“Accustomed long to contemplating Love and Compassion,
I have forgotten all difference between myself and others.”

Milarepa

Compassion is the theme for the next Interfaith gathering on Sunday 13th October at the Fellside Alexander School in Kendal, to which everyone is most welcome to bring a reading or simply come along.

What is compassion? My dictionary tells me that it is a deep feeling of pity for the suffering of another, and an inclination to give aid or support, or to show mercy.

Buddhism teaches us that compassion generates the desire to liberate all beings from the cycle of rebirth, or samsara, the most compassionate being the bodhisattvas who obtain release but postpone their liberation in order to help others..

Christianity asks us to “be of one mind, sympathetic, loving toward one another, compassionate, humble.”(1 Peter 3.8-9)

And in the Hindu writings of the Bhagavad Gita we are told, “Who is incapable of hatred toward any being, who is kind and compassionate, free from selfishness…such a devotee of Mine is My beloved. (12. 13-14)

For myself, I experience compassion as a stirring in my heart that moves me to action, small or large. I feel my heart open, my ego shrink and I am moved to touch, or hold, to pray or write a letter, to phone or make a journey.

The action itself is not important, it is the motivation that counts. I am moved by the understanding of the suffering of another, and feel it as my own. Then I long to let that other know that they are not alone, that I understand, that I offer my friendship, support and, most importantly, my love. Because, after all, that is what compassion is to me. It is love in action.

I ask myself, “ How much compassion do I have for others?” I hold Mahatma Gandhi in mind as one of the world’s greatest teachers of love and compassion. He said, “My life is an indivisible whole, and all my activities run into one another; and they have their rise in my insatiable love of mankind.” Something to aim for!

I also ask myself how much compassion do I have for myself? Can I offer myself the love, holding and support that I would offer another? Can I truly understand that we are one, and that how I treat myself is how I treat others?

There are times when I may forget myself in my compassion for another’s suffering, and there are times when I need to address my own suffering and meet it with compassion, so that I may be of loving service to others. We cannot truly give to others what we are unable to give ourselves.

And I guess that if we contemplate love and compassion for as long as Milarepa, we may reach the stage of forgetting the difference between ourselves and others. What a loving world that will be!

Susanna Michaelis
Interfaith Minister and Spiritual Counsellor