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The Theory and Practise of Compassion

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nyarlathotep's shoe horn

11:04 / 22.12.07

smile.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

11:04 / 22.12.07

ask yourself "am I doing this out of love?" whenever it occurs to you to do so

11:22 / 22.12.07

Feed wild birds.

14:30 / 22.12.07

Give a gift of food and drink to a beggar. (TOEB would smile on this too)

14:37 / 22.12.07

I was trying to come up with a Sigyn-esque act, but only got "catch some poison". This came with an image of you approaching an angry argument and diffusing / defusing it with a bit of misdirection. Enough to let the combatants cool slightly... (actually, one wandered off while the shouty one gave you the directions to the out-of-the-way place you'd asked about)

18:12 / 22.12.07

Feed wild birds.

Be careful with that one, as it can actually cause said birds more harm than good.

--Ember--

18:17 / 22.12.07

Compliment people whose attention you do not otherwise require. Their hair, their clothing, their jewelry, whatever.

Give small gifts that impart comfort. My primary examples are things like splitting my lunch with a homeless woman, or giving a girl I found crying a cup of chamomile tea.

One of the rather famous/infamous ones 'round these parts is feeding the parking meters to keep parked cars from getting tickets.

Cliche, I know, but helping the elderly or disabled cross busy streets safely is in fact helpful.

Go out of your way to open doors for people whose hands are full.

.... Or am I combining Random Acts of Kindness with Compassion?

--Ember--

08:41 / 23.12.07

EmberLeo, I think Random Acts of kindness are also a form of compassion.

TTS, thank you for resurrecting this thread. I have been thinking about it myself.

Also, I am very happy for you that you have decided to take this pledge. I too, am not very fluent with the compassionate nature, as this thread is evidence of that. One of my own reasons stems from fear of being taken advantage of. Something that really remedies that for me is the practice of dedicating the "merit" of compassionate acts.

Now, whether or not "merit" is actually gained, or even exists is irrelevant. What that dedication does is help me let go of the act and any shred of expectation of benefiting from my kind act. Not that you do kind things with expectations of any payback, but sometimes, I find myself bewildered by a lack of gratitude, for instance. (This has proven to be quite disheartening in the past) Sometimes, people can even be rude even after you just have helped them! In that case, an act of compassion is needed even more because that person probably suffering in ways I can't understand.

So, whether of not "merit" exists does not matter, it is the attitude dedication of it engenders. The attitude that any benefit goes right back into the world to help every sentient being or just one in particular that I wish to direct the "merit" to, causing less attachment to my action. PLus, thinking in this way is also beneficial to the person you are dedicating to, even if it is just because you are thinking positively about someone. Thus, two kind acts from one!

Now, if "merit" really does exist, you've just set up one heck of a feedback loop.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

10:35 / 23.12.07

smile.

I already do this one. This all started when I decided to make a concerted effort to leave for work ten minutes earlier, so that there would be one less cross, pushy, scowly person on the train and one more relatively good-humoured individual. I don't go around grinning at everyone but I do take the opportunity to end transactions with a smile.

After going back and forth on the matter, I eventually decided that praying for people and doing distance healing work would count towards my daily 9. Generally I tend to prefer more concrete works, but even if praying and poppet-making and hon-sha-ze-sho-nen-ing don't actually do anything per se, I have at least turned my thoughts towards that individual in a positive frame of mind rather than just worrying and fretting (or seething with rage against bloody stupid motorists). I will therefore be better placed to offer moral support, and to pick up on information and opportunities to offer advice and real-world aid.

WRT being taken advantage of: basically, my attitude is whaddayagonnado. There will always be freeloading asshats, outright predators and well-meaning but fucked up people who bleed on your rug because their guts are hanging out. If you scrooge yourself down into a tiny little ball, you not only close yourself off from offering compassion but you don't prevent predation anyway; there will always be someone skilled enough to get past your defences, and the more you shut down the nastier these intrusions are likely to be. There's a point at which cynicism goes full circle and becomes a kind of naivety--think of a beehive, where the guards will sting invaders to death at the gate, but let them gorge unhindered once they get inside. Effective boundaries mean balancing the need to offer help at a rate you can sustain with the real human need to act with compassion.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

14:40 / 23.12.07

Have also decided that acts of "tough love," be they everso sincere, will NOT count towards the total. I want to focus wholly on the gentler manifestations of compassion (where it's also harder for vindictivness to sneak in under the guise of doing it for their own good).

15:00 / 23.12.07

If you're looking for ways to cultivate a compassionate heart one of the things that connects to that for me is something Freya teaches me.

What Freya has me do periodically is "see with Her eyes" how everyone - absolutely everyone - is deeply beautiful. Not just beautiful in personality, but actually physically beautiful. This is hard, and sometimes painful, but the result is that I feel myself loving absolutely everyone I can see, each individually, if only for a moment. It shows me the difference between a human's heart and a goddess's heart, but it also shows me how the gap can begin to be bridged.

What comes to mind as perhaps a more tenable exercise for folks who don't have "Freya's Eyes" being superimposed over their own, is to sit at a window where you can see people in public, and watch them as they pass, making a point of finding each of them a worthy human being, and finding your love for each of them, even just a little bit. The frame of the window helps both with the slight removal, and with the focus. The barrier prevents you from engaging them directly in order to dig for worthiness - you must accept each of them as-is.

The reason I say this is compassionate, is that ultimately, it is my experience that this is where compassion comes from - a deep, abiding love for everything, expressed as a deep, abiding love for each individual thing. For me, that love comes from recognizing their value in being - beauty.

--Ember--

00:17 / 24.12.07

Spare insects' lives.

05:56 / 24.12.07

whaddayagonnado

Well, I kinda mentioned something...ah, well.

An act of compassion that I have found challenging, but helps to soften the heart is to pray, sincerely and earnestly, for people I have issues with. Even people who I feel are cruel to me. I pray or do sending and taking meditation (also called tonglen). I find this to be incredibly powerful in developing a gentle and open compassionate nature.

Tonglen has a similarity to Sigyn own actions in the way one absorbs suffering and negativity of others and dissolves it into one's own heart, (the heart and Sigyn's cup - I find this symbolic).

12:48 / 24.12.07

(this is a bit choppy as I'm just waking up)

We tend to think of compassion as an extra effort rather than inherent in our daily activities.

Whenever someone acts like a complete and utter asshat / turbo douche either directly or indirectly in your general direction, consider what inner pain/misery/confusion/anger is motivating their actions. Elect to respond to the source of potential discomfort rather than the shitty behavior (do hold them responsible for said behavior).

Every time we do not respond to hatred/anger with the same we are choosing to act with compassion. Mind you it is not pity, it is not the judging of others because of where they happen to be on their spectrum of experience at the moment.

I had a driver pull out into the road in front of me yesterday during crazy dangerous holiday traffic. Instead of responding with WTF aggressive driving I thought of what was potentially motivating them to pull out (giant SUV up their trunk? Yelling tired children? tired confused driver?). My actions in letting them through and not getting worked up may have prevented an accident but it also kept me from generating my own anger. I smiled thinking of all the nice people who have made way for my own dumb driving moments. It was a tiny moment of a fellow inmate crossing my path without noticing me. Surely I do not need to feel offended.

There really is a profound shift with the practice of giving others the benefit of the doubt all the time every time. If we accept we are not the keepers of others' truth only our own it greatly impacts our relations. There is a difference between disagreeing and conflict. If we can bring an attitude of respect and genuine curiousity to a discussion it is an act of compassion not only to others but ourselves.

When we make mistakes, when we struggle with our goals, when we are tired cranky and miserable we need to be compassionate to ourselves.

The best advice I have ever received is that an emotional state of gratitude is the most beneficial. If we are thankful for what we have we are automaticaly compassionate to others. Happiness it at its core a state of grateful appreciation. At any given moment you can think of 10 things you are grateful for. Go on, try it.

17:21 / 24.12.07

In the spirit of gratitude, XK, I thank you for that well thought out post.

Sometimes I have needed extra help to maintain that exact view. It has been very hard to do so at times. I realized that when I didn't act in this way, however, it was simply out of fear. Fear of being hurt again and again. I still struggle with this, but I use a few practices to turn my mind when it strays. A book I found very beneficial for opening up the heart in this manner (and i know you have read this, XK) is "The Places that Scare You", by Pema Chödrön.

BTW, EmberLeo: I know what you are talking about with Freya. I have had this experience of everyone being incredibly beautiful since I have worked with Her. It was very helpful when I did work in Sacred Prostitution, but it has continued to this day. It makes a difference in how one approaches the world from being immediately repulsed to embracing others no matter what appearances seem to convey initially. Eventually, everyone just had this incredible beauty about them.

07:46 / 25.12.07

Papess - I think everyone who works with Freya (and, I presume, other Beauty-oriented powers) learn this. I'm still in process, I suppose - I can clearly percieve the existence-value of all things, whether I have the energy to get out of myself enough to acknowledge it at any given moment. But it definitely doesn't register as aesthetic beauty. Through Her eyes, everyone doesn't just seem beautiful, everyone looks attractive. People I love but don't find at all physically attractive are shiningly beautiful through Her eyes. The difference is very clear to me, and I'm definitely not to a point in my work with Her that I carry it that far on my own.

We tend to think of compassion as an extra effort rather than inherent in our daily activities.

Mmm, I don't so much think of compassion as an extra effort, as I think of cultivation as an extra effort, and I think compassion is worth cultivating.

--Ember--

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

16:36 / 26.12.07

"freeloading asshats" <- well put

I found some words from Martin Luther King Jr rather a propos of this topic. His theme is loving your enemy. Here are some excepts that I find inspiring:

Loving Your Enemies
November 17th 1957
Martin Luther King

“Now first let us deal with this question, which is the practical question: How do you go about loving your enemies? I think the first thing is this: In order to love your enemies, you must begin by analyzing self.

“A second thing that an individual must do in seeking to love his enemy is to discover the element of good in his enemy, and everytime you begin to hate that person and think of hating that person, realize that there is some good there and look at those good points which will over-balance the bad points.

“Another way that you love your enemy is this: When the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it.

“But there is another way. And that is to organize mass non-violent resistance based on the principle of love. It seems to me that this is the only way as our eyes look to the future.

“So this morning, as I look into your eyes, and into the eyes of all of my brothers in Alabama and all over America and over the world, I say to you, “I love you. I would rather die than hate you.”"

19:19 / 28.12.07

(Tangent)

Be careful with that one, as it can actually cause said birds more harm than good.

Ember, if you follow the guidelines on what to feed the birds, the birds will actually be fine and very grateful especially at this time of year. But obviously if you are feeding them toffee, that's where you are going wrong! If you're struggling, the RSPB gives excellent guidelines and it's mostly during breeding season that you need to be really careful.

Mordant,

Perhaps you could try making a list of all the things that would make you normally act in an incompassionate way, for example like when you travel on the tube as you mentioned right at the beginning of the thread. Then if these are regularly occurring situations they'll count for a good few of your nine if each time they occur you do the exact opposite.

I think it's a lovely dedication and a beautiful idea and I wish you every success.

I definitely think that one of your nine things should regularly be compassion towards yourself. So that when you find yourself being distinctly mean to yourself you should reverse that feeling. I think that one of the hardest things to do in the word is to be compassionate to yourself, especially if you're a intensely self-critical person. And obviously out of compassion for oneself comes compassion for others I believe.

And so it goes.

23:44 / 28.12.07

Olu - Fair enough. Just make sure that whatever guidelines you check are applicable to where you are. I live in a very bio-diverse area of California, where we need new guidelines every few miles, it seems, and they say you should never feed the pigeons.

--Ember--

Less searchable M0rd4nt

09:39 / 31.12.07

I've had the everyone-becoming-beautiful experience myself. Interestingly, the first time it occurred was years before my conversion, when I was maintaining an entirely secular practice. I was rather fitty, headachy and woozy and not myself that day--not sure where I was, got on the wrong bus and ended up wandering around miles from home with no clear idea how to get back. And one by one, I started to see these monsters. A woman with a face like a pterodactyl. A dog-faced man with lugubrious, malevolent eyes. Apes and ghouls. It was altogether nasty, and it got worse and worse until every face I looked at was utterly hideous and loaded with malice to boot. And eventually I said to myself: I reject this. There aren't any monsters here. Just ordinary people going about their lives. Whatever is going on with my perception right now, whatever internal screw-up is manifesting here, I refuse to hang it on anyone else. And with that thought the monsters disappeared. Instead, everyone was surrounded by a kind of radiance, and every face I looked at was like the face of an angel.

I have since had similar experiences, not so much in respect of my work with Frejya but definitely in respect of my work with Loki. Loki is very good at revealing beauty even in the most unlikely places: the Father of Monsters, looking with loving eyes even on Fenrir and Jormungandr. Not long after my first serious working with Him I was walking in my neighbourhood and had one of those Beauty moments; everyone around me seemed to be glowing with this glorious potential, the best of everything they could be manifesting as this tremendous living light, like golden fire. I kept wanting to dip my fingers in it.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

09:40 / 31.12.07

Perhaps you could try making a list of all the things that would make you normally act in an incompassionate way, for example like when you travel on the tube as you mentioned right at the beginning of the thread. Then if these are regularly occurring situations they'll count for a good few of your nine if each time they occur you do the exact opposite.

That's a good tactic. I will implement it.

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