photo by Mara ~earth light~

The notion of practicing compassion for other fellow humans has been with us since the beginning of time. After all, Man is a social creature in need of meaningful social connections in order to grow on all levels of his being.

The concept of compassion however has in recent times been appraised in value. Its importance is starting to be understood under the new light of a drastically changing world where people are getting more connected, economies collapse and new global crisis emerge.  Compassion is becoming increasingly tied to the future of humanity. In order for Humanity to keep the balance against the impounding waves of change we need to grow collectively in mind, awareness and in consciousness.  One essential ingredient for this growth is cultivating compassion and loving kindness

Compassion compels action and social change

“You know, there’s a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit — the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the world through the eyes of those who are different from us — the child who’s hungry, the steelworker who’s been laid-off, the family who lost the entire life they built together when the storm came to town. When you think like this — when you choose to broaden your ambit of concern and empathize with the plight of others, whether they are close friends or distant strangers — it becomes harder not to act; harder not to help.” Barack Obama

President Obama mentions the empathy deficit but why does he put emphasis on it?

What his words imply is that real concern about the future does not stop around financial and monetary issues. These are important but to stop there is shortsightedly missing the whole point about positive social change.

Yes, the economy is a driver of social well being and change but both well being and social change are also driven by something which runs deeper than the balance books and the cash tills. It is driven by social cohesion, understanding, comprehension, extended cooperation, empathy and compassion.

Compassion is empathizing with other beings that are suffering and left behind. It is exactly “the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes” and see their predicament with their own eyes through their own perspective.

Compassion is the deep desire to free others from suffering. It is the understanding that we are not alone and that others have exactly the same desire to be happy as we do and the same right to attain it.

Compassion begets positive social change because it compels action. When you empathize with the suffering and pain of others “it becomes harder not to act; harder not to help.” This means that when you genuinely open your heart and mind to the problems of others, you shift your perspective in such a way that you are inclined and motivated to help and alleviate their pain and suffering. Action is a natural consequence to compassion.

Action brings about change. Even better, action grounded in compassion, in the awareness and understanding of people’s problems and with the intent to improve their condition brings about positive change and one step closer towards the diminishing of suffering in the world.

Society is a living system. It is a dynamic network through which millions of interactions take place every second and through which ideas, joy, love, energy and compassion can flow between human connections – the nodes of the network.

When empathy and compassion are missing those connections can break and bend. What follows is an ever increasing segregation and detachment between groups of people and individuals giving rise to misunderstanding, inequality, intolerance and unhappiness running from the individual to the social.

Buddhism on Compassion & Loving Kindness

The practice of compassion and loving kindness is central to the Buddhist way of life. The Dalai Lama made it his special mission in this lifetime to spread the teaching of compassion and loving kindness.

I think it is not a coincidence that he chose the teaching of compassion to be his lifetime work in this particular time we are living in. I believe that this is a particularly ripe time for the world to wake up and expand its consciousness, cultivate compassion and sow the seeds of love. There is no better time.

In Buddhist philosophy, compassion is the deep desire and highest motivation to free all sentient beings from suffering. However this notion of compassion is not rooted in subjectivity, judged according to proximity or executed through uncontrolled emotions.

This means that true compassion is unconfined. If I am compassionate about my family but not for those who suffer in far away places or for those whom I dislike then it is not true compassion although it is still a good starting point.

“True compassion is not just an emotional response but a firm commitment founded on reason. Because of this firm foundation, a truly compassionate attitude toward others does not change even if they behave negatively. Genuine compassion is based not on our own projections and expectations, but rather on the needs of the other: irrespective of whether another person is a close friend or an enemy…This is genuine compassion.”  The Dalai Lama from ‘The Compassionate Life’

True compassion is not rooted in the ego. Sometimes we feel distraught by some tragic story because we cannot bear the thought or the emotion of what it ought to be like to pass through that experience. We feel sorry but at the same time we want to stay detached because our heart is not strong enough to bear it. This is because we are seeing it from our own ego-centred standpoint which is natural for an untrained mind.

This has happened to me lately. I went to visit my parents one day. The day before a tragic traffic accident happened where the lives of a whole family were lost including a 3 year old girl. The car they were in was smashed beyond recognition. The story was all over the papers. I did not want to look at it nor the photos of the family. It was like my heart couldn’t bear it. I didn’t want to think about it. I must however admit that this is not compassion. It is feeling deeply sorry but with a detached heart.

Compassion is seeing the suffering of the world with an open heart – a strong heart.

“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.” Sharon Salzberg

Expanding our consciousness through compassion

The natural questions that springs out of this is “Ok it’s nice to help others when needed but what good does it bring to soak into the sufferings of others?”, “doesn’t this dull your mind or depress you?”, “does compassion has any other value besides being an ethical or moral thing to do?”

I understand that these are legitimate questions and they should be asked freely.

The answer is simple but not straightforward at the same time

When we understand the concept of true compassion as held by Buddhist teaching and hopefully practice it in our daily lives, we are doing something more than just doing the ethically right thing and helping others that are in need. We are doing more than being responsible humans who reach out for other people.

What we are doing is expanding and shifting our consciousness.  We are freeing ourselves from the tyranny of the ego-consciousness because when we “put ourselves in someone else’s shoes” we are shifting our perspective and center of focus from the self to others. We expand our view and the purpose of our lives.

We start to break away from the self-centered whims and desires that hold us from expanding ourselves. We start breaking the illusion that we are separate from others and the world around us. In fact the Buddhist notion of compassion is intimately tied to the understanding that we are one and the same. Separateness is ultimately an illusion.

When we come to realize more and more of the interconnectedness between all sentient beings, we start to realize that compassion is not only a polite or ethical thing to do. It is the only sensible thing to do. It is the way forward for humanity.

Compassion is a way of realizing ourselves. When we are compassionate and seek to free others from their suffering, we are effectively freeing ourselves. We are part of the grid network. We are connected to it and if we contribute just a little and do our part to expand it by showing compassion and loving kindness to others then we are also expanding ourselves. This is the great web of life.

Cultivating compassion through meditation

There are many ways to practice compassion and loving kindness.  Like most things it takes time and commitment but it can be done in small and easy steps.

Meditation is one way through which compassion can be cultivated. It is good to know that scientific research is now starting to discover through various tests that compassion helps the mind to better cope with stress and conditions such as depression.  Here is one such article from the science daily.

At this point I am tempted to jot down a few practical tips on practising compassion meditation but that would be a bit pretentious from my part. It’s better to leave that to people who know way more than me about compassion.

Here is a short video of 9:56 mins  from Angela Carole Brown in which she gives a guided meditation on Compassion for beginners. It’s a very good place to start.

I’ll leave you to it. Enjoy and may compassion be seeded in your heart.

Related posts:

1. A Note on Happiness
2. From Ego-Consciousness to Eco-Consciousness:10 Meditations

“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence” Aristotle

Photo by Hadrien

Every living being in this world seeks happiness whether s/he is aware of it or not.  It is the meaning and purpose of life as Aristotle had noted.

“Isn’t it obvious?” I hear you say. Yet is it really that obvious I dare ask again?

If it were that obvious why aren’t billion of dollars being spent in researching the ‘Science of Happiness’? Why aren’t political systems based on the pursuit, achievement and safeguarding of Happiness? Why aren’t there too many religions that instead of attaching themselves to Dogma and authority reorient their beliefs on the basic Human need of Happiness? Why isn’t Happiness a shared point of reference between political, ideological and International transactions?

Something is not that obviously straight forward to me.

A New Earth & Eckhart Tolle

The answers came from a book that I have read during the last year or so and which has profoundly influenced my perspective on life. The book is Eckhart Tolle’s  A New Earth.  Written by a real contemporary Spiritual Master, the book touches on many insightful and profound truths that seem to unknowingly spark off something inside the reader. There is that “A Ha! So that’s what it is!” kind of feeling in everyone who I know has read the book, including myself.

One of these insights is the fact that the human mind is by default dysfunctional since it is caught by the grips of the ego consciousness. The ego consciousness is that little Mr. Hyde in us that sabotages our every attempt to break free from our old patterns of behavior or self-destructive habits such as negative thinking, limiting and self-defeating thoughts, anger, greed & the incessant desire for having more than others and being better than others.

The Ego & its subconscious machinery

The ego-consciousness makes us self-absorbed and self-centered. It makes us blind and shortsighted. It makes us feel special and cut off from the rest.

There is always that ‘I and others’ or ‘’us and them’ kind of standpoint which breeds other negative repercussions such as prejudice, labeling, intolerance, hatred, etc. The ego consciousness is also a trickster. It comes up with apparently rational arguments in our ‘self-talking’ such as to justify our dysfunctional beliefs and subconscious irrational fears.

The Collective Ego

On a social level, the ego has its collective presence too. The world news is such a testimony to that. Everyday we hear about mass attacks on human lives from religious extremists with fundamentalist beliefs, violence spurred by racial or ethnic hatred and intolerance, political standoffs between countries due to a clash of ideologies and cultures.

This is the collective ego at work that makes us perceive the world through a self-centered orientation, making us narrow minded and blind to the needs and rights of others. We attach ourselves blindly to the shallowness of our own self-created and self-perpetuated system of beliefs & values in such a way that change and acceptance become the worst enemies for the ego because they threaten to uncover its covert trickery and end its reign.

The Transcendental Self

On the other end of Human nature there is what is often referred to as the Transcendental self. This is the nemesis of the ego. It is the part of us which transcends beyond the limited and self-centered vision of the ego and gains insights into the real nature of things without being obscured by the delusions of mind. It is free from attachment to thought.

The Transcendental self is not rooted in the conditioning of past habits or future worries but is rooted in the now, in the only moment which is ever real because everything happens in the now. Tying oneself to the past or future will only bring stress and anxiety while it forces us to live our lives on autopilot (which is the opposite of being awake).

The Transcendental self is not self-absorbed. Its vision is wider and feels and accepts that s/he is part of the universal being. S/he understands that all life is interconnected at some level and that all our actions have consequences which incur other consequences in an interdependent Universe of cause and effect.

A person who has transcended beyond his limiting ego-centric view on life is a person who is self-actualizing, takes his destiny in his own hands and co-creates his life rather than just reacting to it with worry, anger, guilt or attachment.

The Reactive vs. The Creative self

Two people can behave quite differently in a same situation. Imagine a situation whereby a man, Mr.A is driving along his way when some other guy thoughtlessly but abusively drives in the main road from a side street and almost makes Mr.A loose control of his car and send him into a possible life-threatening accident.

Mr.A, after getting out of his shock, hoots the horn at the other guy which promptly and cheekily replies with his middle finger. Mr.A gets wrathful to the point of foam in his mouth and steam coming out from his ears. He chases him, swears at him, hoots at him, swerves on him, calls him names, and after a long ride completely off route where he was going, finally decides to call off the chase.

But that’s not the end of it. On the remainder of his trip Mr.A drives with thoughts of revenge, anger, frustration, disbelief and then spends the rest of the day having a mental picture of the guy with all the things he could have said or done to him. Not to mention, the physiological stress and harm, Mr.A wasted his day by running a very vivid and negative documentary in his head.

Now imagine the same situation happening to Mr.B. Car comes out, Mr.B tries to avoid him, takes in a deep breath, makes sure he has full control of the car and himself, slows down then drives off just to forget about it as soon as he turns on the first corner.

Mr.A and Mr.B were victims of the same circumstances but while Mr.A held himself hostage of his own ego, Mr.B was free and made a choice not to hassle himself with the emotion arousing thoughts for the rest of his day.

The Unhappy Ego

The ego-driven self is locked into a powerless state of dysfunction and is very limited in finding happiness. It always wants the next best thing hence eternally dissatisfied with what it has. There is no appreciation of the present moment.

The ego loves a reaction as shown in the case of Mr.A. It feeds on it like a vampire feeds on blood. It is reactive rather than creative, hence its shallowness and shortsightedness.

It reacts as soon as it sees someone else being better than itself or to someone who said or did something that arouses a negative emotion. It will attempt its very best to react to the other person’s actions by trying to win over an argument with intellectual prowess, bitch back, pass on demeaning and insulting remarks, do or say something to show his/her superiority at something and so on down a very long list of silly and futile things the human mind can come up with. Worst thing is that we are not conscious that all this ever happening to us.

The Science of Happiness

Recent studies and Research in Cognitive Psychology and Positive Psychology are time after time discovering and verifying the age-old insights in mind, consciousness and happiness as outlined in brief above. Most of this ancient knowledge derives from Buddhist teachings but now is finding its way further into mainstream western thought and Science. I agree with his Holiness the Dalai Lama when he once was quoted in saying that Buddhism is after all a Science of Mind.

By slowly embracing a relatively more Holistic approach to Science, modern Cognitive Psychology is starting to recognize, through scientific tests, the validity of this ancient wisdom. (If you’re interested in this I recommend checking out the works of Jon Kabat-Zinn here)

Amongst some of the interesting findings, which throw light on the intersection between the old and modern understanding of the mind and happiness there is:

• Meditation has been shown to have many beneficial effects to mental health in general such as significantly reducing stress & anxiety, heart problem risks and depression. It also promotes general happiness and well being

• Attaching oneself to material objects, ideas or a narrow framework of thought causes a kind of black or white mode of seeing reality. Often this brings a loss of perspective and eventually anxiety or depression. The opposite is equally true. People who tend to see things in perspective without blowing up negative happenings tend to be more relaxed & happy.

• People who isolate themselves, are hostile to others or feel cut off and different from the rest have bigger chances of feeling jaded and unhappy. On the other hand, people who receive or give emotional support have a higher chance of being happy.

• Those people who introspect too much on negative things, are self-absorbed and self-centered have more chances of being depressed. Patients suffering chronic depression tend to use the ‘I’, ‘Me’ & ‘Mine’ a lot. Happy people tend to see life and goodness in others.

• Happy people also tend to be people who are not fatalists or who think in a disempowering way. Very often they recognize that they have the power (and the responsibility ) to make a positive change in their life.

Going back to the questions I put in the beginning, it is starting to become more and more clear to me how happiness is the realization and moving away from a rather ego-driven consciousness to a more transcendental one. The only problem is that this is not at all obvious and no one of us is born with a operating manual to mind and happiness.

Related posts:

1. Expanding consciousness through compassion & loving kindness
2. Developing Awareness – Part 2

Confidence and self-esteem are not only personality plus points that influence our wellbeing and the way we interact with others but are two of the main ingredients for personal success.

I was once hearing a speech given by his holiness the Dalai Lama in an audio book entitled “A Path to Happiness”, where he confessed how he was dumbfounded to learn, in his first encounters with the west, that there are people who disapprove of themselves or are unhappy with themselves even to the point of self-hatred. He mentioned how up to that point in time self-hatred was something he had never heard of. There is no conceptual equivalence of self-hatred in Tibetan culture and language. So for him it was not only a foreign and alien concept but completely absent in his stock of experiences.

I remember that this had struck me as a very peculiar notion. It begged the question of how is it that we come to a point of not liking ourselves or become uncomfortable with ourselves. Surely this is not a natural thing to happen. There is no evolutionary purpose for it.

So why do we sometimes feel this way about ourselves?  Ok, perhaps self-hatred is an extreme example and as far as I know, or rather I hope, it’s not that common. However it comes in a myriad of forms as it goes down in scale. Lack of self-confidence and low self-esteem are examples which in this case happen to be considerably common among us.

Lack of Self-Confidence and Self-Esteem:

We all had those moments when we feel sheepish and insecure about our own image, actions or speech or by having that constant self-critic reminding us how we might not be looking the part.

“This dress doesn’t fit my overweight body…tonight’s party is going to be an utter disaster!”, “who knows what they will be thinking about me?”, “I might be making a fool of myself if I say this or that”, “My boss is looking unimpressed…am I saying the right words?”, “Will I ever make it to my graduation?” and so on and on. The mind keeps on lurking on unassertive and self-defeating thoughts that shake our own confidence up to a point of renouncing or cutting back from fully and actively engaging in life or in the things we want to endeavor.

Perhaps the Dalai Lama’s remark has a lot of truth in it. I am also of the idea that in the west, lack of confidence and self-esteem is more pronounced than other non-western cultures. Probably this has to do with the fact that we base a lot of our own self-image on what the media and pop culture feeds us. In other words we benchmark ourselves with the icons and role-models the media and our peer network ‘impose’ on us and hence we bitterly feel that we are very often not living up to those expectations. This continues to place on us a falsely perceived state of under-achievement, failure and dissatisfaction with our projected image.  Lack of self-confidence and self-esteem are an effect of this.

Seeking Attention & Approval from Others:

Another problem which I think runs deeper than the above is the fact that as humans we constantly seek attention and approval from others. The need for attention and approval is a very strong motivational force deeply rooted in our behavioral makeup.

Since we are infants (especially when we are infants) we constantly look for our parents or care taker’s attention, loving-care and warmth. Also, their approval or disapproval helps us build boundaries and guidelines on what is and what is not accepted or tolerated in the social environment we live in.

We subconsciously learn this skill from a very tender age and use it throughout our development and adulthood. At school, pupils are extremely influenced by whether or not they are given attention by their tutors and peers. Teenagers are the quintessential example of attention-grabbers as they constantly try to make a statement through rebellious and deviant behavior, nonconformist looks, outbursts of home-made drama and on the other extreme by being totally compliant and trying to please their teachers and people in the authoritative rung above them.

Most of us adults are not free from the shackles of attention-seeking behavior either. There is a Sufi scholar, whose name escapes me at the moment, who pointed out that most, if not all, of our social interactions are heavily driven by attention-seeking and approval-seeking behavior even those which may not seem like it such as business meetings or negotiating.

In a few words, attention-seeking and approval-seeking seem to dictate a lot of what we say and do in all areas of our lives and throughout its different stages. More than that it also influences how we perceive ourselves, our self-image, which is what some refer to as our blueprint for outward action.

The Identity Profile of a False Self-Image

It seems then that the common denominator for the lack of self-confidence or low self-esteem episodes lies in the building or measuring our self-image on outward cues (role model behavior through social media or approval from others) rather than inward perceptions. Some features to note about this type of false self-image are that it’s:

1. Inauthentic: Since it’s not naturally born from within us but ‘suggested’ to us externally through social media and our peers.
2. Decentralized: It’s not coming from one source but from different signs we pick up around us (from other people’s remarks about you; from your friend’s behavior, from your colleagues’ way of relating to you; etc)
3. Impermanent: It changes constantly, it’s never fixed. As the world changes around us, so does our self-image
4. Contradictory: It is often contradictory since sometimes the same thing (the image we have of ourselves) appears to change under a different light.
5. Counter-intuitive: It goes against what we really, really think and feel about ourselves deep inside. This can lead to inner conflict with our purpose in life.

How to build self-confidence:

So how do we find and cultivate true self-confidence? …and the natural question that comes prior to that is: Can we program ourselves to be self-confident if it feels that we ‘naturally’ aren’t?

The answer to the latter question is a definite and big YES.  The answer to the former can be listed in a few anecdotes below:

• Realization: One of the most powerful techniques to boost self-confidence is the realization that we are not products of our past experiences or of other people’s way of seeing us. This means that if in the past I have failed to pursue a certain task, or I was embarrassed about something I did, it doesn’t mean that that thing will happen to me again. I am not determined by past events but I have the power to change my future. Also if some people see me or think of me in a certain way, then that does not mean that it really reflects who I am. We don’t need to take that information in. We can choose not to pick up that information, filter it out or not let it affect us.   If someone passes on a depreciating remark on us we can either take it all in and let it haunt our heads for the rest of the day (with negative repercussions on our self-confidence) or we can choose to ignore it as a wrong assessment of ourselves.
• Moderation: You know, just as much as a discussion group or a forum needs a moderator to keep the discussion in balance without any one thread of discussion going to far off in one direction, so do we need to be moderators with our own discussions going on in our heads. We all have that inner-critic which most of the time keeps us in check from not doing something crazy or stupid that we might regret afterwards. That’s fine. However the inner-critic also very often gives us disempowering and self-defeating thoughts that undermine our self-confidence.  Like for example “Oh no, you’re not good at this…don’t try it or you’ll make a fool of yourself.”  So try to moderate and challenge your inner-critic in a good way. Try to catch that limiting thought as it arises in your head and challenge it by asking: “How true is this thought I am having right now? Is it just an irrational fear trying to scare me off?”
• Equalization: Up to not so long time ago, I had the wrong habit of accentuating worrying thoughts more than I should have and not adequately cherishing the positive good things that come along the way. This lack of equalization is a very natural fault to fall into because we are more influenced by warning signs than by counting blessings. With some effort and shift in perspective, we can start seeing things under a more positive and encouraging light. Now I make it a point to stop and absorb those little good things in life more. It’s simple. I just put my attention to them for a minute or two every time. On the other hand, I try to discount the not so good episodes by investing less time thinking about them and more time in trying to sort them out.  This is what I call the principle of equalization.
• Visualization: The more I learn and practice it, the more I realize on the tremendous power of visualization. When you visualize or imagine something happening, it is like running a movie in your head. You know, when we are watching a movie, we all know that what’s on the screen is not for real but it still captures us in a way that we feel part of it or living it at that moment (we bite our nails and tense up in those moments of suspense, laugh or cry in the dramatic ones, etc). So although we know it’s not happening, there is another part of our mind which acts on it as though it is. So if you visualize yourself achieving a desired goal or a desired outcome every day, you are running that movie in your head and your mind is picking up the instruction to act on it. Your mind is then set on it.  This is also part of what some people refer to as the law of attraction.
• Authentication: There is a straight line of divide between pursuing your own dreams or benchmarking with those of others. As mentioned in the beginning of this article, the main reason for our false self-image arises out of constantly comparing ourselves with the ‘ideal’  looks, bodyweight and shape, achievements, goals, etc that are being fed to us by the media. This skews and distorts our self-image. What we need is to spend some time to validate, or rather authenticate how we think or feel about ourselves.   There is no need to over-analyze ourselves. However, it would be extremely insightful to sometimes question ourselves whether the way we feel about ourselves is genuinely based on true & verifiable facts or just on fleeting hints and cues that we pick up from around us or from others.

The building up of self-confidence therefore seems to be tied to re-orienting the way look at ourselves from outward to inward.  Going back once more to the Dalai Lama’s remark, this seems to resonate with one fundamental difference in orientation between Western and Eastern cultures. Western cultures are more outwardly oriented, what Carl Jung would have called the collective extrovert type, while Eastern cultures are guided by philosophies that thread more upon the inward path.

Related posts:

1. 7 Kick-ass Steps to Getting More Done