The Spirituality of Compassion

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Compassion can be defined as a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering. Thus, emotionally and attitudinally, compassion presupposes sympathy/empathy/understanding/pity.

The Spirituality of Compassion

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I guess I see compassion slightly differently than the way this reads above.

 

First of all, I see everyone on earth as a victim. When you start with how all of us have been victimized 

in one way or another growing up you see the power in this realization.

 

Once you realize that literally everyone is a victim of how they have been raised you begin to have 

 

Empathy for them in the sense that you see them like yourself having been victimized by circumstances

 

beyond their control since they were born.

 

Next, we have all been victims of our enculturation. However, also without enculturation none of us 

would be alive either. Because without enculturation no one would have ever fed us food or changed our 

diapers so we could stay alive. So, even though we are all victims of enculturation our survival also 

depends upon this enculturation or we wouldn't be alive now.

 

However, enculturation is a two edged sword in that it both helps us survive but might also encourage 

us to go crazy and die at the same time.

 

So, getting beyond enculturation to inner peace is import for human survival.

 

And everyone who survives enculturation has to find some way to do this.

 

I found my way forward through compassion of my parents (the did the best that  they could with what they

had at the time). They were good people and did the best they could for me. I don't fault them for that.

 

But then, I had to go beyond all this to see them in some ways as children in comparison to how I understood 

the universe. The did the best they could then I had to do better for my children than they could do for me.

 

So, the spirituality of Compassion is making lives better for others than your life has been for yourself.

 

This is the true power of a life of Compassion towards oneself and all others.