On Compassion, Equanimity and Impermanence — by Shinzen Young

[Welles]

Shinzen's message was rather important for me today. In the past I've considered his point about the two practices of compassion sort of like the difference between empathy and sympathy. His view is much clearer.

Share People's Pain, Not Their Suffering

Just as insight has many facets, so also with service. I would like to talk about just one aspect -- compassion.

Compassion is practiced in two ways: subtly and overtly. You can subtly serve any person with whom you interact by allowing their poison and pain to resonate deeply within you, and experiencing it completely so that it does not turn into suffering within you. This is the healthy alternative to both callous indifference and enervating enmeshment.

This subtle service is a natural extension of the self-liberation process. You purified your own pain by willingly experiencing it with mindfulness and equanimity. Now, in daily interaction, you open yourself up to other people's pain. But you apply mindfulness and equanimity to it as it resonates within you. By experiencing another person's pain in this liberated way, you are subtly, subliminally helping them to do the same. People want to have you around, but they cannot say exactly why. The reason is that your body is constantly preaching a wordless sermon to everybody you interact with, even casually.

On Compassion, Equanimity and Impermanence — by Shinzen Young

http://www.dailygood.org/story/2213/on- ... zen-young/

[happyrain]

thanks welles, this one i'll have to reference again and again until my irritable self can get this down right.