suffer with another, we paradoxically end up increasing, rather than decreasing, the total amount of suffering – two suffering people instead of one.
Fortunately, what most people mean by compassion is the feeling that arises when we are confronted with another’s suffering and are motivated to relieve that suffering. Now we can see that the point of entering into another’s suffering is to find a way to alleviate it. This brings us close to the Buddhist concept of Karuna, and is just the beginning of an idea of compassion I can relate to.
Compassion creates a deep desire to alleviate suffering, often beginning with our own, but increasingly extended toward others. It is the extension of this desire – even at considerable personal cost - which characterises the lives of so many nameless, but quietly heroic, men and women, and also some of the great figures from the faith & philosophical traditions, arts and sciences, and movements for social justice.
Compassion is an exacting spiritual practice, and may feel almost impossible to perfect. However, each moment we step into compassion we embody a quality which has a touch of grace, something out of the grasp of the ordinary, egoic mind. Many people characterise this mystery in religious terms, whilst others couch it in strictly secular language. They are both one to me: for one person’s ‘God’ is another’s quest for Truth, Peace or Goodness, the full realisation of which they can at this moment only dream.
I ask the indulgence for a moment of those of you for whom the term ‘God’ is an anathema – because it is kind of helpful in my story. And I’ll be blunt: a God Who suffers with me is not much good to me. If God simply suffers with me, there is no difference between us. To elicit my devotion, my God has to work harder than that! So here’s my Job Description for God:
Being of limitless compassion and patience, gender no object; Who understands my pain and offers an end to my suffering; Who promises perfect peace and joy; to Whom I can turn in times of trouble; Who will forgive all my errors; Whose vast and unconditionally loving arms can hold all the fear and anger I can muster without flinching.
Not much of an ask, then! And yet, is this ideal really so far from our experience that we cannot relate to it? Which parent here has not at some time or another offered this kind of compassion to their child? And how many of us have at times felt carried through our troubles by a grace or sense of greater Love we could not explain?
Then we come to growth and the inconvenient matter of other people…
The real test of life on earth is not just whether we can realise our personal
connection with the great mystery of our creation and our destiny; it is whether