Compassion: Are You Mindfully Practicing It?

I have been off the grid for a while with my writing and to be honest it’s been a deliberate decision to not write just for the sake of writing. I think all writers and pen enthusiasts will agree that what you write only delivers if your heart is in the content. I have taken a back seat with what I choose to publish and when I really and truly feel the passion in my own words, I dare to feed my audience.

It got me thinking, this word passion. I like the word because when one thinks of admiration for anything, passion is automatically an accompanying noun, along with love. I do find love a little emotional though, the weight of it can pull us down at times. However, passion is fresh and less subjective. Now, if I am passionate about something and would like you to share the same sentiment, this would make you a compassionate person correct? The word compassion literally means to share the same suffering together. However, the words suffering and passion sound like an oxymoron when you first link them together don’t they? Let’s look at suffering from another optic; it’s like sharing the passion of another and living it with them. The passion can be positive or negative. So, the suffering or as I prefer “experience” can also be a positive or negative one.

Once you can be fully compassionate with someone, this is humanly one of the most positive emotions a person can experience. “Ranked a great virtue in numerous philosophies, compassion is considered in almost all the major religious traditions as among the greatest of virtues.” – Wikipedia

This got me thinking further because as humans we are always set on trying to understand one another. In the mundane one can just accept what the other is doing or saying. You can be tolerant towards the behaviour of a close one because let’s be honest it rarely affects us so much to honestly give it so much importance. When things start to get under our skin, we seek for answers and these answers can be easier to comprehend if we apply empathy. You can stop the chain of understanding at this point if you are happy with your answers. What happens when those answers penetrate under your skin and into your veins? At this point, you are beginning to sympathise and perhaps even feel pity. To feel pity for someone is like running or suffering the race, and deciding to give up half way. Go the whole way and that’s when compassion comes in. Yes, you understand them, you empathise with them, you feel sorry and now you want to offer your help to them. Offering help does not mean physical help or material help. Help can simply be listening, showing you care by being passively available without stepping on toes, saying some kind words that reassure the other person a little and ultimately as the definition says “responding to the suffering of others and feeling a desire or motivation to help”.

The feeling of compassion actually has a lot more power than you would think. I decided to dig further into this human virtue. I was fortunate to stumble upon a wonderful TED Talk, given by Joan Halifax, an American Buddhist teacher who amongst other things is also a pioneer in the field of end-of-life care. This very challenging field where one is faced with people who are well aware that their life is coming to a close end, obliges almost organically for true compassion to come to life within a caretaker. It’s a place where forcefully one must live the emotion to its full capacity with strength and believe that we are not separate from the suffering of this dying person. At this point, compassion activates our motor cortex and motivates us to transform the suffering of this dying person. There are people who are actually blessed so deeply that they can then engage in activities to allow this transformation of suffering to start happening. If you can then not allow yourself to be affected by the ultimate outcome of this suffering, in this case death, well that’s the definition of a truly compassionate person.

Compassion as a trait is actually present in all of us; it’s one of those elements in our personality that simply needs watering and a catalyst to activate it. I used the word suffering / experience earlier. It’s this that one needs in their life to activate compassion. If one can relate to the suffering of the other person, not necessarily in the exact same circumstances, as long as the intensity is felt, your work to transform suffering can take action.

The Opponents.

You are starting to see the path towards transforming this suffering but then at a crucial bend you can find yourself being betrayed by certain opponents. I think the best example for an opponent would be your self-interest in the matter. Are you being compassionate towards a person to in return receive adulation or recognition for your help? You better stop right there. What is a dying man going to give you in return for your compassion? I was extreme with my example, but it’s the only way to avoid enemies such as self-interest, pity and fear to paralyse your journey of transforming this suffering for someone.

After all the terrorist attacks that have taken place in recent times, Paris and London being the more recent ones, the one emotion which has most been felt both by the victims as well as globally by those who have watched the attacks is terror and fear. This is again a big enemy of compassion. We are living in a world full of fear, so how are we supposed to help each other efficiently if there are deterrents such as fear and terror clouding us?

The Scientific Secret Behind Compassion

You may think that fear is stopping you from being that assistant to someone, but what you are not aware of is that whilst you can practice compassion in its full effect, your immune system is actually benefiting from this so hugely that toxins are being removed from your body.

Compassion offers tremendous benefits for both physical and mental health and overall well-being. Research by APS William James Fellow Ed Diener (a leading researcher in positive psychology) and APS James McKeen Cattell Fellow Martin Seligman (a pioneer of the psychology of happiness and human flourishing) suggests that connecting with others in a meaningful way helps us enjoy better mental and physical health and speeds up recovery from disease. Furthermore, research by Stephanie Brown (Stony Brook University) and Sara Konrath (University of Michigan) has shown that compassion may even lengthen our lifespans. – Stanford University.

Where next?

Compassion is clearly a gift if one can manage it well, it can help others as well as help you to live a better life. I kept wondering how and where compassion is seen at its deepest. The one place where this gift is most valued is in hospitals. A nurse, more than a doctor has to practice compassion day in and day out. Another common denominator with the nurse was female. Traditionally a nurse has always been the job of a woman. Why? A study conducted by Roberto Mercadillo, National Autonomous University of Mexico (2011) showed “that by engaging the prefrontal and cingulate cortices, women accomplish the complex emotional-cognitive process, defined as compassion, through more elaborate brain processing than men. During testing, activity was observed in two areas of the female brain: the thalamus and the putamen, part of the basal ganglia in women, but not in men.”

On a spiritual level Joan Halifax refers to women as “the lotuses in the sea of fire” and invites all women to partner with the men in their lives to push further this innate gift we possess. Over time we have seen women filter suffering so clearly and address it at face value. These same women have then gone and injected kindness into our societies, to transform this suffering. From Florence Nightingale to Mother Teresa to Rigoberta Menchú Tum just to name just a few.

Compassion is a powerful tool and if we women truly have that within us, it’s our duty to exercise this and spread it across the world for the greater good. I come back to where I started. If you have suffered a passion then deliver this and help another person. Our society already suffers from enough hurt, so be the transformation towards healing.

This article was originally published at Thoughts Translated - my personal blog. Reprinted with permission from the author.