Best Way To Develope True Compassion?

[Scholar]

What ways do you guys know of to cultivate true compassion? I heard Thich Nhat Hanh talk about "Deep listening", but I'm not exactly sure how to practise that on a daily basis. I'm an empathetic person, but I feel like I have mostly used that to manipulate people instead of helping them, even if it was subtle and not ill-intended. How do create undiscriminate motivation to resolve someone elses suffering, even for people that I haven't met before, or people that I don't seem to like?

Are there any special meditative methods to develope it? Or is it just about mindfulness at all times?

[Arman]

Try metta aka loving kindness meditation

also I believe our capacity to love others is roughly a reflection of our capacity to love ourselves

[PureExp]

30 minutes ago, Scholar said:

How do create undiscriminate motivation to resolve someone elses suffering, even for people that I haven't met before, or people that I don't seem to like?

Forget about others, fix yourself.

If you think you are already perfect, fix that too.

Know that there are no "others", it is a need of your "spiritual ego" to fix external stuff. It is just distracting you. Ego has many tricks, this one is a subtle one. It effectively makes you forget your main goal. Know that we cannot fix stuff or people, they are already perfect the way they are. There is a reason someone is like the way he is. Why meddle with that?

Ok, this will raise eyebrows some of you will call me cruel or zen devil or whatever. So I've a more practical suggestion. Of course you may choose any other action. I take no responsibility. Its as follow:

Do not hunt for opportunities to do good aggressively or proactively. If, by chance or by grace an opportunity to help someone arises, take it. In this way you have done your duty without meddling with others. If you have a strong desire to remove all suffering from all corners of the world, examine it, see from where it arises, trace the ignorance that lies behind it, and remove that ignorance. Done. Thats all you need to do.

 

[Scholar]

19 minutes ago, PureExp said:

Forget about others, fix yourself.

If you think you are already perfect, fix that too.

Know that there are no "others", it is a need of your "spiritual ego" to fix external stuff. It is just distracting you. Ego has many tricks, this one is a subtle one. It effectively makes you forget your main goal. Know that we cannot fix stuff or people, they are already perfect the way they are. There is a reason someone is like the way he is. Why meddle with that?

Ok, this will raise eyebrows some of you will call me cruel or zen devil or whatever. So I've a more practical suggestion. Of course you may choose any other action. I take no responsibility. Its as follow:

Do not hunt for opportunities to do good aggressively or proactively. If, by chance or by grace an opportunity to help someone arises, take it. In this way you have done your duty without meddling with others. If you have a strong desire to remove all suffering from all corners of the world, examine it, see from where it arises, trace the ignorance that lies behind it, and remove that ignorance. Done. Thats all you need to do.

 

I think there is a reason for why this kind of thought-pattern, or paradigm, has not survived and become an established religion. It is because, if you take the road to non-duality, or enlightenment, before having taken the road to love and compassion, one is destined to manifest into complete absence of action. In a way, it's quite like evolution. Those who were enlightened and loved, spread their enlightenment, because they indeed did not belief everything to be pointless. They have engineered their psyche in a way, that despite facing absolute nothingness, they could still operate from love. From that, actions of love took place, revolutionizing the world in the process.

Now, everyone who was enlightened and did not take the path of love, did take another path nonetheless. That path simply lead to them not do anything. Their enlighenment showed them that the world is illusion, and even love was illusion. They had no reason to love anyone or anything. They had no reason to relief other beings of suffering, because after all, other beings don't exist.

See, both paths are equally valid. The zen devil just as much as the enlightened buddhist. There is no reason not to love, just as much as there is no reason to love. Whether you will love or not completely depends on the leftovers of your psyche. The structures of your psyche will decide the actions you will take. And make no mistake, because even the absence of tradition will lead you to one set of actions over the other. How your mind interpretes "enlightenment" completely depends on your psyche. And ironically, any interpretation is illusion. Yet, the interpretation always happens. 

 

I choose the path of love now, not only so that it gives me strength to actually take this path to the end, but also because I want to act out of love if I ever am "enlightened". And if enlighenment was my only goal, I'd simply jump off a building. That would make short shrift of my ignorance.

The true question is why not meddle with it? The avoidance of action, after all, is an action in itself.

Edited March 8, 2017 by Scholar

[Loreena]

Compassion meditation helps a lot. It's called metta meditation. Also try listening to people. When you get good at listening, it increases your tendency to feel, understand and empathize with em

[Guivs]

@Scholar A great way is the daily practice of tong-len, "giving" and "receiving"

The goal of this practice is to visualize giving all your happiness to others and taking on all their suffering, ignorance, illnesses,...

From The Art of Happiness :  

(quote) To begin this exercise,first visualize on one side of you a group of people who are in desperate need of help, those who are in an unfortunate state of suffering, those living under conditions of poverty, hardship, and pain. (...)

Then, on the other side, visualize yourself as the embodiment of a self-centered person, with a customary selfish attitude, indifferent to the well-being and needs of others. And then in between this suffering group of people and this selfish representation of you see yourself in the middle, as a neutral observer.

Next, notice which side you are naturally inclined towards. Are you more inclined towards that single individual, the embodiment of selfishness? Or do your natural feelings of empathy reach out to the group of weaker people who are in need ? If you look objectively, you can see that the well-being of a group or large number of individuals is more important than that of one single individual.

After that, focus your attention on the needy and desperate people. Direct all your positive energy to them. Mentally give them your successes, your ressources, your collection of virtues. And after you have done that, visualize taking upon yourself their suffering, their problems, their negativities. (end quote)

 

Then during the day, you can imagine that during each inbreath,  you breathe in all the suffering, agression, ignorance around you and you breathe out all your happiness to others.

This is a wonderful practice because one must have some courage to be able to breathe in all sufferings of others and give out his/her happiness. 

But this makes you much more self-centered. Being increasingly less self-centered means it becomes easier to see the selflessness of individual and phenomena.

Also, each time you breathe out, you start to realize that you always have some happiness to give out, you realize that it is always there and never runs out.

This is a practice that changes dramatically your way of seeing things

 

 

 

[ajasatya]

@Scholar embracing kundalini yoga practices helped me a lot.

[Nahm]

@Scholar you can help someone else with their pain, but not their suffering. That is self inflicted, they must stop doing something to stop suffering (a belief, overthinking, keeping out of the now,etc)

You can tell them how, but you can't help them to do it.

[Prabhaker]

On 3/9/2017 at 3:54 AM, Scholar said:

Best Way To Develope True Compassion?

After each meditation, when you are celebrating, have compassion. Just feel that your energy should go and help people in whatsoever ways they need it. Just release it! You will be unburdened, you will feel very relaxed, you will feel very calm and quiet, and the vibrations that you have released will help many. End your meditations always with compassion.

And compassion is unconditional. You cannot have compassion only for those who are friendly towards you, only for those who are related to you. Compassion is all-inclusive...intrinsically all-inclusive. So if you cannot feel compassion for your neighbor, then forget all about meditation, because it has nothing to do with somebody in particular. It has something to do with your inner state. Be compassion! unconditionally, undirected, unaddressed. Then you become a healing force into this world of misery.

Compassion basically means accepting people’s frailties, their weaknesses, not expecting them to behave like gods. One of the fundamentals of compassion is to make everybody dignified, everybody aware that what has happened to you can happen to him; that he is not a hopeless case, that he is not unworthy. 

Compassion is not addressed to anybody. It is not a relationship; it is simply your very being. You enjoy being compassionate to the trees, to the birds, to the animals, to human beings, to everybody – unconditionally, not asking for anything in return.