William Mawhinney is a fine northwest poet. One of his poems touches on the practice of Zen monks going into the streets each morning on their begging rounds, holding their begging bowls. The poem includes these lines about their return to the monastery:
“Monks return through the gate
Nourished by the compassionate, attached to no harvest.”
Nourished by the compassionate, attached to no harvest. Buddhism in action.
‘Compassion’ is defined as a word used to describe one person’s “…deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it.” That, at any rate, is as good a definition as I’ve found….a deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it.
A deep awareness of anything is hard enough, but if we put some effort into it we can gain some degree of awareness and appreciation of another’s suffering. To be aware is a first step and it is not in the beginning all that difficult because everyone is suffering. Everyone. In this room. In this town. In this world. Just look around. Just look inside. The First Noble Truth is everywhere, and it seems to me that human nature is such that the deeper our awareness of suffering, the stronger will be our wish to relieve it.
The most common definition of ‘wish’ is ‘desire’ and The Second Noble Truth is that desire is the cause of suffering. That is, the wish, the desire to relieve suffering causes suffering. Every human being inherently has some level of compassion. Animals have compassion, at least for their own offspring. But humans have the capacity to cultivate and expand their own compassion beyond self-interest to include all of life. One Tibetan Buddhist teaching reads: “When a dog sees her puppies in pain she develops the wish to protect them and free them from pain, and this compassionate wish is her Buddha seed. Unfortunately, however, animals have no ability to train in compassion, and so their Buddha seed cannot ripen. Human beings, though, have a great opportunity to develop their Buddha nature. Through meditation we can extend and deepen our compassion until it transforms into the mind of great compassion – the wish to protect all living beings without exception from their suffering. Through improving this mind of great, or universal, compassion it will eventually transform into the compassion of a Buddha, which actually has the power to protect all living beings. Therefore the way to become a Buddha is to awaken our compassionate Buddha nature and complete the training in universal compassion. Only human beings can do this.”
Compassion, then, is the effort in the present moment to be aware of the world as it is, to accept responsibility for it and to do whatever is within one’s power to alleviate its suffering without attachment to the outcome. Compassion is not warm and fuzzy as some might think and like to feel. Compassion is first of all awareness of suffering. Each individual response to one’s awareness of that suffering in the world is a step in the cultivation and expansion of compassion. The less attachment the bigger the step. This Zen story from Japan is one of my favorites and illustrates compassionate Buddha nature:
A beautiful girl in the village was pregnant. Her angry parents demanded to know who was the father. At first resistant to confess, the anxious and embarrassed girl finally pointed to Hakuin, the Zen master whom everyone previously revered for living such a pure life. When the outraged parents confronted Hakuin with their daughter’s accusation, he simply replied, “Is that so?”
When the child was born, the parents brought it to Hakuin, who now was viewed as a pariah by the whole village. They demanded that he take care of the child since it was his responsibility. “Is that so?” Hakuin said calmly as he accepted the child.
For many months he took very good care of the child until the daughter could no longer withstand the lie she had told. She confessed that the real father was a young man in the village whom she had tried to protect. The parents immediately went to Hakuin to see if he would return the baby. With profuse apologies they explained what had happened. “Is that so?” Hakuin said as he handed them the child.
That’s compassion in action.
Hakuin’s was not the reaction of denial, the avoidance of an unwanted responsibility or the blaming of others for an injustice, a dishonesty and more suffering. Just the question, “Is that so?” and taking care of that which needed care (the baby) while compassionate Buddha nature began to awaken in the beautiful girl and her parents and, we can hope, the young man in the village.
Hakuin, by turning the situation around with three words used as a mirror, “Is that so?” helped the girl, her parents, the young man and the entire village transform small mind into the large mind of universal compassion.
In closing, I want to include this funny little aside that just won’t go away whenever I think about compassion:
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.
That way, when you criticize them, you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.