Compassion, by John Aske

By Buddhism Now on 26 October 2023 • ( 0 )

When I was a little boy, I went with my grandmother to visit an old friend of hers in Windermere. There were some books on a table beside us, and I found one about birds, beautifully illustrated. The old lady saw I had fallen in love with the book and gave it to me. Not only was I very happy, but I realised it was one of her favourite books and I knew it was a great kindness to give it to me. This left a deep impression on me, and I can still remember my feeling of thanks and the warmth of the giving, though it was so long ago. Compassion so often draws on the love we have received, firstly from our parents and those who have helped us in our lives. Unfortunately, this does not always come and we build a defensive wall against those who have failed to support us, whether in reality or fantasy. But love lies at the root of human nature and waits patiently for its warmth to penetrate the walls of protection built against it.

A famous psychiatrist told the story of a young boy who had lost his parents in the war, and was then taken in by a farmer but very badly treated, almost losing hope until a little girl, feeling sorry for him, hugged him; and this simple act of compassion began to bring him back to life. Compassion arises from a joy and love for fellow beings and what we share with them; and it is experiences like this that bring it out.

Once, I decided to travel to Germany to study, but had not taken account of the length of the train journey. It was longer than I thought, but met a young German girl who realised what had happened and she took me back to her parents. They very kindly put me up for the night. Years later I found a young Chinese sleeping in a doorway in Kensington. He was on his way back from America to Singapore and had arrived too late to find somewhere to stay, so I took him back to my flat and got him off in time to catch his plane. I received a beautiful letter thanking me, and only wished I could have done the same for the kind German family.

Compassion requires wisdom as well as love to grow in us, and as it does, we rediscover parts of ourselves that have been neglected or even forgotten, and we become more human in the process. Far from wasting our essence in an emotional pursuit of sentimental things, we gain emotional stature and broaden our human nature to take in a rich and vivid world, which affects everything we think and do.

Once, working with friends in Portugal, we found a little, lost dog and I remember another friend saying ‘Coitado, que nao tem dono” (poor little thing that has no master) and we adopted it and looked after it affectionately for several months until one day, the tribe (of dogs) went by and he was able to rejoin them, and we wished him well on his way.

Along with kindness, often goes a sense of humour. As the poet Yates said: ‘For the good are always merry, and the merry always good,’ and I have often found it so.

As Ajahn Santacitto said so well, ‘When you’ve had this great opportunity of sharing and giving to another, there’s no longer any doubt and question about the purpose of life; in the joy, there’s no room for it.’ This is the strange quality of the pain of compassion — it’s a bitter-sweet pain. Even though one has to be willing to be there in an uncomfortable place, there’s a certain warmth in that place, a certain joyous warmth, which provides the strength to just remain in touch.

[‘Awakening of the Compassionate Heart,’ by Ajahn Santacitto from a book entitled Peace & Kindness, an Amaravati publication.]

Ivory figure of Kannnon and dragon
Kannnon, the Buddhist deity of compassion and mercy, is known in Sanskrit as Avalokiteshvara.
Here, she stands serenely on a coiled dragon.
Her chest is decorated with jewls and she wears an elaborae headdress, while holding a water bottle in one hand a basket filled with lotus flowers, chrysanthemums and grapes in the other.

Kannon with a basket of fruit and entwined with a dragon.

Featured: Guanyin, China Ming dynasty gilded bronze.

Standing figure of the bodhisattva Kannon, holding water vase, with metal crown, and mandorla behind. Carved in ‘ichiboku-zukuri’ method, almost wholly out of single block of camphor wood and hollowed at back; painted, gesso, with bronze ornaments. Replica of 7th-century statue (known as the Kudara Kannon) in Horyu-ji temple, Nara.