My recent experience as a new business owner in a community neighborhood of low-income families with many children who lacked quality opportunities for advancement and change, led to the opening of my heart, finding courage and launching a free educational program that would primarily focus on the education and engagement of 16-20 children and youth at-risk who resided in the area. These children were unsupervised for the majority of the day and most of them were failing out of grade-school. From vandalism to graffiti gang-related activity, as a young female educator there were countless incidents and challenges I was faced with during the first 2 months of operation. Compassion and an open heart led me to realize that many of these children were good kids lacking the knowledge and positive guidance that would prevent them from joining the footsteps and forces of family members and the common neighborhood gang-related activities.Through my continuous efforts, dedication and preserverance, I have had to show much courage in order to act compassionately in leading peaceful efforts within the community. After 5 months of hard work, the community has gone through major transformation leading to positive outcomes in the immediate neighborhood where gang activity and violence have been a major threat in youth/children's social and character development. Although this story and the nature of gang-activity in the surroundings of my new business establishment put fear in the hearts of many friends and concerned family members, it serves as an inspirational guide to not live in continuous fear, but to rise above all darkness and face our fears courageously by preserving in light and through acts of unconditional love. To let love glance and roam about freely within such dense communities who lack the economic vitality and quality experiences in their life- teaching all to be compassionate citizens who can take pride in a new heritage of Peace and Peace-building.
Q: How have you had to show courage in order to act compassionately?
Answers
the most courage thing the wise one can do is maintain patience cause culmination of education is knowledge as culmination of knowledge is tolerance as culmination of tolerance is patience that leads to passive resistance via acting without taking action and this happens to be the way of Mahatma. patience is the one way ticket to salvation. show patience and soon enough the lever will turn for pi radians leading you in your favorite situation.
Many will lead us to believe that we are weak.But it is quite the opposite.Living in a hostile enviroment without hitting back, takes a lot of bravery and courage.I know that we are all imperfect beings - all of us - even capable of killing but spirituality, since it brings positive change to the world, has a way of exonerating our guild, if any.It makes us holy men of the universe god, and it reserves for us a perfect place in this cosmos.If humans simply give in to their lusts they only enhance and proliferate more crime,hate and wars! The real men are the godly!
In hindsight I guess I did, but at the time, one doesn't think "I'm being courageous" ... one does what one has to do to help people as a matter of course. In the end I'd say 99% of the time it works out just fine (and my 1% didn't come up...yet)
During childhood, I thought that Compassion was an spontaneous tendency that everyone had and that there was absolutely no courage involved in a compassionate act.
What IF compassion is an innate thing that we are all born with, and then it's smothered by ...society (for lack of a better word)
Living with a person who has mental health issues takes strength of character and I believe show compassion.
There is no Pride in selflessness, even when it saves all you love...
My compassion had to be pulled out through my anger of feeling helpless to stop that which was bigger than me. It was a struggle to find it and hold onto it long enough. to do more than react So much of my person was a stake.
That cliche, "This too shall pass" became the mantra I used to see past what was happening and into what needed to happen and what I could do - it was like having an ice pick when I needed a shovel. For me, compassion is the hardest of the virtues we seek, a really hard action to take, testing my endurance and bringing me to the edge where I either plunge into inhumanity or run into the fire of my true humanity; both options terrify me but only one moves both me and my enemy closer to a common ground.
As an educator, I learned about the real meaning of the word "assertive".
It involves respect for yourself AND the other person.
It means "I count" AND "You count".
It involves listening to each other... and trying to come up with a new solution TOGETHER.
I used to think assertiveness was acting in my own interests and was too self serving ... BUT learning about assertiveness gave me the courage to act in my best interest AND others.
It showed connection and direction.
It takes courage to say, 'I'm sorry.'
I have had to have the courage to search myself and be humbled by what I found. The natural movement of Life has humbled me. Sometimes, it hasn't been easy. It hurt my pride a great deal at first, but what has begun to happen is that I am seeing beyond my own self interests and compassion has become a natural expression.
When someone goes "against the grain" in the world. Specially, when the majority is demanding violent retaliation after it has been injured in someway.
Humiliation has taught me I don't matter as much as the separation between us. Humility is an admirable standing ground. Compassion is seeing the same truth.
(continue).......Some times compassionate can only be an act deep within one's own heart because the expression of it would be misunderstood, anyways. But to be able to expressed it because the surroundings was ready...karma ripened, becomes compassion truly felt.
The toughest challenge in my own practice of compassion as a working principle in life is how to define 'compassion' contextually when faced with a complex situation when an act can be seen as skilful to one side and unskilful to the other, and that not acting at all may be good yet becomes passivity at best. It is like, how do one transcend seeing and believing - for example, that Shug-Den in our mundane mind, is not our beloved Guru Rinpoche, like a double-edged sword that may have been left on our study table....Well, the thing is, no one asked that we pick it up and cut ourselves with it (our delusions, our divisions), that it cd have been transformed as an act of compassion if our spiritual foundation went deeper than the surface plane and that our strength of compassionate love could overcome all these concentrated energy of anger and hatred -- that would be ground-breaking compassion. Some times compassionate cannot be an act deep within one's own heart because the expression of it would be misunderstood, anyways.
And once, in Winnipeg, a man was standing on the outside of the Osborne Street Bridge. He looked as though he was contemplating jumping. My roommate dropped me off so that I could talk to him, and she called the police from a pay phone down the block. I approached the man slowly and talking to him until the police arrived. They took him to the emergency department and he was admitted. Both of these times, my heart was pounding hard and I was afraid, because I wasn't sure how the person would respond - with anger? With violence? But something in me couldn't just pass by or ignore, so I took the risk.
Sometimes one must sacrifice a friendship when one discovers that compassion for the friend makes it necessary for them to move on in their own life.
A good friend was about to commit suicide, and just called to say goodbye. I took it to mean he challenged me to help him. I figured out where he was, which was not hard, and I showed up not knowing what to do. Immediately upon hearing it was me he shouted: "You only came for your own self interest!". I stopped in silence and in the dark wondering if he was right. I checked deep down and found no personal reason but the motive that it is obvious in itself that I am related to him in being human, and his need is mine to alleviate if I can. But I still had nothing to offer and no idea as to what to do. Yet, the silence was sincere enough for him, so he spoke, in a different tone: "Well, are you coming?". And that was a very good opening for a touching conversation that led to an agreement that we would seek good therapy together.
Compassion: I believe compassion along with love, kindness, happiness and sadness is one of the many basic instincts we are born with.
It is always there and rises to the surface of our mind, at the sight suffering of others, be it human or animal.
To me it simply IS. Compassion does not need thought or courage. It simply needs an understanding of one self as a human being first, and an individual second. In the words of William Shakespeare in Hamlet:
Thus above all - to thine own self be true;
And it must follow , as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
To me the question would be, why do some of us deny or destroy our compassion?. The world is full of such examples.
Compassion is something that is within, It comes when you can understand that each and everyone of us have different ideas on what is right and wrong, good and bad, love and hate. We have compassion when we understand that someone acts out only because that is all they know. My experience with a form was the greatest teacher of all, she did not know how to be happy how to love and receive love unconditionaly. I grew to love the expression and hold no judgment when I finally understood her limitations. She was my mother in law. I stood by her side until her death and no one else in her life was there. That is the gift I received, living compassion.
All of the great teachers out there are people like you and me and your neighbor or friend. Each time something comes to us that we think is another painful drama to be overcome, change it look at it through the eyes of compassion and free yourself from the ties of form. Remember it is just an opinion that is at the head of the Drama. To be conscious of it, That is freedom.
Namaste
Brenda
Compassion comes in many shapes and forms......Compassion can express itself by standing up to the injustices of our individual enviroments ..OR by walking away from a confrontational situation.... Realizing that there is nothing to prove ..nothing to gain... it's all relative.
Just put yourself in that persons shoes. Why are they behaving unjustly? Do they need love and understanding? That helps me to be a force of love rather than anger. Look upon another human who acts violently or unkindly and try and understand how hurt they must be and where that anger comes from. Then it is easy to reach out and love them - to offer love to show them a better response. Place love in front of them when clearly that is lacking in their life. I think we all respond to love when it is offered in a simple, gentle and nonthreatening way.
When I was a baby my family called me "buddha".....
Makiah's Prayer is my way of being of service to mankind....pelodom
