Compassion
I have a tatoo on my arm, that I got a year ago. It's Kwan Yin (there are many spellings of her name, Quan Yin, Kannon). She is the bodhisattva of compassion. To delve into the details of what a bodhisattva is would take a while, and is out of the scope of this particular piece, but imagine a kind of goddess, or an enlightened being who could be hanging out (metaphorically) having fun in nirvana, but decides to keep slogging it out with us here.
You might ask, why did I get a tatoo of Kwan Yin on my arm? I got it because it is meant to be a constant reminder to me about what is the central and most important thing in my life - to lead a compassionate life. Part of that process is to continually learn, re-learn, explore and delve into what compassion is, what it means to me, and what it has meant in different traditions.
If you know me, you've found that the two primary spiritual traditions that influence my life are Buddhism and Christianity. I thought I'd spend some time exploring what I've been learning about compassion in those two traditions, and do some comparison of them.
Compassion is one of the "Four Boundless Abodes" of Buddhist teaching. These include lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. In Buddhism, compassion is the desire to remove suffering, and give happiness. The pali word, Karuna, which is translated to compassion in English, is actually a word that is often used as a concept of love.
To have compassion, to live compassionately, is an important part of Buddhist practice. There are 5 basic precepts in Buddhism (many traditions have 8 or 10, but there are 5 that all have in common). These are a moral code for Buddhists. They are refraining from killing (which, to many Buddhists, means being a vegetarian). Refraining from taking what is not freely offered (stealing). Refraining from sexual misconduct. Refraining from speaking falsely. Refraining from intoxicants. Four of the five can certainly be seen as fairly natural outgrowths of compassion.
In English, the origin of the word compassion is the prefix com-, which means 'with', and the suffix -passion which in Latin means "to feel". So compassion can be also expressed in the phrase "to feel with." And this is pretty deep, this thing about "feeling with" someone else. It gets more interesting. In the Hebrew bible, the word that is usually translated as compassion is the plural of a noun that means "womb." So it's the way a woman feels about her own child, in a sense. That's pretty deep.
Luke 6:36 says "Be merciful, as your Father is merciful". The Hebrew word for compassion are also translated as merciful. I don't like the word mercy (although Kwan Yin is also called the goddess of mercy). One might (and Marcus Borg does) use the translation "Be compassionate as God is compassionate." There is abundant tradition in both Jewish and Christian scripture of God as the God of compassion and love. So to be compassionate as God is, is to live compassion.
I also think of the saying "walk a mile in my shoes." I find that the biggest barrier to compassion is to keep wearing our own shoes - keep seeing things through our own eyes. It's SO human - we expect everyone to be like us, at some level, and when they don't behave like we do, or don't think like we do, it's hard to have compassion - hard to feel with them.
Like a lot of things it's a practice. And practice implies making mistakes. And the more we learn to be compassionate with ourselves with our own mistakes, the easier it is to be compassionate with someone else. I know, it sounds like I just contradicted myself - it's one of those interesting paradoxes. At the same time as we need to "feel with" others, and walk in their shoes, we do need to feel deep compassion for ourselves, as well. That's sometimes even harder.
(Thanks to Marcus Borg's book "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time" for some of the info on the Christian perspectives)