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One of the things I suspect about serious spiritual life is this:
A realized man or woman is by nature compassionate. This compassion is not the stuff that self-help books refer to -- a kind of super-duper altruism that contrasts so nicely with the rough-and-tumble and sometimes horrific ways of the world. It is not something to praise.
Rather, I suspect, a realized man or woman simply has no other choice. Things cannot be correctly understood or enacted without compassion and this has fuck-all to do with virtue. There simply is no other choice.
It can't be helped.
Outsiders may judge those deemed 'realized' by the fact that they simply cannot act out egotistical formats. They can not. If they can, that's not realized...it's just another greedy, sex-crazed, ignorant nitwit like the rest of us. Such nitwits may praise compassion or tie it in self-serving knots or Jesuitical explanations, but compassion is not a choice or a possession in the world of realization.
It can't be helped ... that's all.
Or that's my hunch.
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Yep, I agree that compassion is built in. It can not be turned on and off. I also think that sometimes, when a "realized" person is acting in compassion toward someone, they person on the receiving end might get a little shaken up. Compassion on this level does not tolerate ignorance that would lead another person to the lower forms of existence....animal, hungry ghost, or hell realms.
ReplyDeleteI think compassion is just being yourself without compromise, under all and any circumstance. There is no compromise needed to assure one that they are being compassionate. It comes from ones' whole being, and it risks everything to be sincere.
The moral standards of society vary from time to time and culture to culture. They are not a indicator of compassion. Compassion goes to the heart of life and death and the absolute care one has for all beings to find their original nature.
Chana