15. Compassion

What is compassion? It is the wish for others to be free from suffering and confusion. We all have some compassion, but it’s small and partial. For it to become great compassion we have to vastly augment the compassion that we already have. What is great compassion? It is non-­discriminating compassion whose object is all living beings without exception; all those who suffer from ego conflict, dissatisfaction and confusion. 

Our present compassion is very limited in experience, so as I say, we need to expand or develop it beyond limitation so that its object is all universal living beings. The cause of this limitation is the perception, or preconceived idea, that in the world there are some living beings who are my dear friends, who I hold close; some who are my enemies because they irritate me and who I hate or am jealous of; and others who are neutral, neither friend nor enemy and who I regard as strangers and don’t care about. I don’t know anything about these strangers, I don’t want to know anything about them, I just ignore them. And this just makes me more ignorant. 

In order to develop great compassion, we need to balance, or equalize, this attitude. Because of our preconceptions, it’s normal for us to have friends, enemies and strangers. But the real scientific point is that we are just projecting our fantasies onto these three objects. As a matter of fact, they don’t objectively exist as friend, enemy and stranger as our fantasies project, and we have to recognize our limited reasoning for making these indefinite, temporal designations. Today, someone gets angry with us and we label that person an enemy; tomorrow that same person does something nice for us and we label them a friend. We need balance. Our extreme imputations are based on deluded logic that fails to recognize the totality of the human being. 

When we look at the situation from the perspective of infinite time and space, we can see that each and every sentient being has been our friend, enemy, stranger and everything else countless times. So these relationships are nothing new. All those who are currently strangers or enemies have been friends in the past and all our current friends have also been enemies and strangers throughout our beginningless lives. In fact, each sentient being has been equally a friend, an enemy and a stranger infinite times. In order to realize this and become healthy, we practice the equilibrium meditation.⁵⁹ 

From the Buddhist point of view, as long as we have objects of jealousy or hatred, we are not healthy, we are mentally ill. It’s the same if we’re obsessed with objects of desire that we can’t let go of. Buddhist psychology holds that in order to be completely healthy we need to be free from exaggerated desire, exaggerated hatred, exaggerated jealousy and so forth. The point is that all living beings, objects of our desire, hatred or ignorance, are completely equal and we should be equally sympathetic to them all. Why? Because they are also equal in wanting happiness and freedom from misery. We’re all in the same situation, so there’s no reason to discriminate between sentient beings the way we normally do. 

We have such a limited way of thinking. Say we ask somebody for something and they don’t give it to us. We think, “They’re so unkind. They won’t give it to me now and I’m sure they won’t give it to me in the future.” With our deluded, limited mind we’ve already decided about the future. All we can see is the present, but sentient beings give in hundreds of different ways. Sometimes we don’t even know who has given to us and who hasn’t; sometimes we don’t know how an enemy has benefited us or how someone of whom we’re jealous has benefited us. Sometimes the people who benefit us the most are those who don’t give us chocolate or kisses. 

Getting back to the three objects of friend, enemy and stranger, they appear to us as they do because of our delusions and wrong conceptions, our unrealistic point of view. In reality, we should see them as the same, conceptually and emotionally, according to the logic above. We’re not just giving some small reason for saying they’re equal, like we have a nose, they have a nose, so we’re equal. Sentient beings are equal because we all seek happiness and a joyful life and freedom from misery, dissatisfaction and loneliness. Our enemies seek this, rich people seek this and so do poor people: all of us are in the same situation. 

But then, the poor still think, “If I were rich, I’d be happy.” The rich think, “I’m rich but unhappy. Maybe I’d be happy if I had a private jet.” These are all deluded fantasies. It doesn’t matter what your status is, as long as you’re experiencing dualistic ego conflict, you’re always dissatisfied. 

Here’s another example of unreasonable discrimination. A couple of hungry ghosts come to you looking for food. You give one of them bread and butter but reject the other for no reason at all. That shows you have no equilibrium feeling, the thought that makes you balanced by avoiding extreme emotions, extreme feelings, extreme discriminations. In order to be healthy, we should actualize equilibrium as much as we possibly can. 

We usually have a false view of others. Mostly it comes from us. This false view dwells within us such that the moment we open our eyes we project onto others, “He is this, she is that; because of this, because of that.” That’s our projection problem—we project the false view onto our friends, wife, husband and everybody else and see them in the light of that.

People fight each other all the time, mostly for philosophical reasons. It’s not that they have read philosophy books. They haven’t. It’s because they have within themselves preconceived ideas, some kind of inner philosophy, which they then project onto others: “You think this is good; I think it’s bad.” On that basis they fight, mostly over small things, projecting good and bad onto each other. “Your nose is running, therefore you’re bad. My nose is not running, therefore I’m good.” Who cares? Is that important? There are more important good and bad things to talk about than runny noses. It’s useless; most of our talk about good and bad is useless. It has nothing to do with what’s worthwhile. The main point is to know what’s worthwhile and to put our life’s energy into that. 

The nature of the ego is contradictory to the nature of philosophy, so we do need to even out our mind by seeing the universal reality of all living beings. Then, when we have developed a smooth, equal feeling, there’s room for great love and compassion. 

Buddhism talks about an inherent, or innate, ego. That is the feeling of self, or “I,” that we’re born with. The ego of a person born in Holland develops in that environment and they grow up thinking Holland is the best country in the world. They look askance at other countries, automatically thinking that the people who live there are inferior, without having any kind of political or philosophical reason for that view. On the basis of this dualistic, nationalistic mind, politics becomes dirty. Here I’m talking about the psychology of ego, not politics, and that’s why I say to be healthy, people should eliminate the ego that discriminates, “I am the best, my nation is the best, all other sentient beings are the worst.” That’s not true; it’s absolutely deluded, but the strange thing is that everybody does it. 

Go to all the different countries and interview the citizens: “What do you think of your country?” “Oh, it’s the best country in the world.” You interview me: “What do you think of Tibet?” “Oh, Tibet’s the best country in the world.” This is my instinctive ego-­reaction. Go to America, go to Italy—it’s the same thing. Everybody thinks that way. According to the Buddhist view, this is the dualistic mind speaking, not the healthy mind. Its nature is aggression, ready to fight, to protect: “I’m the best.” That’s how deluded we are. It doesn’t matter what kind of intelligent front we put up, as long as we harbor this ego we’re going to end up in dissatisfactory situations.

Now, I don’t want to confuse you by giving you the impression that when Buddhism talks about equilibrium, discrimination and so forth as being essential for the development of great compassion we’re equating it with communism and communist ideas of equality. They try to impose their philosophy on people by force, but we can see that up until now they have been unsuccessful; their ideas remain unactualized. It’s just a dry philosophy. The underlying idea of equality may be good, but actualization has to come from inner transformation. Guns and knives can’t make it work. You can see that. 

I tell you from my own experience, the Chinese came into Tibet saying, “Everybody should be equal.” Of course, I agree, Tibet was an uneven society, but the communists’ equality was the same old materialistic “some people have too much stuff, others don’t have enough.” Then what? Some people are hungry, others have huge amounts of food, so take from one and give to the other? From the practical point of view, that’s not going to work. What we have to do is free people’s minds from confusion and irritation and help them become harmonious with others by actualizing equanimity within themselves. 

After the Chinese invasion of Tibet, many Tibetans died of starvation. I’m not talking from the religious point of view; I’m talking from the scientific point of view and people’s experience. The Chinese soldiers had far more food than they needed, but even though they were saying “equal, equal,” they didn’t share it with those who had none. Their idea of equality doesn’t work. 

The equilibrium meditation is in the lamrim. It is important to actualize it. Then, having established the fundamental foundation of equanimity, you have space to generate the will to lead each and every sentient being without exception away from the confusion that has ego as its root. Understanding that all living beings are suffering from ego-­driven conflict and recognizing the symptoms of that, you become sympathetic to their plight and simultaneously develop the compassion that moves you to action. Because of your compassionate attitude, your body and speech move from laziness to the service of others. 

Also, by having great compassion for all universal living beings you develop the determination to alleviate the ego-­conflict pain they’re experiencing, seeing that it’s not enough just to wish they were free from suffering; you feel the need to take responsibility for making it happen: “I must take responsibility for freeing all living beings from suffering.” Thinking in this way gives you the great courage to take personal responsibility for doing it: “I, myself alone, will do this.” We call that thought the superior intention [Tib: lhag sam]. Instead of thinking, “Oh, yeah, they’re suffering,” and sort of leaving it at that, you feel, “I want to do something.” From there you take it upon yourself to finally put an end to all sentient beings’ suffering and then contemplate what is the best way to go about doing it.⁶⁰

We often have good intentions of helping but finish up making the situation worse. For example, a rich parent gives a million dollars to their stupid child, who then goes crazy and spends it on heroin or something. That’s the wrong kind of love. The parent means well but is acting out of deluded, limited love and this just increases the child’s suffering. 

The whole question of how best to help others doesn’t have a quick, single answer. It could take an entire lifetime to explain . . . or at least a month or a year. I don’t know, it depends. But it’s very important to know. Personally, I think you should always think, “What is the best way I can help my wife/husband/son/daughter . . . ?” Keep meditating on that until you get an answer. As a meditation topic, that’s good enough. Don’t react; just contemplate: “What will happen if I do this? What will happen if I say that?” That’s the way to meditate on this topic. Meditation doesn’t mean sitting cross-­legged someplace, bound by an intellectual meditation belt. That is not enough.

Eventually, you’ll reach the point where in order to really benefit others you need help in eliminating your own dissatisfaction and ego-­conflict, which is the biggest problem. Most of the time our parents and we ourselves spend our time teaching others how to develop more delusions, more hatred. 

For example, say I have a son and one day he comes to me crying, “Waah, the kid next door beat me up.” I’m going to reply, “Well, stupid, did you smack him back? You should hit him three times for every time he hit you.” We do that, don’t we? That’s a good example of what I’m talking about. So, like that, parents have great influence over their children. If parents have strong hatred and paranoia, their children are going to develop those tendencies too, because from the time they’re born they’re reflecting what’s around them. 

That’s why the highest destination to which we can lead all sentient beings is liberation and enlightenment, complete freedom from dualistic ego-­conflict. Understanding the situation others are in generates within us dedication to serving them and the energy to do so. Since the destination is profound, we have to practice intensively to gain it. If somebody irritates us, we need to practice patience and not get angry; we need to generate enthusiastic perseverance in order to have the energy to keep going continuously. With limited destinations, we don’t need much effort to reach them. 

The dedicated attitude is extremely powerful in transforming your entire life into progress on the path. Because of it, your speech is transformed to benefit others, your body is transformed to benefit others and your mental energy is transformed to benefit others. 

Westerners like to hear about meditation. They think it’s something special. But they don’t like to hear “totally dedicate yourself to others.” My point of view is that the totally dedicated attitude with accordingly dedicated actions is much more profound and lasting than just an hour’s meditation, trying to concentrate and then getting angry when somebody irritates you. That sort of thing is not enough. If you have the dedicated attitude, even if somebody disturbs you, you recognize that as your problem. If you have positive energy, you won’t get angry or want to retaliate in response to other people’s anger. 

Those of us living in Western society are constantly busy. We can’t sit cross-­legged spacing out all the time. We have to get a job, work. That’s good—we have to deal with people. Mahayana Buddhism teaches us to deal with others without getting irritated by having the dedicated attitude and practicing the equilibrium, compassion and bodhicitta meditations. I think that’s the most profound way to live in society. 

People in society are suffering, confused, dissatisfied and worried. You need to know this. It seems to me that sometimes Western people don’t understand it. They see somebody dancing and assume, “Oh, he’s happy; he’s not suffering.” But regular people, scientific people and everybody else are suffering, so we should feel that we’re working to benefit all of society. After all, we were once society babies, weren’t we? That’s where we come from. So we need to serve society people. Don’t be like, “Society people are bad; I’m good.” That’s stupid thinking. Society people are good; society people need compassion; they’re suffering. We should understand that, even though they pretend they’re not suffering. It’s not true. 

That’s why, in his lamrim teachings, the great yogi Lama Je Tsongkhapa stressed the importance of recognizing how the self-­cherishing thought, holding ourselves dearer than others, attachment to our own happiness, is the source of all confusion, the source of all disease, the source of any negative experience we can think of. All enemies and all heart-­breaking desire objects come from holding ourselves dearer than others, from self-­cherishing. Lama Tsongkhapa explained all this logically, in much greater detail than I can go into right now. 

Every single delusion arises from the concept that somewhere “in here,” somewhere within the atmosphere of our body, lies something solid, concrete, much stronger than iron. Something like that exists somewhere in here. So basically, no, that’s not the case. There is nothing solid within us, as our ego discerns. 

Take, for example, a cohabiting couple. They do experience a little pleasure because there’s a mixture of motivations. Along with the usual selfishness there’s some small dedication to the other’s happiness. So, as a result of this mixture of “I want” and a little dedication to the other, you gain a little pleasure. If, however, you were able to completely dedicate to your partner, with no “I want” involved, there’d be no room for fighting or disagreement. 

Buddhism very much emphasizes that the way to determine whether something you do is positive or negative is not by the action itself. Maybe I move my hand this way; maybe I move it that way. Just from watching me you can’t judge if it’s positive or negative. Behind each action is the motivation for it, and that’s the key to determining its nature. I could be sitting in the meditation posture looking very peaceful, but I could be doing it with negative motivation, the result of which would be suffering and pain. 

Having a dedicated attitude means you’re open; your heart, or consciousness, has opened, and there is space within your consciousness for all living beings. If you have this universal opened attitude you have less paranoia and less dualistic superstition. If every living being had this dedicated attitude, that would be the guarantee that there’d be no more war. The reason for there being so much war and fighting—personal and national—is because of the self-­cherishing thought, holding oneself dearer than others. That thought is so overwhelming; it’s why the world is becoming increasingly impure. 

One way we counter self-­cherishing is through the sending and giving [Tib: tonglen] meditation. Lama Tsongkhapa explained it in his lamrim teachings. On inhalation, you take into your heart all their cancer and other diseases, anger and all their other negative energy. On exhalation, you send out on your breath the energy of your good qualities like compassion, wisdom and love to all living beings. This exercise helps you reverse the attitude where you consider yourself dearest of all and ignore or hate others. In order to change all that, we do this kind of practice.⁶¹ 

All individual and social problems come from the self-­cherishing thought. I’m sure you’ll think I’m wrong, but all economic difficulties, such as inflation and recession, also come from self-­cherishing. This is precisely the Buddhist point of view. Any kind of problem you can imagine comes from the self-­cherishing thought. 

Even your car breaking down comes from attachment and the self-­cherishing thought. You’re probably going to argue that with me as well, but the thing is that a broken-­down car is not the problem; your problem, the Western problem, is your broken head. It’s the way we look at problems: “My car broke down. That’s a problem.” Your broken car is not a problem. It’s natural for things to break. But the materialistic attitude is to always blame the objects: “There’s an electricity outage. What a problem!” Electricity is not a problem. Problems are fabricated in our mind. We make up good and bad. We set it up. That is the problem. We set up the entire structure of samsara. 

It’s the self-­cherishing mind that’s the problem. It is narrow, fanatical. What are the characteristics of the fanatical mind? It is constricted; it has no space. Its opposite, the enlightened attitude of bodhicitta, is a dedicated attitude that knows the universal nature of all living beings’ situation and is therefore totally open. With bodhicitta, your mind expands to embrace the energy of the universe, so you see things better. That’s why we call it Mahayana Buddhism. Maha means great; the great thought that has space for all living beings. The fanatical view, the fanatical, narrow mind is like a nail or a knife. It’s painful; it automatically irritates you. When you expand your mind, the painful, fanatical, dualistic mind goes away. When you generate the enlightened attitude of bodhicitta, the dagger of fanaticism disappears. 

Furthermore, bodhicitta is a brave mind. To be successful, even materially, people need that. You need a certain amount of bravery to get things done. If your attitude is, “If I try to do that I might fail,” you’ll never accomplish anything. Similarly, to attain enlightenment you need a brave mind, which eliminates fear. Most of our fears arise because of the fanatical, self-­cherishing mind that holds oneself dearest of all. That’s the reason we get afraid; fear comes from that. When we have the dedicated attitude, we don’t experience fear, such as someone asking you for a cup of coffee! Do you get annoyed if someone asks you to buy them a coffee? Check up.

Do you recall what the great meditator bodhisattva Shantideva said? “Bodhicitta is the most powerful way to purify negativities, the most powerful antidote to sin.”⁶² We often say, “I am so negative. I really want to purify.” Sometimes we’re afraid of purification, but actualizing bodhicitta is the most powerful purifying meditation and is nothing to be scared of. There are many prayers and purifying rituals, but from the realistic, scientific point of view, it is absolutely true that developing bodhicitta is the best way to purify anger, negativity and sin. 

Take abortion, for example. Many women have abortions. That comes from the self-­cherishing thought, “If I have this baby my life will be difficult. I won’t be able to take care of it. I’ll suffer, therefore I’ll kill this sentient being.” Trying to be nice, people might say, “You’re right. Better you don’t have the baby because you won’t be able to take care of it and it will suffer.” That’s not true. The Western ego is so intelligent; that’s a nice way to put it. But in fact, it’s the woman herself who’s afraid of her own suffering, so she aborts the baby. 

If we look at Shakyamuni’s previous lives in the Jataka Tales we’ll see that he gave his body to others many times, but for us, that’s far too difficult. We even find it difficult to give much lesser things. When Lord Buddha was a bodhisattva practicing the six perfections, he found it easy to offer his body to other sentient beings in need, like when he gave up his monkhood in order to marry that suicidal woman. He did many similar things in his previous lives. Those are good examples for us. When we marry, it’s mostly out of desire, our own grasping mind, not out of concern for others. So we shouldn’t be surprised when bad motivation leads to a bad marriage. 

The enlightenment attitude of bodhicitta is the most liberated universal thought. It is universal consciousness because it has room for all universal living beings. That’s why one of the bodhisattva vows is to never disparage any other doctrine or philosophy, such as the Hinayana. That’s good. The Buddha was very skillful. So Buddhism coming to the West is totally noncontradictory. People from other religions and even nonreligious people can relate to Buddhism. It isn’t against their beliefs. What it’s against is the ego, that’s all.

I think it’s most important that each of us tries as much as possible to actualize the dedicated attitude of bodhicitta based on equilibrium and compassion. That is so reasonable, so scientific, so logical. What is the key to doing this? The meditation techniques to accomplish it exist. So for the rest of our life we should try to actualize bodhicitta as much as we can. That’s very, very important. It’s like taking refuge: whenever you actualize refuge, the pain of the dualistic mind disappears. Similarly, bodhicitta is a painkiller. Instead of taking pills, actualize bodhicitta. 

The enlightened attitude of bodhicitta is sort of internationally accepted without question by any religion’s philosophy and it is understandable to everybody. Therefore we should try to actualize bodhicitta as much as we can. This attitude is the vehicle to carry our life, to lead our consciousness, into enlightenment. This attitude is the right path to liberation and buddhahood. In fact, Lama Je Tsongkhapa said that bodhicitta is the essential path to enlightenment and the foundation of all higher realizations. 

In these, our twentieth century lives, we’re beset by an explosion of ego and delusion. Tremendous negative energy forces are strongly developed and that’s the kind of environment we have to deal with. To counter all this we need a powerful antidote, and that’s just what the universal attitude of bodhicitta is. With it we can cope with our situation and transform the negative energy of contemporary life into positivity and the path to enlightenment. 

Because of our current situation, every time we come into contact with the sense world we energize more ego, more delusion, more superstition, more wrong conceptions, and this is the way we’ve always been. But if we have this universal attitude, which sees the universal characteristics of all living beings and has sympathy for their plight, by dealing with city life and life in general, we can develop and integrate mindfulness, compassion and the dedicated attitude into our very being. 

Otherwise, just trying to develop single-­pointed concentration isn’t going to work. Western life is not made for that. We can’t take a two-­year holiday in order to develop concentration. Western life isn’t easy. If we go off to some isolated place to meditate we’re likely to starve. Therefore we have to learn to integrate and not be afraid of dealing with society. If we have the enlightened attitude of bodhicitta we can easily deal with this kind of thing. 

That’s why Lama Tsongkhapa likened the power of bodhicitta to that of alchemy. Through the power of alchemy, iron can be transmuted into gold. Similarly, through the power of bodhicitta, mundane actions can be transformed into transcendent experiences. 

For example, if you possess that attitude, you dedicate your life to serving other people. That makes you feel your life is worthwhile, which in turn causes you to take care of your life by attending to your health, your diet and so forth, feeling that doing so is in the service of others. You look after your health for others rather than yourself. At present we have an attitude of self-­pity. Everything is me, me, me, me, me. Sometimes you even get fed up with “me” and don’t take care of your health. That’s wrong. You should recognize your profound qualities, feel proud of them, be dignified, feel that your life is worthwhile and take care of it. 

With bodhicitta, even when you encounter difficult circumstances you have the energy to rise to the challenge. You feel it’s worthwhile to face demanding situations. With bodhicitta, situations you consider difficult mean nothing. 

Bodhicitta springs from a medicinal root, so every action arising from it becomes medicine. Bodhicitta is always helpful and nothing it produces is ever mixed with impurity. Its universal attitude leaves no room for contaminated, negative energy. 

Also, the profound aim of bodhicitta gives you energy. For example, and this is a good one, many young people marry without really knowing what their aim is. They just come together. Maybe that’s their aim. But first of all, they don’t understand the meaning of life; that’s why they have no aim, no destination, no desired achievement, not even from the samsaric point of view. Perhaps all they know is the good feeling of attachment. With this limited aim it’s easy for conflict to arise. This example is clean clear. 

But many married people do stick together. They’re the ones who know their aim is not just attachment, comfort. They know coming together has to mean more than that; that they have to achieve something. And when difficulties arise, even worldly ones, they have the energy to work together to overcome them.

It’s the same thing with bodhicitta. You can see that you can achieve the highest destination of enlightenment by solving the problems presented by ego conflict, dissatisfaction and loneliness, even though they are not easy problems to solve. You know that to reach beyond all that, by continuously working hard, step by step you can attain your goal, and you have the energy to do that. 

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Notes

59. See Developing Equanimity: The Mahayana Equilibrium Meditation. [Return to text]

60. See “The Seven-­Point Cause and Effect Instruction” in How to Generate Bodhicitta. [Return to text]

61. The most extensive tonglen meditation you’ll find is probably Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s in his Wishfulfilling Golden Sun, Meditation Seven. Find more instructions on tonglen practice. [Return to text]

62. "Just like the fire at the end of an eon,
Bodhicitta destroys all great negativity in an instant."
—Bodhicaryavatara, 1:14 [Return to text]