240. The Necessity Of Compassion

Compassionate action can be difficult and demanding, so it’s reasonable to wonder why we should want to become more compassionate. From the perspective of ordinary self-interest, perhaps the answer is simply that we shouldn’t. What we actually want and need is to suffer less and to live more joyfully.

An examination of our suffering quickly reveals that it arises from attachment. We’re human beings, which means we reflect on our experiences and we form desires, aversions, and beliefs that combine to produce ideals that we can easily become attached to. When these ideals are not achieved, we suffer in the form of stress, anger, anxiety, shame, despair, and so on.

Understanding how attachment operates in our own unique experience is not easy. We have to investigate both the self and the world relentlessly, in order to discover what we’re attached to and how these attachments produce our own suffering. As we pay more attention to our experiences, our awareness grows and our suffering shrinks. Noticing this, we aspire to expand our awareness further, in the hope that our suffering will cease.

But we soon discover that suffering does not begin or end with our own individual bodies. Our new awareness reveals that the distinctions between living beings are not nearly as clear or final as they might seem. The suffering that exists in others is also our suffering, and it can cause us to feel just as much anguish as our own attachments.

We then find ourselves compelled towards compassion. We choose it not out of desire or obligation, but because we must choose it. If we hope to end our own suffering, it is necessary for us to act from compassion towards others and help them develop their own awareness.

In the process of doing so, we also learn more about the world. We discover that the deficit of awareness is greater than we thought and as a direct result, compassion is all too rare. Our dire situation means that we need to be as compassionate as possible in order to catalyze the growth of awareness in others.

We also discover that our own awareness is never total or complete. We must continue developing it without end, and become even more compassionate than we already are. When compassion spreads, in ourselves and others, we all gain the opportunity for freedom from suffering and the possibility to live with greater joy.