Thursday, May 21, 2009

So That I Don't Have To

"Compassion is that which makes the heart of the good move at the pain of others. It crushes and destroys the pain of others." - The Buddha

When stumped by a problem, attack it from a different angle. So rather than focus on what the relationship between 'self' and 'other' must look like in order to give rise to compassion, I found myself focusing on compassion. I know what it feels like. I know what it can do. But where does it come from?

[Aside to those wondering why I care about this particular perception of 'inseparability': 1) Though not a Buddhist, I have found wisdom in many of the teachings of the Buddha. 2) I am also trying to understand the self/other relationship as an interconnected/interdependent one (as discussed in Buddhist teachings) that I generally call 'multiple-observer interaction'. 3) It seems worth the effort to examine the Buddha's perception of the self/other relationship for clues to any 'truth' about the nature of this relationship.]

"Compassion is a profound human emotion prompted by the pain of others." But what produces it? It is not a universal response to the suffering of others, so it must be acquired, or dependent upon a particular way of perceiving the other. When I think of instances in which I've felt a 'wave of compassion' for another person, I can recall no specific thoughts that triggered the emotions. (Such is often the nature of emotions though.)

What I attempted to do while lying in bed early this morning was to create a particular idea about another person that would invoke compassion. I cannot think of the other person as 'me' and feel compassion - I am ridiculously not compassionate towards myself. I'm quite demanding of myself: always seeing how I could do better, never quite being content with who I am or what I have done. I don't eat particularly well or exercise as much as I should, though I know that doing so would make me physically feel better. In short, I don't worry about or consciously do a lot to alleviate my own suffering.

Thinking of the other person as completely separate from me produces no compassion either. Compassion is a visceral, and often uncomfortable, reaction. While I have no doubt that a person could be conditioned to experience it, it makes no rational sense to have such a reaction to something that is apart from you. What possible reason is there to induce suffering in yourself in response to the suffering of a separate 'other'?

Having examined the two extremes of self/other the relationship, I was back to trying to find a way of understanding a connected self/other that produced compassion in the 'self' in response to the suffering of the 'other'. In that chaotic swirl of thought, one idea surfaced and has not gone away.

If I see another person suffering, and I perceive that person as suffering so that I don't have to, I immediately feel compassion for the person.

This idea was partially triggered by the mental-replaying of a conversation I was having yesterday about balance in the universe. Not a particularly profound conversation in itself, but it triggered some thoughts I've had in the past about the balance of qualities within a particular relationship/interpersonal dynamic. 'If I had had less ambition, would you have had more ambition?'-type of questions that make no rational sense, but nonetheless are thought of by seemingly-rational people. This spun into the 'If I suffer less, do you suffer more?' scenario that gave rise to that perception of 'other' that trigger a feeling of compassion.

This particular idea about the self/other relationship hasn't gone away, and it fits data. Okay, it fits experiential data that you may or may not agree with or share, but which is data all the same.

All day I've obsessed over how to convey this perception. (Capture the perception before you become overly concerned with its validity.) I'm fairly sure that I won't be able to do it adequately, but here goes...

What is 'self' is not 'other', though it can be shared with/given to the 'other'. What is 'other' cannot be a part of the 'self' unless it is no longer 'other'. In seeing the suffering of the 'other', the 'self' sees what it cannot experience, unless it exchanges a portion of itself with the 'other'. The suffering of the 'other' shows the 'self' what it does not have, and what it does not have to have.

Compassion doesn't demand that we physically take on the suffering of the 'other', though that response is possible. In seeking to alleviate the suffering of the 'other', we exchange a portion of our peace of mind for an empathic awareness of what the 'other' must be feeling. We may exchange a portion of our physical resources for their absence in order that the 'other' might make use of them. We exchange our previous worldview for one that now includes an awareness of this particular instance/kind of suffering. Compassion seeks a better balance between 'self' and 'other' - whether that balance is one of peace of mind, physical resources, or actual pain.

Okay, I don't know where the hell all that just came from. To be continued, once I give this some more thought...

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