“A feeling of intimacy towards all other sentient beings, including those who would harm us is
generated.”

Published by Little, Brown and Company ( UK )

Compassion

Ancient Wisdom, Modern World….Ethics for a new millennium.

by

His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

In the Buddhist tradition compassion is understood mainly in terms of empathy – our ability to enter into and, to some extent share others suffering. This Buddhists – and perhaps others – believe, can be developed to the degree that not only does our compassion arise without any effort, but it is unconditional, undifferentiated and universal in scope. A feeling of intimacy towards all other sentient beings, including those who would harm us, is generated. This is likened to the Buddhist literature to the love a mother has for her only child.

But the sense of equanimity towards all others is not seen as an end in itself. Rather it is seen as a spring-board to a still greater love. Because our capacity for empathy is innate, and because the ability to reason is also an innate faculty, compassion shares the characteristics of consciousness itself. The potential we have for it is therefore stable and continuous. It is not a resource, which can be used up - as water is used up when we boil it. Though it can be described in terms of activity, it is not like a physical activity for which we train, like jumping, and which once we reach a certain height we can go no further. On the contrary, when we enhance our sensitivity towards others’ suffering through deliberately opening ourselves up to it, it is believed that we can gradually extend our compassion to the point where the individual feels so moved by even the subtlest suffering of others that they come to have an overwhelming sense of responsibility towards those others. This causes the one who is compassionate to dedicate himself or herself entirely to helping others overcome both suffering and the causes of suffering. In Tibetan, this ultimate level of attainment is called nying-je chenmo, literally "great compassion"

Now I am not suggesting that in order to lead an ethically wholesome life, each individual must attain these advanced states of spiritual development. If we can keep the aspiration to develop nying-je chenmo, or great compassion as an ideal, based on the simple recognition that, just as I do so all others desire to be happy and not to suffer, it will naturally have a significant impact on our outlook.