412. Collective Liberation

When we act from compassion, we do what is needed to make our own lives and the lives of the people around us better. By meeting the needs of ourselves and others, we eliminate suffering and we create joy. We meet needs directly and also indirectly, by helping others towards the awareness they need to overcome their suffering.

It might then seem like compassion is concerned only with improving individual lives. But it is by creating change in individuals that compassion also creates collective change. For a person who is aware does not restrict their compassion to specific others. Genuine compassion is never limited only to our own family, friends, or neighbours. It is always action to meet needs and eliminate suffering for all living beings.

It is precisely when we are most free of our self-produced suffering that we are also most able to see that systemic changes are needed and necessary. We can then see how the suffering of individuals and their automatic reactions to that suffering combine to produce social and economic forces that perpetuate suffering for all of us.

Our systems of power and hierarchy were bred from the suffering of attachment, and as a result, these systems cause enormous harm. They do so because they work to promote and magnify attachment. In particular, they encourage attachment to things like status, wealth, and other forms of power, and in doing so they produce incredible suffering not just for those who are deprived of these things but also for those who most possess them.

Recognizing this, the aware person is motivated to transform such systems into ones that encourage liberation from suffering. They are so motivated because they see the need for suffering to end and for joy to be born. They are able to take action to meet that need because their individual lives have been transformed to be less dominated by suffering. Every individual transformation is not only an end to suffering for a single person, but also the beginning of the liberation of all others.