What value has compassion that does not
take its object in its arms?

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

compassion 2

I am compassionate.  I allow my heart and imagination to embrace the difficulties
and concerns of others.  While maintaining my own balance, I find it within myself
to extend sympathy, attention, and support.  When they are grieved, I listen with
openness and gentle strength.  I offer loyalty, friendship, and human understanding.
Without undermining or enabling, I aid and assist others to find their strength.
I allow the healing power of the Universe to flow through me,
soothing the hearts and feelings of those I encounter.

Julia Cameron

      

At times I think the truest image of God today is a black inner-city
grandmother in the U.S. or a mother of the disappeared in Argentina
or the women who wake up early to make tortillas in refugee camps.
They all weep for their children and in their compassionate tears arises
the political action that changes the world.  The mothers show us that
it is the experience of touching the pain of others that is the key to change.

Jim Wallis
  
Compassion is the basis of all truthful relationship:  it
means being present with love--for ourselves and for all
life, including animals, fish, birds, and trees.  Compassion
is bringing our deepest truth into our actions, no matter
how much the world seems to resist, because that is ultimately
what we have to give this world and one another.

Ram Dass
   

No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.

Don Swartz

   

When you're helping, from your limited vantage point, appreciate that person's struggles and suffering yet also respect their privacy and boundaries.  Ascertain with delicacy and care the extent to which your friend may wish to open up and talk.  Don't take responsibility for solving that friend's life; just be there.  Let any feelings of compassion and selflessness come naturally.  Watch your feelings so that, if you feel superior or prideful, you can shush your mind and tell it that it should feel grateful for the opportunity to serve.  For, in serving by doing what you can to alleviate suffering, you are transcending boundaries and glorifying the One Power in us all.   As you give your life to others, compassion grows; and as compassion grows, you become worthier to receive grace.  Grace is what enables you to grow in you divinity and what helps you gain your true life.

Michael Goddart
   
  
  

Compassion and nonviolence help us to see the enemy's point of view,
to hear their questions, to know their assessment of ourselves.
For from their point of view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses
of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit
from the wisdom of the brothers and sisters who are called the opposition.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
  

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness
of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part
of one another, and all involved in one another.

Thomas Merton
  

Often the most loving
thing we can do when
a friend is in pain is
to share the pain--to be
there even when we have
nothing to offer except
our presence and even when
being there is painful to ourselves.

M. Scott Peck
  

Spiritual energy brings compassion into the real world.  With compassion,
we see benevolently our own human condition and the condition
of our fellow beings.  We drop prejudice.  We withhold judgment.

Christina Baldwin
 
 

The individual is capable of both great compassion
and great indifference.  We have it within our means
to nourish the former and outgrow the latter.

Norman Cousins
  
Compassion for yourself translates into compassion for others.

Suki Jay Munsell

When one has compassion for others, God has compassion for him or her.

Talmud
 
Until we extend the circle of our compassion to
all living things, we will not ourselves find peace.

Albert Schweitzer
 
Let me explain what we mean by compassion.  Usually, our concept of compassion or love refers to the feeling of closeness we have with our friends and loved ones.  Sometimes compassion also carries a sense of pity.  This is wrong--any love or compassion which entails looking down on the other is not genuine compassion.  To be genuine, compassion must be based on respect for the other, and on the realization that others have the right to be happy and overcome suffering just as much as you.  On this basis, since you can see that others are suffering, you develop a genuine sense of concern for them.

As for the closeness we feel toward our friends, this is usually more like attachment than compassion. Genuine compassion should be

unbiased.  If we only feel close to
our friends, and not to our enemies, or to the countless people who are unknown to us personally and toward whom we are indifferent, then our compassion is only partial or biased.

Genuine compassion is based on the recognition that others have the right to happiness just like yourself, and therefore even your enemy is a human being with the same wish for happiness as you, and the same right to happiness as you.  A sense of concern developed on this basis is what we call compassion; it extends to everyone, irrespective of whether the person's attitude toward you is hostile or friendly.

the Dalai Lama
  
  

Compassion is the ultimate and most meaningful embodiment of
emotional maturity.  It is through compassion that a person achieves
the highest peak and the deepest reach in his or her
search for self-fulfillment.

Arthur Jersild

  
 

When we see ourselves as we truly are--divinely perfect human beings
struggling to live out the gifts of spirituality--we have an opportunity
to crack open the door of compassion a bit.  When we can compassionately
see that we fumble, we make mistakes, or that we are (if only faintly and occasionally!)
aware of a goodness within us that we do not always know how to express, we start
to be aware of feelings of compassion for ourselves.  Once we are aware of compassion
for ourselves, it is only a very short step to begin to feel compassion for others.

Anne Wilson Schaef

compassion 2
The joy that compassion brings is one of the best-kept secrets
of humanity.  It is a secret known only to a very few people,
a secret that has to be rediscovered over and over again.

Henri J.M Nouwen

  
Compassion means
that if I see my friend and my enemy
in equal need,
I shall help them both equally.
Justice demands
that we seek
and find the stranger,
the broken, the prisoner
and comfort them
and offer them our help.

Mechtild of Magdeburg
 

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Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle.

John Watson

 

Compassion is the basis of all morality.

Arthur Schopenhauer

  

Make no judgments where
you have no compassion.

Anne McCaffrey

Compassion is a foundation for sharing our
aliveness and building a more human world.

Martin Lowenthal
  

  

As Gandhi wisely points out, even as we serve others we are working
on ourselves; every act, every word, every gesture of genuine compassion
naturally nourishes our own hearts as well.  It is not a question of who is
healed first.  When we attend to ourselves with compassion and mercy,
more healing is made available for others.  And when we serve others with
an open and generous heart, great healing comes to us.

Wayne Muller

  
 
An old Rabbi once asked his pupils how they could tell when the night had ended and the day had begun.
   "Could it be," asked one of the students, "when you can see an animal in the distance and tell whether it's a sheep or a dog?"
   "No," answered the Rabbi.
   Another asked, "Is it when you can look at a tree in the distance and tell whether it's a fig tree or a peach tree?"
   "No," answered the Rabbi.
   "Then what is it?" the pupils demanded.
   "It is when you can look on the face of any man or woman and see that it is your sister or brother.  Because if you cannot see this, it is still night."

Hasidic Tale
  
The path of compassion leads to the development of insight.  But it
doesn't work to say, "Ready, set, go!  Be compassionate!"  Beginning
any practice depends on intention.  Intention depends on intuiting--at
least a little bit--the suffering inherent in the human condition and the
pain we feel, and cause, when we act out of confusion.  It also depends
on trusting--at least a little bit--in the possibility of a contented, satisfied mind.

Sylvia Boorstein

   
  

When we endure our own tragedies or trials, most of us
develop some empathy and compassion for others who are suffering.
The trick is to keep that sense of compassion going throughout
our daily lives, when we are likely to go on automatic pilot and
move back into being judgmental, especially when times are tough.

Bill O’Hanlon

  
Perhaps we can only truly serve those we are willing to touch, not only
with our hands but with our hearts and even our souls.  Professionalism
has embedded in service a sense of difference, a certain distance.
But on the deepest level, service is an experience of belonging, an experience
of connection to others and to the word around us.  It is this connection that
gives us the power to bless the life in others.
Without it, the life in them would not respond to us.

Rachel Naomi Remen

compassion 2

If children show signs of being afraid, such as crying and hiding,
we do our best to comfort them.  We hug them,
and we try to calm them down.  We give them our sympathy and our love.
When an adult shows signs of fear, though, in the form of rudeness
or obnoxiousness, we respond by trying to put that person in
his or her place.  We have little sympathy, and we often feel
hurt or diminished by that person's actions or words.
Have you ever seen someone act in a way that was hurtful,
and then found out later that something drastic, such as
the death of a loved one, had just happened to that person?
Once we have an explanation for the behavior,
it's not just acceptable, but understandable.

tom walsh

   
   

Compassion for others comes naturally as you recognize your own limitations.

Stephen C. Paul

  
Nothing helps us build our perspective more than developing
compassion for others.  Compassion is a sympathetic feeling.
It involves the willingness to put yourself in someone else's shoes,
to take the focus off yourself and to imagine what it's like to be
in someone else's predicament, and simultaneously, to feel love
for that person.  It's the recognition that other people's problems,
their pain and frustrations, are every bit as real as our own--often
far worse.  In recognizing this fact and trying to offer some assistance,
we open our own hearts and greatly enhance our sense of gratitude.

Richard Carlson
   




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When we think about the people who have given us hope and
have increased the strength of our soul, we might discover that
they were not the advice givers, warners, or moralists, but the
few who were able to articulate in words and actions the human
condition in which we participate. . . . Not because of any solution
they offered but because of the courage to enter so deeply into
human suffering and speak from there.  Neither Kierkegaard nor
Sartre nor Camus nor Hammarskjold nor Solzhenitsyn has offered
solutions, but many who read their words find new strength to
pursue their own personal search.  Those who do not run away
from our pains but touch them with compassion bring healing and
new strength. . . . In our solution oriented world, it is more important
than ever to realize that wanting to alleviate pain without sharing it
is like wanting to save a child from a burning house
without the risk of being hurt.

Henri J.M. Nouwen 
    

Rest assured that, generally speaking, others are acting in exactly the same
manner that you would under exactly the same circumstances.  Hence, be kind,
understanding, empathetic, compassionate, and loving.

Gary W. Fenchuk

   
  

     

   

Just for Today, the Fire Edition--scores of photos and uplifting thoughts to help you to make your day a great one!