True
Strength
“Sometimes
we think that to develop an open heart, to be truly loving and compassionate,
means that we need to be passive, to allow others to abuse us, to smile and let
everyone do what they want with us. Yet this is not what is meant by compassion.
Quite the contrary. Compassion is not at all weak. It is the strength that
arises out of seeing the true nature of suffering in the world. Compassion
allows us to bear witness to that suffering, whether it is in ourselves or
others without fear; it allows us to name injustice without hesitation, and to
act strongly, with all the skills at our disposal. To develop this mind state
of compassion…is to learn to live, as the Buddha put it, with sympathy for all
living beings, without exception.”
Sharon
Salzberg (Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness)
It has
become routine to consider kindness and compassion to be signs of weakness. They
are nothing of the sort. In this world today, the easiest emotion of all is anger;
and the true cowardice comes in feeling as though you have to strap a gun on
your hip to claim your power. Compassion is true strength. Compassion recognizes
that the person who must have a weapon on them is suffering, and that their
suffering comes from fear.
I heard
someone say recently, regarding the melting of the ice in our polar regions,
and the allowance for fracking in those wilderness areas, “Well, who needs polar
bears, anyway?” As though the extinction of polar bears has no bearing on human
life, and the most important thing is to make money. This is the dark side of
capitalism. This is suffering at its most obvious. When we can turn our backs
on the world, on all of creation, in the name of money, we are well and truly
miserable. Some would say, we’ve lost our souls.
When
you stand up and say, No! to anything that imperils others in the name of
money, whether those others are human beings, or polar bears, or frogs, you are
exercising compassion. It is compassionate to care about the environment and “all
creatures great and small,” and not a sign of weakness. Nor is it anarchy for
people to protest such indiscriminate disregard for other living beings. It is
a sign of strength. I stand with you, and I believe that the Creator of the
Universe stands with you, too.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment