“The reason we are not there for others is because we are not there for ourselves.”
In a paradoxical way the path of compassion is the path of attending deeply to ourselves. The only way to deeply attend to ourselves is to feel into our experience and then let go. Often when we experience deep feeling we cling onto it, we fixate. With regards to suffering it is this being stuck in our idea about the situation that can feel overwhelming, we see everything through this feeling. This is the only thing that is happening. In order to stay open to suffering without getting overwhelmed we need to learn how to let go and open to the flow of experience, to open to the next moment: to feel compassion for ourselves, the other and the space all around it, to embrace the totality of the situation.
The value of empathy
The Oxford Dictionary describes empathy as ‘the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.’ Carl Rogers the founder of person centered therapy says something similar but adds, as if it was your own but without losing your own perspective.
So empathy is about sharing the emotion/pain of the other. Because we can empathise, we care about the other. When we receive empathy we are not alone, as if the walls of our separateness have been breached. In many ways this is the basis of love and connection between people, that we can feel as if we are the other and therefore we do not want them to suffer and we wish them well. Rogers talking of the experience of receiving empathy says
“When a person realizes he has been deeply heard, his eyes moisten. I think in some real sense he is weeping for joy. It is as though he were saying, "Thank God, somebody heard me. Someone knows what it's like to be me” (Rogers, 1980:65)
Empathy is a gift we give to the other.
The difference between empathy and compassion
The terms empathy and compassion are often used interchangeably; relative compassion and empathy are very close but from a Buddhist perspective ultimately they are very different, one is a feeling and one is a perspective. Empathy is feeling what the other is feeling as if you are in their shoes: it is an emotional response in one person to another. The difference between empathy and compassion from a Buddhist perspective is that there is no separateness between the person feeling compassion and the person suffering. As Pema Chodron says, ‘Compassion is a relationship between equals.’
Compassion is realizing that the other’s pain is the same as your pain and that when we truly enter into this we dissolve the dualistic barrier, between ourselves and others and between our conscious mind and our feeling. So from this perspective the key difference is that one’s relationship to the other’s suffering is not centred on oneself, how it affects us.
Tanya Singer who researches into the neuroscience of compassion ((Singer, T. and Bolz, T. (2013) eBook Copyright: Max Planck Society, Munich, Germany)
talks about two aspects to compassion: an emotional response to the other and a broader notion, that is, an approach to reality and attitude to life. This is akin to relative and ultimate bodhicitta in Tibetan Buddhism. Bodhiccitta literally means awakened heart, the mind of enlightenment. Relative bodhicitta is the warmth that we can feel towards the other and ultimate bodhicitta is awakened mind, ultimate reality.
This was illustrated in her work with Mathieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk. He was asked to tune into the suffering of others whilst having a brain scan. He chose to think about and feel the suffering of Romanian orphans that he had seen on a TV programme recently. He found this quite easy to do but when asked how it was, he said “…the empathic sharing of their pain, very quickly became intolerable to me and I felt emotionally exhausted”, very similar to being burned out. He was then asked if he wanted to continue empathising or to bring compassion to this experience. He immediately chose to focus on compassion and although the images of the suffering children were still as vivid as before, they no longer induced distress. “Instead, I felt a natural and boundless love for these children and the courage to approach and console them. In addition, the distance between the children and myself had completely disappeared.” Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche called this, radiation without a radiator.
In many ways the question is how do we hold our hearts open and care about others without becoming overwhelmed?
How to work with being overwhelmed.
We all feel the suffering of others all the time: every time you watch the news, see a homeless person, hear the news of friends and relatives. We feel something and then what do we do next? It is very easy to fixate on this thought or feeling as if it is permanently true. When we think this we naturally feel overwhelmed. I think part of this is because deep down we feel responsible for the situation and therefore also for making it better. When we can’t do this we feel overwhelmed. Compassion is surrendering to being overwhelmed, not by throwing our hands up in the air but by letting go of holding onto our mind and relaxing into totality, to be present to what is. Suzuki Roshi describes this as dying into every moment (Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind).
I have felt this many times: feeling overwhelmed and then surrendering to what is. This was my experience in working with refugees when I found their distress of both their recent past and the present situation overwhelming. At times the only thing I could do was attempt to relax into my feeling of helplessness: to share their situation. Similarly I have felt this in being with a dying client and in my intimate relationship with my partner when we are having some sort of fight. At the same time I am both trying to reject what my partner is saying and unconsciously or emotionally identifying with what she is saying, as if she is right and I have done something wrong. I experience not knowing what to do, what is right, I have no angle and I see all my explanations, interpretations as subtle attempts to try and get a handle on the situation, to know and I come to the point that the only useful response is to bring compassion to the situation to myself and the other and the whole drama that we are involved in: to surrender to what is rather than try to control or overcome it.
Feeling compassion
To surrender to what is, means to feel what is happening. Another word for feeling is intuitive awareness: we sense through our nervous system, our five senses and the sixth sense, the mind sense, what is happening in the moment. We don’t do this to work things out but to be fully present to ourselves and what is, suchness, tathata. Feeling compassion is about going beyond separation, the notion that I am feeling the pain of the other. In ultimate compassion we let go of holding onto our separateness, me helping you; we tune into intrinsic sanity, beyond our separate experience of this event, whether it is for me against me or neutral and we open to what I like to call totality, tuning into the bigger picture.
Pema Chodron describes this as stepping into ‘unknown territory’,
You become willing to step into the unknown territory of your own being. Then you realize that this particular adventure is not only taking you into your own being, it’s also taking you out into the whole universe. You can only go into the unknown when you have made friends with yourself. You can only step into those areas “out there” by beginning to explore and have curiosity about this unknown “in here,” in yourself. (Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart)
I had a powerful experience of this when I I was on holiday with my 17 yr old son and his girlfriend. They went out clubbing and weren’t back by 1:30pm in the morning. I was terrified; he wasn't picking up his phone or responding to texts. I thought about phoning the police. I wondered if he died or was in trouble and I couldn't get hold of him. I was very distressed. After a few minutes I realised that I was the one freaking out, it was my emotion and my situation and I turned my attention away from what might have happened, (my thinking), towards myself, to the experience in my body. As soon as I turned my attention to my immediate physical sensing, attending to my nervous system, I started to calm down. When I deeply attended to myself I dissolved the dualistic barrier between myself, my thinking mind and my emotional reaction and/or the event and could rest in the situation.
Dogen Zen-ji said, “The way of the Buddha is the way of the self.” We may think that focusing on ourselves is a selfish thing and we should really focus on others. However sometimes when we focus on others we are focusing on their suffering because we have fixated on it. It is a form of negative ego; it gives us a reference point. When we move our attention from what we think about the situation, from what we think about others to our immediate experiencing of it, we begin to dissolve the walls that separate us from others. Somehow all of these walls, these ways of feeling separate from everything else, are made up of ideas about the situation rather than experiencing what is; what is happening in our bodymind right now. This is the Buddhist logic of starting with the Hinayana, to relate to our own confusion before we try and help others.
Overwhelm is about feeling responsible: ‘Nothing has gone wrong’
Another detail is that I think overwhelm is often associated with taking too much responsibility for a situation so that if things are going wrong we can feel it is our fault. This reminds me of the film Good Will Hunting where Robin Williams says to Matt Damon’s character, ‘It’s not your fault!’ Matt Damon replies ‘I know’ as if he is brushing it away. Robin Williams keeps saying, it’s not your fault until Matt Damon, lets it in and breaks down crying. We can know it’s not our fault rationally and we can hold onto an unconscious, out of awareness, emotional feeling/memory that it is our fault. We are often paralysed by this sense of responsibility which is what leads to the feeling of overwhelm. Our practice is to appreciate our limited ability to help, that we are not in control and then do whatever is most helpful. This requires a humility that we are not above the situation, in control but are a part of everything along with everyone else.
This is not just speaking to the spiritual journey or renunciants but has real practical application. Paul Gilbert who developed Compassion Based Therapy, working with people with severe mental illness, comments:
It is very moving when people begin to see the unchosen nature of so much of what goes on in our minds.
I think this is speaking to what I have just said that we can often feel our or other people’s distress is our fault. If I were more capable I wouldn’t have to experience this. When we appreciate the first noble truth, life is suffering and it’s not our fault we can relax.
The value of surrendering
So rather than trying to have an angle, to be in control of a situation, in a subtle way we are invited to not know, to surrender to what is beyond our limited conception of it, our cognitive knowing. When we say something has gone wrong, we are saying it shouldn't have happened, as if we are in control and should have prevented it or someone else should have. This is understandable as no-one really wants anyone else to be in pain, no-one wants war or famine but when we think it should be different, we are subtly avoiding the rawness of reality, how things actually are. In Buddhist terms this is a form of ignorance, or even aggression, things aren't the way we would like them to be and so we are upset or angry; it becomes about us. If we can be open to how things actually are we can find a skilful response or action that might help the situation.
The path of compassion training is working with ourselves and attending to parts of ourselves that have been ignored or neglected. “Our task is not to seek for love but to find the barriers within that we may have built against it.”[1] (2003). Rumi: The book of love. New York: Harper Collins. The way to do this might be to not try so hard but to lean into and soften into what we actually experience, what is.
“Master, master, how long do I need to achieve enlightenment?”
“Well, maybe 20 years.” “And if I try really hard?” “Then 40.”
Buddhist joke
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