compassion

I imagine it feels like bathing in ice to the person touching her. But how does it feel to her? Cold as she is, it must surely burn like fire.

The healthy should be reminded that we are all dying because it is through our own reminder of mortality that we accelerate our good intentions, into actions people can see.

Curious, he thought, how, if you knew a person long enough, he could elicit every kind of emotion from you, every possible reaction, envy, admiration, pity, irritation, fury, fondness, jealousy, love, disgust. But in the end all human beings became candidates for compassion, all of us, without exception...and if we could recognize this from the beginning, what a saving in pain and grief and misery.

You can't fix things with a hug, but you can't make them any worse either.

A saint or monk can afford to be compassionate to all, but a leader or boss cannot always be kind. He may soon be without a job himself if he is unduly compassionate, and chances are, no one would show him any compassion then.

Love, gratitude, compassion, and kindness are the sources of all enduring, pure happiness.

They say compassion is the only voice; a gift which can help mend the broken, lift the fallen and soften the hardened.

Kindness wields a sword of light against the darkness.

We must remember that the most powerful medicine we can offer for suffering of any kind is simply kindness. It says, "You're not alone. I see you; I hear you; I'm with you.

Imagine walking along a sidewalk with your arms full of groceries, and someone roughly bumps into you so that you fall and your groceries are strewn over the ground. As you rise up from the puddle of broken eggs and tomato juice, you are ready to shout out, 'You idiot! What's wrong with you? Are you blind?' But just before you can catch your breath to speak, you see that the person who bumped into you is actually blind. He, too, is sprawled in the spilled groceries, and your anger vanishes in an instant, to be replaced by sympathetic concern: 'Are you hurt? Can I help you up?' Our situation is like that. When we clearly realize that the source of disharmony and misery in the world is ignorance, we can open the door of wisdom and compassion.

I was not always that way, but perhaps the shadow Earth, where I spent so many years, mellowed me a bit, and maybe my hitch in the dungeons of Amber reminded me somewhat of the quality of human suffering. I do not know. I only know that I could not pass by the hurt I saw on the form of someone much like someone who had once been a friend.

The Oscar-nominated documentary The Act of Killing tells the story of the gangster leaders who carried out anti-communist purges in Indonesia in 1965 to usher in the regime of Suharto.The film__ hook, which makes it compelling and accessible, is that the filmmakers get Anwar __ne of the death-squad leaders, who murdered around a thousand communists using a wire rope__nd his acolytes to reenact the killings and events around them on film in a variety of genres of their choosing.In the film__ most memorable sequence, Anwar__ho is old now and actually really likable, a bit like Nelson Mandela, all soft and wrinkly with nice, fuzzy gray hair__or the purposes of a scene plays the role of a victim in one of the murders that he in real life carried out.A little way into it, he gets a bit tearful and distressed and, when discussing it with the filmmaker on camera in the next scene, reveals that he found the scene upsetting. The offcamera director asks the poignant question, __hat do you think your victims must__e felt like?_ and Anwar initially almost fails to see the connection. Eventually, when the bloody obvious correlation hits him, he thinks it unlikely that his victims were as upset as he was, because he was __eally_ upset. The director, pressing the film__ point home, says, __eah but it must__e been worse for them, because we were just pretending; for them it was real.__vidently at this point the reality of the cruelty he has inflicted hits Anwar, because when they return to the concrete garden where the executions had taken place years before, he, on camera, begins to violently gag.This makes incredible viewing, as this literally visceral ejection of his self and sickness at his previous actions is a vivid catharsis. He gagged at what he__ done.After watching the film, I thought__s did probably everyone who saw it__ow can people carry out violent murders by the thousand without it ever occurring to them that it is causing suffering? Surely someone with piano wire round their neck, being asphyxiated, must give off some recognizable signs? Like going __uch_ or __top_ or having blood come out of their throats while twitching and spluttering into perpetual slumber?What it must be is that in order to carry out that kind of brutal murder, you have to disengage with the empathetic aspect of your nature and cultivate an idea of the victim as different, inferior, and subhuman. The only way to understand how such inhumane behavior could be unthinkingly conducted is to look for comparable examples from our own lives. Our attitude to homelessness is apposite here.It isn__ difficult to envisage a species like us, only slightly more evolved, being universally appalled by our acceptance of homelessness.__hat? You had sufficient housing, it cost less money to house them, and you just ignored the problem?__hey__ be as astonished by our indifference as we are by the disconnected cruelty of Anwar.

When someone is being particularly mean and nasty, I simply think to myself, he or she used to be a cute little baby, I wonder what happened?

God wants to lead you to places you cannot get to without Him, and He does that by the power of His Spirit. He can bring you into the realm of the miraculous__ot as a show, but as a demonstration of His love and compassion for the lost, hurting, or needy. Who among us doesn__ want or need that?

Whenever tragic loss occurs, you either resist or you yield. Some people become bitter or deeply resentful; others become compassionate, wise, and loving. Yielding means inner acceptance of what is.You are open to life.

We can never know how much they deserve our sympathy, but we have to give it unreservedly as they are people innately full of the divine who instead choose to behave infernally owing to poor programming.

To know another person is to Know How to live and work with her. To know another person in a moral sense is to Know How to respect her... Respect must show in action.

Compassion brings people together.