion
or advice which is directed at them. Otherwise it is of no use to them and
becomes in fact an irritation. It is almost as if we must stand back and
allow people to experience the lot which is theirs, the path which fate
has prepared for them, no matter how unhappy it is. Or the path which they
have created for themselevs through many lifetimes. In this sense, trying
to help them is pointless and causes more harm than good. They must go
through those experiences, it seems, and any help we offer will be
rejected or misconstrued as unwanted interference.
We should therefore respect their right to liberty, even
to the extent of allowing them to suffer, even if that suffering is very
intense from an external viewpoint. If they do not ask for help, then what
use is there in giving it? Viewed from the outside, it is easy for us to
believe that they want help, when in actual fact they might think they are
doing just fine. One thinks here of criminals, prostitutes, alcoholics and
drug users who would claim they need no help at all and are doing just
fine. Who are we to stand in judgement over them and declare their
lifestyle invalid, damaging or helpless? Is it not a form of spiritual
oneupmanship and arrogance to adopt such a position? Surely they have the
right to live exactly as they wish?
To act with true compassion is not therefore to
interfere or stand in judgment, but to be ready to help only when asked.
Only then will any help offered be truly useful to them. People therefore
have a weird sort of right to tread their own karmic path. We should not
deny them the right to experience whatever karmas they alone have created,
and accumulated; whatever paths they have created for themselves. Though
they seem real to us, they are as if in a dream. Though we can touch them,
they seem to be in a cage quite beyond our reach. Thus advice and help is
misunderstood by the suffering and is rejected, perhaps even violently.
For such people the most we can do is to be quietly there for them as
simple and peaceful contents of their troubled lives.
Each lifetime is another struggle with the same basic
forces and problems as the last or the next. The actual theme changes
little. Each lifetime we face the same basic mistakes and problems as the
last, the same wins and the same losses, but woven into a slightly
different fabric. We even meet the same people over and over again —
those closest to us, the ones we have loved so many times and who many
times come back to us, as we do to them. We can derive great comfort from
this knowledge. Each life is thus only a tiny evolution through our
experiences, some good some bad. We inch forwards very slowly and change
but little through many lives.
Our karma inches forward slowly like a great river,
gathering like little rafts, new good and new bad seeds from each life. We
reap what we have sown. Our primary aim, as spiritual people, should
always be to ensure that we create and garner new good seeds and to deal
with, work through and destroy bad seeds. And we should also strive to
create no new bad in our lives. That is our basic ethical basis: ‘do good,
avoid evil and purify the mind’. If we reach the point of death better off
than we were at birth, a sounder, kinder person who can look back on their
life with true pleasure and know that one has done more good than harm and
that one has created happiness for many, then we can truly die in peace.
For such a situation moves us forward along our karmic path towards
greater spiritual insights, greater love and greater wisdom in the future.
In this sense we create our own future, for good or ill.
While it is true that each living being tries to find
happiness and to avoid suffering, yet it is also true that each living
being reaps just what they have sown, and must be allowed to tread the
path given to them by their own accumulated karmic seeds. While it is true
that compassion and kindness are important qualities for all of us to
develop, but we should not go around trying to give help to the suffering
who are happy in their suffering and who do not ask for our help. To do so
is in fact to follow a delusory path which creates suffering and confusion
and which pollutes the spiritual traditions with confusion and
misunderstanding in the eyes of those who might benefit from them the
most.
Compassion is a great problem for us who are active in
the world, as we must beware of the actual karmic position of the people
we meet and not just jump in feet first to ‘help them’. Direct compassion
for the suffering of living beings is not an easy task to undertake as it
presumes they want help or that it is being offered in a form which is
useful to them. As indicated above, we must approach the problem as-is and
give people something they can use directly which is of immediate use to
them and easily comprehended. To do otherwise is to open oneself to great
misunderstanding. Within Buddhism (and also in Christianity) ‘compassion
in action’ is portrayed as a great quality which generates great merit and
is directly helpful to living beings. But it is easy to misunderstand how
it can be applied in a subtle way. It is rather like food which must be
prepared in a certain way to account for different people’s tastes.
In the case of violent and troubled people and those
whose lives have been filled with damaging relationships, we must tread
very carefully. Yet it is true to say that even these people will
appreciate a new friendship if they can see that we are reliable, can be
trusted and will never hurt or abandon them. For them to know there is ONE
person in their life they can depend upon is an enormous success story
compared to what they have experienced in every other section of their
life to date. Just befriending such a person is compassion enough. Showing
tolerance where others put up a fight, showing warmth where others reject
them, showing love where others show hatred, these are all subtle forms of
compassion we can deliberately cultivate, indulge and weave into the
fabric of our everyday lives.
Ultimately, criminality, violence and social deviance
derive from the pain and sufferings and bad relationships which have been
the daily bread and butter of the people who become like that. To have
grown up in violence, abuse, fear, threats, low self-esteem and to know no
love from anyone is the cruellest of fates. We should be more grateful to
realise how immensely lucky we are not to have been born into such a life
ourselves. And to be more understanding of those who are. To have in
effect no father and no mother, no comfort and no happiness, no friend in
the whole world is a terrible fate. Yet that is the background against
which violence and criminality develop. That is the soil which cultivates
all the bad in society. Such people are the products of their experiences,
just as we all are. Such people have seen every door in their life stay
closed. No wonder they become so angry and so bitter.
It is clearly apparent on spiritual grounds that such
people mainly need love and affection, and in a form they can understand
and assimilate — steady, friendly relationships, people who care for them
and who can get close to them in a way no-one has ever tried to do. To
heal such lives no preaching or imprisonment can do that. Only friendship
and sound relationships with people who understand can achieve such
radical change. And therapy. They require a ‘change of diet’, a ‘food’
they can eat and digest. That food is compassion and kindness, from which
they have been deprived since birth. How can more violence, more hatred,
more estrangement from the human family and more imprisonment possibly
help such people? They are foods they have overdosed on already and which
have proved to be quite unsuited to the task. Those foods create only
pain, suffering and misery.
To be a healing and peaceful influence upon the lives of
others is a noble Buddhist goal, but it does not involve forcing the
Dharma down people’s throats. Simply by quietly being within the lives of
others can have a positive healing effect. To be a source of compassion is
to be a source of peace, joy, simplicity and contentment. These qualities
touch all people very easily, for they can see directly with their own
eyes the type of person you are, and in a way that needs no explaining to
them. To quietly be a steady and warm influence in the lives of everyone
we meet is a wonderful undertaking, and it is to generate healing vibes
for them and to fill one’s life with warm compassion. Quietly tolerating
the vices and imperfections of others is a massive virtue. We reach all
people through this technique of right livelihood than through any other
means. Our joy, our composure, our friendliness, our self-contentment
become radiantly obvious to the spiritually aware, and intuitively
attractive and comforting to the troubled and the unhappy.
The Tibetans encourage us to see all living beings as
our own mothers, because they have been our mothers many times in
countless previous lifetimes. That forms the basis for universal
compassion as we transfer our feelings for our known mother of this life
to all living beings and to regard them all just as precious to us as she
is. It also extends beyond human life to embrace all living beings
including worms, fish and insects and even plants. A prayer they use to
cultivate this feeling, by frequent repetition, is:
‘May the infinite mother beings attain perfect
peace and happiness and be released from their pain, fear, sorrow and
delusion; may they always abide in perfect equanimity of mind and in joy
beyond all sorrow.’
This short prayer contains all the essentials of
Buddhism as it asserts universal compassion, it is ethically sound, it
sees all beingsa sour mothers and it emphasises the 4 perfections of love,
compassion, joy and equanimity. It is therefore a practise for oneself and
it creates happiness for others too.