A question for any Buddhists out there

[robinturner]

I've just finished reading The Art of Happiness, and a jolly good read it was too. The Dalai Lama manages to hit several nails squarely on the head. However, I have a few problems/issues.

The main one concerns compassion. I'm all for benevolence, in the sense of concern for others' well-being, and regard it as a major source of happiness. On the other hand, taking on board the suffering of other sentient beings in the way recommended by Buddhists (and Tibetan Buddhists in particular, I think) is probably the main source of unhappiness in my life. I'm pretty sure if I did something like tong-len for any length of time, I'd end up as a gibbering idiot, rather like Cordelia in that episode of Angel where she gets cursed so that she gets her visions full-time and gets all the suffering of Los Angeles at once.

So, is there such a thing as too much compassion?

Comments

[asteriskhere.livejournal.com]

I don't think so. Didn't the Buddha supposedly feed himself to a starving mother tiger in one of his incarnations?

[kristian.livejournal.com]

my life

Thats the phrase that is causing the problem!

[solri.livejournal.com]

Even allowing for hagiographic exaggeration, my problem is not with compassionate acts but compassionate feelings.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Heh - that was sharp!

[(Anonymous)]

Well, it depends on what you mean by compassion. Start with "Do no harm." If compassion means that you do harm to yourself with worry and pain, than sure, there's such a thing as too much compassion. The expectation is not that you empty your life of anything other than feeling the pain of the world. I think that it's that you open your life to the notion that everyone's pain (including, and perhaps particularly, your own) is the same.

Try Pema Chodron re: tonglen - she's very good about boundaries in tonglen, and making sure that compassion doesn't turn into a) self-harm, or b) idiot compassion.

Alternately, the next time you feel overwhelmed by another person's pain, and the assumption of that pain is a burden, do tonglen for yourself, and all who feel compelled to assume burdens that are sometimes too much.

Hope this helps,
blorky

Re: Not only for geeks

[solri.livejournal.com]

That kind of makes sense. My problem, though, is that everyone's pain is not the same, I think.

Let's say that I imagine myself feeling what someone feels when they cut their finger. If I imagine how I would feel after cutting my finger, it would just be something like "Ow - oh bugger!" But if the person involved is overly sensitive, they would feel much worse than that. So to really experience their suffering, I would also have to experience the attitudes that made them suffer more than I would in the same situation.

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

"I've just finished reading The Art of Happiness/b>"
You mean this one here? *holds up text by Mirko Fryba* Jolly good read indeed! If I were steadier on my stilts I'd have been using it for workshops many years ago.

Too much compassion ... I get a sense of what you're aiming at, and it isn't easy to express. Hmmm ... since Ani Pema has already been mentionned: to those of us as the Abbey she once talked about how, when you feel like shutting off from the world ("closing the door to your room"), it would be good to recognize that there's no need to be locked away. "Try keeping the door open a bit more ... no need to take it right off its hinges, of course" or words to that effect.
My life has been very difficult because I see that what causes me so much pain (compulsive individualism; absence of physical community) is actually symptomatic of the alienated state of being that enables us to be heartless; others' isolation results in my loneliness. So my compassion has a base of self-interest, and it's my project to transform that to as enlightened a form as I can. Every step, I see that others' good really is connected to my bliss, i.e. I don't want to attain a state where I'm aloof and isolated, but more: where I can fully engage the human drama (not tragedy, note).

Using tonglen as a case in point ... I've sometimes felt that I was drowning ... real panic. This, to me, shows that I've taken a mis-step somewhere.
The teachers I've had the priviledge of meeting have been impecable; expert at their own well-being, they can meet the daunting needs of others. They're /brave/, in their generosity, without being foolhardy.

Funny!

[asteriskhere.livejournal.com]

I went to the bookstore on my lunch break today (to find a fish book - one of my fish seems under the weather) and who was making an in-store appearance right then but Howard Cutler, who wrote The Art of Happiness with the Dalai Lama! I listened to him for a little while but then I had to get back to work so I missed the Q&A. I thought it would be interesting to see what he would say regarding your question about compassion. In any case, kind of a coincidence, wasn't it?

Re: Not only for geeks

[solri.livejournal.com]

When I was more of a hippie, I would have said it was synchronicity ;-)

[solri.livejournal.com]

You mean this one here? *holds up text by Mirko Fryba*
No, the one by Howard Cutler and the Dalai Lama.

Using tonglen as a case in point ... I've sometimes felt that I was drowning ... real panic.
I get that drowning feeling without even having to do tonglen!