Pema Chodron: The Practice of Compassion

[a dying child in the Sudan]

We cultivate compassion to soften our hearts and also to
become more honest and forgiving about when and how we shut down. Without justifying or condemning ourselves, we do the courageous work of opening to suffering. This can be the pain that comes when we put up barriers or the pain of opening our heart to our own sorrow or that of another being. We learn as much about doing this from our failures as we do from our successes. In cultivating compassion we draw from the wholeness of our experience -- our suffering, our empathy, as well as our cruelty and terror. It has to be this way. Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.

As in all the aspiration practices of the four limitless qualities, we start the compassion practice where we are and then expand our capacity. We start by locating our current ability to be genuinely touched by suffering. We can make a list of those who evoke a feeling of compassion. It might include our grandchild and our brother and our friend who is afraid of dying, as well as beings we see on the news or read about in a book. The point is simply to contact genuine compassion, wherever we may find it. Then we can follow the three-step formula, "May I be free of suffering. May you be free of suffering. May we be free of suffering."

From Comfortable with Uncertainty

This is a powerful meditation practice in that it includes the first person (May I be free), the second person (May you be free), and the third person (May we be free). In doing this practice, we transcend our own personal interior to include the collective interiors of all beings. It is a truly integral meditation.

I found this image at easily amazed last night. It ripped a hole in my chest. In the image, which won a Pulitzer Prize for Kevin Carter, the toddler is struggling to get to a food distribution center. Three months after being awarded the prize, Carter committed suicide.

If we do not have a way to deal with the horrors we see in the world, and a way to prepare a place within ourselves to see the pain that lives within all of us, it can destroy us as it did Carter. If we hope to face the world with an open, tender heart, we must develop compassion for ourselves as well as others.

Chodron says, "Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others." This is the painful truth. How much more difficult it is to face our own pain than it is that of others.

We cannot eliminate the pain. We cannot transcend it. We must befriend it. We must let it educate us. Pain is our teacher, if we are willing, and not our adversary.

Easy for me to say. But this is one of the things that comes up in response to my gratitude practice. I become more aware of how good my life is compared to others. And I begin to see more clearly the pain and suffering around me. And many times I cannot face it.

But as I learn to face my own pain, the pain I have hidden from for years -- the pain of the child I have locked away in the cellars of my psyche -- I can feel myself soften. I can feel my heart opening.

When I saw that picture of the child last night I cried. This child has likely been dead for more than ten years (it's from 1993), yet its pain -- her pain -- touched me deeply. My whole body contracted . . . but then my heart opened. And the tears came. And it was okay.


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Del.Icio.Us Tags: Pema Chodron, Compasion, Suffering, Pain, Buddhism, Sudan, Kevin Carter, Gratitude