Since I was a young man, I have tried to understand the nature of Compassion. But whatever little I have understood about compassion has not come from intellectual investigation but from actual suffering. Doesn’t the Buddha see my suffering? How can he smile? When the Buddha witnesses the endless suffering of living beings, he must feel deep concern. How can he just sit there & smile? But it is we who sculpt him sitting and smiling and we do it for a reason.
When you stay up all night worrying about your loved one, you may not be able to see the true face of reality. A physician who accurately understands her patient’s condition does not sit and obsess over anxieties as the patient’s family might. The doctor knows that the patient will recover and so may smile, but her smile is not unkind; it simply indicates that she grasps the situation & so does not unnecessarily worry.
When we begin to see that neither black mud is ugly nor white snow is beautiful, i.e. see things without discrimination/ duality, we begin to grasp Great compassion. In the eyes of great compassion there is no victory or defeat, no enemy or friend. But the energy of Great Compassion is radiant & wondrous. If a cruel person disembowels you, you can smile & look at him with love. It is his upbringing; situation and ignorance that make him to act so mindlessly. Let compassion pour from your eyes, and don’t let anger rise up in your heart. He commits senseless crimes and makes you suffer because he cannot see the way to peace, joy or understanding.
If some day you receive news that I died because of cruel action of somebody, rest assured that I died with peace in my heart. We should never hate anybody. If we can give rise to this awareness, you will be able to smile. Remembering me you will continue on this path. You will have a refuge which no one can take away from you. No one will be able to disturb your faith, because your faith does not rely on anything in the phenomenal world. Faith and love are one and can emerge only when you penetrate the empty nature of this world & when you can see that you are in everything and everything is in you.
