I would define compassion in a nutshell as a natural sense of concern that arises in
us in the face of someone who is in need or someone who is in pain.
And accompanied by a kind of a wishing to see the relief or end of that situation and
wanted to do something about it.
So compassion is not just an emotional reaction.
There is also a more motivational kind of element which makes us want to do something
about the situation.
One of the interesting things about our contemporary modern society is that given the highly competitive
nature of society and also the way in which we bring up our children and the way in which
we ourselves grew up which involved a huge amount of evaluation and judgment and comparison
with others from a very, very early age.
We have kind of internalized a certain kind of way of being in the world and perceiving
our relationship with others.
And that dynamic has created a certain kind of, you know, inhibitions against our natural
compassionate instinct.
So and these inhibitions really take primarily in the form of fear.
So for example many people worry and are afraid that if they are too kind and too compassionate
that other people will take advantage of them.
They will see them as pushover or weak or losers.
So that’s one type of fear that we bring.
Another type of fear that we bring is that, you know, because in popular understanding
of compassion it’s so dominated by compassion as an emotion, kind of a soft hearted, tender
hearted and so on.
So people worry that if they allow their compassionate or kinder instinct to become more dominant
in their way of interacting with the world and others, you know, somehow it might undermine
their more rational tougher side so that they may not be able to succeed in the life and
compete.
That’s another type of fear.
And then sometimes in intimate relations, particularly, you know, between parents and
children on the part of the parents sometimes we also worry that if we are too kind to our
children we might be spoiling them.
They might become over dependent upon us and that somehow we will end up having to do everything
for them.
So these are various types of fear that we bring into our expression of natural compassionate
instinct.
And a lot of these are subconscious biases that we bring, you know.
People may not necessarily sit down and think that’s what I’m going to do.
But these are culturally acquired sensibilities and biases which also makes us suspicious.
When someone is being kind to us, compassionate towards us we start wondering there must be
a hidden agenda, you know.
That person must want something from me.
So it’s very unfortunate that these are various forms of culturally acquired fear
that really undermines the expression of what is really natural to us as human being which
is the ability to connect with someone and the ability to relate to that person at a
deeper level and have a much more open hearted kind of interaction.