432. Helping Others

Someone has asked you to help meet one of their needs, and you feel like you should do it. Perhaps you feel this way because you have a desire to make them happy, or you want to avoid their anger at failing to help, or simply because you believe you should help when you can. If you are attached to any of these intentions, you will feel motivated to do what has been asked of you.

Your helpful actions will be compassionate ones, since they help to meet someone’s need. This is true even though you are not motivated by an awareness of need. In this way, many of the things you do throughout life are compassionate, even if you do not recognize them as such.

At the same time, since you are taking action because of attachment to an intention, you might feel annoyed, frustrated, or even resentful at having to help. Perhaps you wanted to do something else, and now you feel forced to undertake this demanding task out of obligation. This can happen even when the person you are helping is someone you care about deeply. You might then feel guilty over having these feelings, which are actually forms of suffering produced by attachment.

If, on the other hand, you could see that your help was necessary in order to meet an important need, then your motivation would not come from obligation but from awareness. When you see need and the necessity of meeting it, there is no resentment or frustration. You freely choose to offer your help because the necessity of compassion overwhelms any other considerations.

Acting from awareness, you might perform the very same actions as you would acting from attachment, but you will do so with a sense of purpose. For now you can see the immense value created by meeting the need of another person. Not only will you no longer produce additional suffering for yourself, you might also discover that there is an unexpected joy in doing what you have been asked to do.