What is compassion? Does it mean something different to the Christian, to the Buddhist? Do our most profound experiences — our raw encounters with truth — transcend religious differences, or are they subtly shaped by our history, our tradition?
Since 1981, Christian and Buddhist teachers have been meeting informally at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, to discuss such questions. The transcripts of these conferences have been gathered and skillfully edited by Susan Walker in Speaking of Silence: Christians and Buddhist on the Contemplative Way (Paulist Press).
The book combines talks, conversations, poetry, and rituals shared by participants at the annual meetings. Some of the topics may be of interest mainly to students of religion. Other chapters — on suffering and virtue and silence and the ego — are more practical and compelling. I was especially intrigued by the discussion of compassion, excerpts from which are reprinted here, with the kind permission of Paulist Press.
— Ed.
Noble Heart
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
In the Vajrayana Buddhist tradition, we talk about how we can discover wisdom behind our passions and delusions. If you simply cut out your passion or your desire, you can’t work with the world of non-compassion. It would be equivalent to going through surgery and removing your eyeballs, tongue, heart, and sexual organs. Some people might think that is the way to become a monk or nun, but I’m afraid such an approach doesn’t quite work. Compassion is not so much a matter of removing the organs of passion, aggression, and delusion; compassion means working with what you have. If you are hungry, you need your tongue and teeth to eat with. It is a natural thing. We don’t punish ourselves because we have a tongue and teeth. Instead, we work with them. When we have a problem, we don’t throw it away as if it were a piece of garbage. We pick it up and work with it.
According to the Buddhist teachings, the practice of sitting meditation is a way to work with what we have. Meditation is very practical: we learn how to wash the dishes, how to iron our clothes, how to be. That is compassion. When we know how to be, we don’t create chaos for ourselves to begin with, and subsequently we don’t create chaos for others. As it is said in Christianity, “Charity begins at home.” Perhaps we could also say, “Compassion begins at home.”
Basic virtue comes from learning how to be. If we have no idea of how to be, then we commit sins and crimes of all kinds. When we know how to be, our hearts are softened, and compassion naturally comes along with that. We learn how to cry, how to smile, and how to experience other people’s wounds. We also begin to appreciate joy and pleasure. Perhaps we haven’t ever really explored pain and pleasure in our whole lives. When our hearts are softened and we feel pain, it is excruciating. And when we experience pleasure, it is wonderful. Compassion means exploring pain and pleasure properly, thoroughly, completely. The Sanskrit word for compassion is karuna, which means “noble heart.” It is not just a matter of feeling sorry for someone; when we experience noble heart, we are able to have a good time, and we are able to identify with others’ pain and pleasure.
We need to learn how to be decent human beings. That is the basis for what we call “religion.” A decent human society brings about spirituality. It brings about blessings and what could be called the gift of God. This is an extremely simple-minded approach. I’m sorry if I disappoint you, but it is as simple as that. We have to be just as we are. This is not necessarily a Buddhist message; for that matter, it is not even a particularly spiritual message. Compassion is simply a matter of experiencing reality properly.
Good Intentions
QUESTION (from audience): When Buddhists talk about compassion, they don’t say much about activity; they talk about working with the mind. Why is it that there is so much focus on the individual, rather than on social contributions?
JUDY LIEF: I think there is a good reason for that focus; it is the understanding that the quality of one’s motivation is critical. Actions can be extremely deceptive: seemingly good activities may not really be so, and seemingly bad activities may also not really be so — which is wonderful. Acknowledging this cuts through our tendency to judge ourselves and each other too quickly. The point is that, no matter how hard we strive, if we don’t work on the inner force behind our actions, we don’t fundamentally change or progress.
For many centuries, innumerable well-intentioned people have been accomplishing all sorts of things, but how many people have actually lit the flame of wisdom everyone needs? How many people have truly inspired a vaster view and have successfully propagated a sense of human family? That can’t come about merely through one’s actions; it requires a change of mind and heart, and that takes great patience and effort. There is always the temptation to drop the larger intention and just to try to do what one can — everywhere at once. But that approach, no matter how heroic, always seems to lead to terrible frustration.
I think it is most important, especially in this era, to work with the root cause of the problem, which is aggression. That root goes very, very deep. I am not saying we must wait until we’re fully enlightened to be involved in social or political action, but we must at the same time be working at this deeper level.
Finally, each of us should start with some sense of what we actually can accomplish. What is our capacity, and what are our talents, realistically speaking? Often when we read the newspapers, we think about the suffering in the world and we feel that something should be done; then we congratulate ourselves for being involved, for not being indifferent. But we might as well face the reality of what we really can do, and then try to carry that out to the best of our ability. Otherwise we end up either feeling righteous about our grand schemes to help everyone in the world, or feeling guilty because we haven’t yet managed to do so.
On Saints And Sanctity
In the Christian tradition, there is no one model for a life of compassion; there is no blueprint. Because each person in this world is unique, distinct, and unrepeatable, each person’s sanctity is expressed in a unique, distinct, and unrepeatable way.
The Christian communion of saints is therefore made up of an incredibly colorful and captivating variety of individuals. There are people who were models of virtue from a very early age, such as John the Baptist, and there are such profligates as Saint Augustine, whose prayer was, “Lord, give me chastity — but not yet.”
Although the saints manifest themselves in unique ways, we find, when we get to know them intimately, that they do have certain traits in common. I have found ten such traits, which could be called marks of Christian compassion.
First of all, we find in all the saints a heroic fidelity to the details of ordinary, everyday life. Although I am personally more attracted to flamboyant personalities, and the saints I will present as examples reflect this bias, I would also call to mind all those whose lives were quiet, hidden, and unobtrusive. In essence, Christian sanctification requires no glittering achievements and no spectacular successes — only fidelity to a hundred little things.
The second quality is God-intoxication, and this is also not necessarily a visible trait. Nevertheless, if you look closely, you will find that every Christian saint is madly in love with God, and is in fact becoming ever more consumed by his or her passion for God, as we see in Saint Augustine’s magnificent prayer:
You called and cried to me, you even broke open my deafness: Your beams shone on me, and You chased away my blindness: You blew on me most fragrantly, and I drew in my breath, and now I pant after You; I tasted You, and now hunger and thirst after You; You touched me, and I burn again to enjoy Your peace.
The saints are burning with their love for God. But this love does not take place in a vacuum, nor in abstraction. It is expressed concretely and specifically, and this brings us to the third quality, which is the saints’ zest for life.
Their passion for God is lived out in vitality, energy, and fecundity. Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” The fullness of life is what Christian sanctification is all about. Saint Ireneus said that we glorify God most when we are fully alive. Because, according to John the Evangelist, “the Word was made flesh,” and because God became incarnate in matter, the saints’ passion for God is expressed in their passion for the materiality of the universe. Saint Joan of Arc, for example, was crazy about her horses, and Saint Charles Borromeo was wild about chess. John of the Cross was utterly enamored of the Spanish landscape, and he also had a passion for asparagus. When he was dying, he was asked what would help alleviate his pain, and all he wanted was asparagus.
I recently read something about Saint Alphonsus Ligouri that greatly endeared him to me. I had always found him rather lugubrious, but it turns out that he had a great love for music and the theater. It so happened, however, that one of the performances in the Naples theater featured a half-naked chorus line. Alphonsus felt that this was inappropriate for him, but he so wanted to hear the music that he went anyway. He sat in the back row, and when the presentation began, he took off his glasses. Because he was so near-sighted, he couldn’t see a thing! This was an act of great compassion, because through his own purity of heart he did what was appropriate for him, and yet he never made a fuss about what the other people in the theater should or should not be doing.
Teresa of Avila had a passion for absolutely everything. As a popular story goes, one day the sisters walked into the kitchen and found her gorging herself on partridge, and they were scandalized. She looked up, astonished that they would even question this. She said, very simply but with great enthusiasm, “When I pray, I pray; and when I eat partridge, I eat partridge!” The important thing is that all of Teresa’s passions were purified, refined, and unified into her one great passion for God: there was no dispersion or fragmentation.
The Celtic saints were particularly zestful — especially Brigid, who happened to love beer. She wrote this wonderful poem:
I long for a great lake of ale. I long for the men of heaven in my house. I long for cheerfulness in their drinking. And I long for Jesus to be there among them.
And of course Jesus should be there among them. He would be the first to raise a toast. His first public miracle was to change water into wine, and the gospels are full of passages of his eating and drinking — so much that he was sometimes criticized for being a glutton and a drunkard.
Along with this passion for life necessarily goes a passion for suffering and death, particularly in the higher realms of realization. The saints suffer willingly, because they understand suffering as growing pains, or labor pains. It is clear to them that death is not in opposition to life; it is an integral part of life. Saint Paul said that there is absolutely no suffering in this life that can be compared to the glory that comes when one has gone through all the way to the other side of that suffering.
When Ignatius of Antioch, one of the earliest of the Christian martyrs, was condemned to be fed to the lions in the Colosseum, he responded to his disciples, who were of course intent on rescuing him, with long letters that begged them to stop their efforts, saying, “Do not hinder me, and show me no false kindness. Let me be the food of these wild beasts, for they shall bring me to God.” And of course, when he says “to God,” he means that they shall bring him into the fullness of his realized being. For the Christian saints, death is ultimately a love-act, the consummation of a love affair, and they speak tenderly and lovingly about embracing the cross.
The fifth quality of the Christian saint is a passion for people. Jesus said, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” There is an extravagance to the compassion that the saints manifest: they squander themselves for God and for the people of God. John of the Cross’s advice is, “Where there is no love, put love, and you will find love.” By their very love, the saints make lovable what or who is unlovable. The essence of sanctity is heroic charity and an utterly generous heart. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux was a good example of this. She singled out the most unloved and unattractive sister, for whom she had a natural antipathy, and she loved her with such compassionate effort that the nun believed she was Thérèse’s best friend.
This sanctified self-giving can either be simple or it can be spectacular. It can be the humble gesture of Saint Pius the Tenth, who gave his last pair of socks to a poor beggar. Or it can be the dramatic activity of Princess Elizabeth of Hungary, who opened up the doors of her palace and fed all the poor, and on her wedding night put a leper in her wedding bed. Father Maximillian Kolbe, a Franciscan priest, took the place of a man in Auschwitz who had been singled out to be executed, and subsequently starved to death in solitary confinement. When Catherine of Siena heard about a political prisoner who had been sentenced to die, she went to visit him. She took him in her arms, and he rested his head on her breast and, according to her own account, she felt his blood flowing with her own, and she could feel his fear within her. She was so identified with his suffering that she felt it in her own body as well.
The saint’s passion for people manifests itself not only in action, but also in contemplation or stillness. The scriptures are full of allusions to the mysterious disappearances of Christ, who regularly retreated into the hills to be silent. If you look at a photograph of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, you recognize the source of the dynamism for her heroic charity. It is not the product of a lavish funding and influential friends; it comes from her prayer. According to her own direction, the more we receive in silent prayer, the more we can give in our active life. Mother Teresa gets up to pray every morning at 4:30, no matter where she is in the world or what time she went to bed the night before.
So compassion is first and foremost a mode of being. It is an extravagance of being which overflows into doing. Any action without contemplation is blind. A venerable spiritual guide among the Jesuits, the seventeenth-century Father Louis Lallemont, said that if we have only a very little inwardness, we can give nothing at all to what is external; if we have gone a little distance in the inward life, then we can give ourselves moderately to the outward life. He concluded that a man of prayer will accomplish more in one year than another man who does not pray will accomplish in an entire lifetime.
It is actually not fair to call some saints active and others contemplative, because each one is engaged in both, and in fact the seventh quality a saint must possess is the ability to hold a delicate balance between polarities. For some, action may predominate, and for others, contemplation is dominant. But always there is the tension of trying to hold a balance, of trying to come, in T.S. Eliot’s words, to “the stillpoint of the turning world.” It takes a muscular kind of personality to hammer out this polarity, and often the strain takes a terrible toll on the nerves and bodies of the saints. The one who expressed this struggle best was Saint Ignatius of Loyola, who said that we have to work as though absolutely everything in the world depended on us, and we have to pray as though absolutely everything in the world depended on God — a Christian koan for all of us.
The next mark of sanctity is human frailty. This is important to remember, because the statues, pictures, and stories of the saints tend to gloss over the real human beings and give us a terribly wrong impression, leading us to think that the saints are all stuffed shirts. In fact that is not at all the case. The saints are thoroughly human — which means that they are also imperfect. For example, Saint Augustine was given to rages, and Saint Thérèse of Lisieux suffered incredibly from bouts of depression. Saint Vincent de Paul, who was so heroically generous, was actually a bilious character subject to fits of anger. Saint Jerome was downright nasty, although still quite lovable. He was insulting to his theological opponents and known to attack not only their arguments, but also their persons. Saint Francis suffered throughout his life over his chastity. One day he was seen building a family out of snow: a mother, a father, and a child. When asked what he was doing, he said, “I may father a child yet.”
None of these people ever gave up struggling and working on their human weaknesses. They knew that what counts is not triumphant victory, but endless persevering effort. Teresa of Avila said that we should strive and strive and strive, for we were meant for nothing else.
Another characteristic related to imperfection is bounce. Whenever the saints fail, whenever they fall, they pick themselves up and keep going. Saint Peter is the perfect example of this. He bumbles all the way through the scriptures until the biggest bumble of all, which is of course his betrayal of Jesus. The third time the cock crows, Peter remembers Jesus’ prophecy, and he fills with remorse. What happens next is one of the most wrenching passages in all of scripture: “And Peter went out and wept bitterly.” But after the bitterness came the bounce. He became one of the greatest of the disciples — in fact the one upon whom the church is built — simply because, in addition to being the biggest bumbler, he had the best bounce.
This brings us to the last of the ten characteristics of the realized Christian, which is hilarity. I am not just referring to a quiet kind of joy; I mean an uproarious hilarity which wells up out of the depths of stillness. Hilarity makes it possible for the saints to exhibit bounce in the midst of frailty. It allows the Christian saints to face suffering and death in their own lives and in the world around them. As Francis de Sales said, a sad saint is a sorry saint. Philip Neri played football with the red biretta that the Pope had sent him as a sign of prestige and privilege. When Saint Simeon came into the city after spending forty years fasting and praying in the desert, it was Good Friday, the most solemn day in the church year. What did Saint Simeon do? He ate sausages and danced with the harlots! As Nikos Kazantzakis so aptly said, “Every one of us needs a little madness in order to cut the rope and be free.”
There is an old Hassidic story about a rabbi who used to go to the marketplace to meet the prophet Elijah. They would talk together about who was living the life of God. On one particular day, the rabbi asked Elijah, “Well, is there anyone here who is on the way? Is there anyone here who has really awakened?”
Elijah looked around and pointed to two men in one corner and said, “Those two.”
Immediately the rabbi went over and asked. “What is your occupation?”
“We are clowns,” they said. “When we see people who are depressed, we cheer them up.”
These ten qualities are not only a description of Christian saints; they also give us an outline of how we can cultivate compassion in our own lives.
Where The Clouds Crop Up
Depending on how we conduct our lives, we find ourselves in one of a variety of forms of existence. The varieties are endless, but there are six major categories, called the “six worlds.” These worlds, which we create for ourselves, have nicknames: the human realm; the realm of divine bliss; the hell realm of extreme torment and isolation; the insatiable realm of the hungry ghosts; the animal realm of fear; and the realm of the fighting gods.
The human realm is the center of gravity of the other five. As human beings we tend to return here. And at the very heart of the human realm is Jambudvipa, a Sanskrit name which means “Rose-apple Island.” It is the place where we are right now, and it is where we feel connected with all forms of suffering.
When we are in the realm of bliss, it is difficult to empathize with extreme isolation and torment. And when we are in a state of great torment it is hard to appreciate bliss. But in Rose-apple Island, all manifestations of suffering are close at hand, from the most gross to the most subtle. Here at the center of the range of suffering, we can sense the suffering that is present within blissful experience, within torment, within insatiability, within fear and numbness, and within power-seeking. The human realm could be basically described as the state of dissatisfaction, as the frustration of all our desires and strivings. Yet it is only in this realm that there is also the possibility of seeing things just the way they are. There is no point in looking to another realm for comfort. The only real comfort is to be found by settling in deeply, right here and now.
Our sitting practice is simply to settle in and make ourselves at home at the heart of all sentient beings. How do we do this? Actually, there is nothing to do, because we are already at this place. But because of our accumulated opinions, philosophies, and striving human nature, we are obstructed from this simple practice of paying attention to what is right under our feet at this very moment. Great effort is required to be free of our ideas of effort. It takes courage to give up our personal views and to attend to life, just as it is.
One description of this process which I find very helpful is by Wang Wei, a Chinese Buddhist poet of the T’ang Dynasty:
In my middle years I became fond of the way, And made my home in the foothills of South Mountain. When the spirit moves me, I go off by myself To see things that I alone must see. I follow the stream to the source, And sitting there, watch for the moment When clouds come up. Or I may meet a woodsman; We talk and laugh and forget about going home.
At first, sitting meditation is a settling down and a retiring to the foothills. Then, when the spirit moves us, when something happens, we follow the stream to the source: to the heart of all sentient beings. We sit still and observe the time when the clouds crop up. To be present at this moment is to witness the inevitability of thought and its illusory nature. This is the birth of compassion: we observe the production of phenomena and understand their source.
The source of the stream of experience is completely calm and serene. When we are at this source, sitting completely still, all buddhas and sentient beings are there with us. Then this calm mirror experience breaks, and clouds of thinking crop up. Just being willing to give up great calm and to become involved again in particular thoughts is compassion. In this way we knowingly and willingly re-enter the world of confusion and suffering. We become an openness that participates in the world. This is our authentic self, the self which feels connected with all the different varieties of suffering.
We sit calmly without fear. We are open and at ease. We could stand up from our sitting and walk to hell, walk to heaven, or walk to the animal realm. We could also welcome them if they came to us. Compassion is not dualistic: we do not do it, and we cannot stop it. Our body interacts fearlessly with all forms of suffering. This does not mean that the fear does not exist — or that it does exist. It means that we are open to all varieties of fear, so that the forces around us are balanced. We do not have more friends in heaven than we have in hell. If we have too many friends in heaven and not enough in hell, then there will be fear. If we observe our own body and mind as we are sitting, and find that we are leaning more toward heaven than hell, or more toward hell than heaven, we have not yet realized the calm of the Buddha’s mind. Whenever our mind is completely open and we are not trying to control what we are exposed to, the body and mind can sit still in the heart of all suffering beings. That is all we have to do.
Well-Balanced
Brother David Steindl-Rast
Eido Tai Shimano Roshi
BROTHER DAVID: Roshi, is there some particular aspect of zazen practice that helps you to cope with this world we live in, this world which finds itself not only in a state of crisis but which is actually on the brink of self-annihilation? What can be acquired through zazen that will help people to deal with this situation effectively?
EIDO ROSHI: Very few people are able to do something, realistically speaking. Some people may have the desire, but then the situation does not allow them to take action. We all need to have good faith that when we are doing our spiritual practice — even though we might be sitting alone, deep in the mountains — we are radiating a kind of spiritual vibration. I am not saying this with an arrogant attitude, but it is important for us to have faith that if one person sits, the whole universe goes into great samadhi.
BROTHER DAVID: Yes, this is a strong belief in our tradition, as well; it is usually called “praying for the world,” or “suffering for the world.” But knowing you personally, I think you would agree that there is something else we can also do. I am recalling, for example, that we participated together in one of the early Vietnam War protests, in 1965. What little weight we had, as one Buddhist and one Christian monk, we were throwing around even then. Of course, there can be a problem if someone is only an activist and he or she is too busy to spend time in contemplation. But it seems that some people are so intent on sitting that perhaps they overlook opportunities to respond in a helpful way to the present crisis.
EIDO ROSHI: Well, I think we need different kinds of people: some people need to sit, some people need to act. This will make a good balance.
BROTHER DAVID: And what about the people who sometimes sit and sometimes act?
EIDO ROSHI: That is another balance.
BROTHER DAVID: Then you are saying that the solution is to find out where we belong.
EIDO ROSHI: Well, actually, the world itself is well-balanced from the very beginning. (Pause.) Don’t you think so? (Laughter.)
BROTHER DAVID: From the beginning, yes. I’m more concerned about the end. (Laughter.)
EIDO ROSHI: It really is my conviction that the world is well-balanced: from the beginningless beginning to the endless end. It is always well-balanced.
BROTHER DAVID: Yes, I really believe that too. This is what we call “trusting in God.” But there is a way of understanding this that is superficial, so that something else that is also important is bypassed; namely, our sense of responsibility. Even though the world is well-balanced on one level, on another level we need to rise to the responsibility of keeping it in balance. We have the ability to act, and also to fail to act, in ways that will affect the world’s state of balance.
EIDO ROSHI: But whether we sit or not, the world is well-balanced. Remember a few years ago, we had an oil shortage, and the world was shocked. Today, everyone just continues on. Right?
BROTHER DAVID: Well, that is just because we can afford to pay more, but that may not always be the case. . . .
EIDO ROSHI: Brother David, if you start to think that way, you have to worry endlessly.
BROTHER DAVID: Well, there is a way of thinking about it that is not worrying. But there is a way of not thinking about it that is irresponsible.
EIDO ROSHI: No, I really think we are responsible to realize that the world is well-balanced from the beginningless beginning to the endless end. That is our responsibility.
BROTHER DAVID: Yes, I believe that . . . (laughter) . . . but I also realize that, because we are spending more money for oil and gasoline, farmers in the Third World who cannot afford to do so are dying by the score and by the thousand. Every day 50,000 people die of starvation. That is a tragically large number, especially when you consider that these people are dying because we have channeled funds and resources in a way that is not well-balanced in terms of the entire human family. All of us here belong to the small percentage that uses most of the world’s resources, so we have a certain responsibility. I don’t think we should worry, but I do think we should be deeply disturbed. If we are part of a family where something terribly unjust is taking place, we have to do something about it or we are not living up to our practice.
EIDO ROSHI: I feel the same way, and at the same time I feel powerless. No matter how much I think and I do, I alone cannot do anything for those 50,000 people. And suppose 50,000 people did not die every day: there would be other kinds of population problems. I am saying, fundamentally, that I am very much aware of this problem, but it is more important to be aware of the nature of the universe, so that we are able to accept, as Walter Cronkite often said, that “that’s the way it is.” (Laughter.)
BROTHER DAVID: But I often see a reckless kind of trust in God’s power, a reckless presumption that God will make everything come out all right, because God “knows best.”
EIDO ROSHI: Do you think that by doing something, a solution can be found?
BROTHER DAVID: Yes, I do.
EIDO ROSHI: Oh . . . oh. . . . (Laughter.)
BROTHER DAVID: But what to do is the great question. I would say that the answer is: do whatever it is time to do. For some people that may be very little. But if we really do trust in the balance of the world from beginning to end, and at the same time we are aware of our responsibility, we will do the little thing that we can do, and that will be our contribution. No more is asked of us.
EIDO ROSHI: But don’t you think that contemplative practice is one of these deeds?
BROTHER DAVID: Yes. And in exceptional cases it may be the only thing that is asked of someone. But I think that contemplative practice usually alerts us to the other things that are also being asked of us.
EIDO ROSHI: (sucking in breath loudly) You know, Brother David, I have known you for so many years, and you are so romantic. (Laughter and whoops from the audience.) Whether in front of the public or just between the two of us, our conversation has been this way for the past twenty years. I am not a pessimist. I think I am a realist. Perhaps you are a realist, too, but with romantic inclinations. (Laughter.)
BROTHER DAVID: Well, don’t you think there must be a way for a realist with romantic inclinations to do the right thing in the world today? (Laughter.) What would you say it is?
EIDO ROSHI: Well, for myself, somehow I am karmically engaged with the practice of zazen meditation. I can do without consulting others, making telephone calls, writing letters: I just shut up and sit down. This is what I have been doing and through this I came to a spiritual conversion, and I realized the fact that I don’t need to worry, because the world is well-balanced from the very beginning. And that is why I can talk to you, or to these other intelligent people, with great confidence. Perhaps you have different attitudes or ways or answers, but this is certainly one way. It may sound inactive, but zazen is a very active job.
BROTHER DAVID: And I know you well enough to respect that this is your contribution. But it is not the only one. For others there may be other contributions.
EIDO ROSHI: Oh, yes. If all the people in this city were practicing intensive zazen, that could be a problem. The airplanes wouldn’t fly, the stores would be closed, and so on. That is exactly what I mean: the world is well-balanced. (Laughter and applause.)
Copyright © 1987 by Naropa Institute
