Throughout generations, compassion and love have played important roles in the dynamics of human interaction. Although these two concepts are constants in the general sense, they become more dynamic when viewed through different religious and cultural perspectives. The Dalai Lama, Pope John Paul II, and Louis Jacobs all provide prime examples of how the compassion and love vary when looked at through a religious perspective.
The Dalai Lama defines compassion as the “ability to enter into and share others suffering”. Going off a Buddhist perspective, not only is compassion a basic level of success, it should evolve into an unconditional and universal part of one’s person. He believes that a person’s main goal in life is to achieve happiness because happiness is not only a sign of total contentment but also shows a lack of suffering. Happiness, he claims, is achieved when one takes consideration of others and transforms it into compassion, making way to happiness improving one’s ethical practice as well as guards against factors obstructing those that are conducive to compassion. However, the things that begin to bring happiness can turn into suffering if what is originally causing us happiness becomes excessive. In Ethics for the New Millennium, the Dalai Lama uses the example of food: when we consume food it originally makes us happy however eating too much of it can cause immediate suffering (i.e. stomach aches) but also future suffering if we continue the behavior (i.e. high cholesterol). (Ethics for the New Millennium, 136). Because the Dalai Lama relates happiness to compassion, compassion and suffering are then also related. The Dalai Lama claims that in order to achieve and gain compassion and love, suffering must be elimi...
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... love and compassion for another person because one has the desire to do so is the only way that Jacobs deems an act as moral. Jacobs believes that ethics and love for others justify themselves, deeming them autonomous from each other as well as autonomous from religion.
The natures of compassion and love as well as moral principles are consistent with every religious and cultural view in that there is a definite correlation between the concepts. However once each is looked at through a different scope, the ways they correlate have different meanings and are constantly changing.
Bibliography
Gyatso, Tenzin. Ethics for the New Millennium. New York: The Berkley Publishing Group, 1999. 1-231. Print.
Jacobs, Louis. "The Relationship between Religion and Ethics in Jewish Thought.” n. page. Web. 21 Sep. 2011.
Paul, John. "Veritatis Splendor." Web. 21 Sep. 2011.
Drawing a distinction between being for someone and being with someone, Father Boyle writes: “Jesus was not a man for others. He was one with others. Jesus didn’t seek the rights of lepers. He touched the leper even before he got around to curing him. He didn’t champion the cause of the outcast. He was the outcast.” Such a distinction has significant implications for understanding ourselves in relation to others. While being for someone implies a separateness, a distinction between “them” and “us”, being with someone requires the recognition of a oneness with another, a unity that eradicates differences and binds people together. “’Be compassionate as God is compassionate’, means the dismantling of barriers that exclude,” writes Father Boyle. Accordingly, true compassion is not only recognizing the pain and suffering of others – it is not just advocating for those in need. It is being with others in their pain and suffering – and “bringing them in toward yourself.” Indeed, scripture scholars connect the word compassion to the “deepest part of the person,” showing that when Jesus was “moved with pity”, he was moved “from the entirety of his
Compassion towards someone or something that an individual has can spread to others and change their perspective and thought process on that specific subject. In the novel, Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, provides a story of a man who
The two essays “On Compassion” and “This is Water” by Barbara Ascher and David Wallace argue their different viewpoints on both compassion and empathy. While Ascher simply argues that compassion is not a simple character trait but more so a skill acquired overtime; Wallace tries to convince his audience that humans are preprogramed to be motivated by their own selfish desires and must reprogram themselves to think out of sympathy and concern for others. Barbara Ascher’s, essay, “On Compassion,” compels the audience to interpret the compassion and empathy with their underlying definitions. Ascher states “I don’t believe that one is born compassionate. Compassion is not a character trait like a sunny disposition.
The article identifies three primary features of self-compassion; self-kindness, common humanity and mindfulness. (Neff, 2003)
Nobel Peace Prize winner, Desmond Tutu, once said “frequently people think compassion and love are merely sentimental. No! They are very demanding. If you are going to be compassionate, be prepared for action” (values.com). When one thinks of compassion, sympathy and sorrow come to mind. However, compassion also is accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering. This can be accomplished by standing up for what one believes is right. Throughout the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee deeply develops her theme that compassion is understanding someone else’s perspective and using this compassion to stand up against society.
This paper is a comparison between two very different religions. Specifically Christianity and Buddhism. Coming from opposite sides of the globe these two religions could not be any farther apart in any aspect. I will discuss who Christ is for Christians and who Buddha is for Buddhists. I will also get into the aspects of charity, love, and compassion in both religions and I will be looking at the individual self and how christians see resurrection where the buddhists feel about the afterlife. One thing to keep in mind is that the two religions are very different but they seem to have a very similar underlying pattern. Both believe that there was a savior of their people, Buddha and Christ, and both believe that there is something good that happens to us when our time is done here on earth. This is a very generalized summarization but in order to go in to depth I need to explain the two religions more to fully convey this theory.
Heggen, K., & Hem, M. (2004, 6 23). Is compassion essential to nursing practice?. Retrieved from http://www.researchgate.net/publication/5914942_Is_compassion_essential_to_nursing_practice/file/72e7e526f767a80e8a.pdf
What is compassion? It has two components. One component of compassion means to put yourself in another person’s shoes, and ask yourself, What if I were that person? How would I feel? So, compassion means to develop an awareness of the suffering in another person. Another component of compassion is self-compassion, having compassion doesn’t always have to be putting everyone else before you, sometimes compassion can mean putting yourself first. Throughout generations, compassion has played an important role in many people, it’s a natural instinct within all of us. We show compassion towards our loved ones, when confronted with someone in pain, we
Empathy’s emotional nature tempts us to pass it off as a fixed concept. Just as emotions tend to elicit a consistent response, such as tears in response to sorrow, we often categorize empathy as having particular unwavering benefits and downfalls. Empathy’s benefits lie in its connective abilities, but its short duration is often its undoing. Yet the history of humanitarianism implies that empathy is not as steadfast as its stereotype. In early Western history, pain was seen as “a pathway to spiritual enlightenment,” thus inciting little empathy from its witnesses (Hutchinson). Then, upon the emergence of modern medicine, pain became an option rather than a requirement of life, and thus the culture that had once responded to pain with apathy began to show empathy (Hutchinson). Societal expectations clearly mitigate empathetic responses to some extent, which means changing these expectations could revitalize modern humanitarian efforts. Of course, the transformation that Hutchinson refers to took place over
Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner provides incredibly valuable insight into the intertwining concepts of identity and personal happiness, as does A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews. Undeniably, a healthy cognisance of personal identity is crucial to mental tranquility and happiness. Insecurity, for example is unilaterally viewed as an unsettling character flaw precisely because of the inherent implication of untrue personal identity. Accurately understanding one’s true personal identity is the backbone of happiness, as seen in The Kite Runner and A Complicated Kindness. Furthermore, it can be said that personal flaws, strengths and collectivist mentalities surrounding both Amir and Nomi’s characters ultimately contribute to their respective happiness or lack thereof, at the end of both stories.
Compassion is a feeling that humans portray towards others, but you also have to act in some way to aid them and to decrease their suffering. Barbara Lazear Ascher's purpose “On Compassion” of her essay was to distinguish emotions that people feel towards homeless people. She posed the question of whether or not people feel compassion or pity towards homeless people. The thesis statement is the first sentence, which encompasses the main themes that compassions revolves around somebody’s circumstances, rather than a situation that one can dream about. In other words, it is one’s reality. Specifically, “the man’s grin is less the result of circumstance
Radey, M., & Figley, C. R. (2007). The social psychology of compassion. Clinical Social Work Journal, 35(3), 207-214.
To reach enlightenment in Buddhism, one must overcome attachment to the pleasure of peace. Gampopa defines the pleasure of peace as “the desire to achieve nirvana only for oneself without the altruistic mind for sentient beings, and because of it, one does not benefit others” which is also termed as the lesser vehicle (Gampopa, 126). The remedy for this is the practices of loving-kindness and compassion. When one develops this loving-kindness and compassion, then one will have a mind that wants all sentient beings to meet with happiness as well as be free from suffering and its cause. When one achieves this, then one is attached to all sentient beings and no longer wants to attain liberation only for oneself. Compassion is so heavily ingrained in Buddhist practices, that it has been noted that the Buddha had said “the cultivation of loving kindness and compassion is not just part of our practice, it is all of our practice” (Strain, “Compassion & Stoic Philosophy”). Compassion is not just a crucial aspect of the path to Enlightenment; practicing and training in compassion can function to improve the lives of those unconcerned with achieving Buddahood through means of improving health, well-being and increasing self-motivation. Considering the benefits that can come from compassion, everyone should take part in practicing and experiencing compassion as its benefits extend into other aspects of life.
Suffering can be defined as an experience of discomfort suffered by a person during his life. The New York Times published an article entitled what suffering does, by David Brooks (2014). In this article, Brooks explains how suffering plays an important role in our pursuit of happiness. He explains firstly that happiness is found through experiences and then, suffering can also be a motivation in our pursuit of happiness. In other words, suffering is a fearful but necessary gift to acquire happiness. This paper is related to motivation and emotion, two keys words to the pursuit of happiness (King, 2010).
Some people believe that there is no such thing as “true love” they believe that love is nothing but an illusion designed by social expectations. These people believe that love ultimately turns into pain and despair. This idea in some ways is true. Love is not eternal it will come to an end one way or another, but the aspect that separates true love from illusion, is the way love ends. “True Love” is much too powerful to be destroyed by Human imperfection; it may only be destroyed by a force equal to the power of love. Diotima believed that “Love is wanting to posses the good forever” In other words love is the desire to be immortal and the only way that we are able to obtain immortality is through reproduction, and since the act of reproduction is a form of sexual love, then sexual love is in fact a vital part of “True love”. Sexual love is not eternal. This lust for pleasure will soon fade, but the part of love that is immortal, is a plutonic love. You can relate this theory to the birth of love that Diotima talks about. She says that love was born by a mortal mother and immortal father. The mother represents the sexual love, the lust for pleasure. The father represents the plutonic love that is immortal. Plutonic love is defined as a true friendship, the purest of all relationships. A true plutonic love will never die; it transcends time, space, and even death.