Compassion

Compassion (Karuna in the language of the Buddha) is sometimes difficult to identify and to distinguish from self-indulgent and dangerous forms of involvement in the problems of others. When does compassion morph into co-dependence? When is seeming compassion actually pity, that emotion destructive to both recipient and giver? And what the heck is "compassion fatigue", anyway?

Those of you who have been reading this blog awhile (or who are familiar with Buddhist terminology) will remember that compassion is one of the four brahma viharas (the others are openheartedness, sympathetic joy, and equanimity). This is worth noting because the Buddha singled out these four states of being as those which were the most desirable places to spend our emotional time and energy.

The roots of the English word compassion mean "to feel with". When we can open our hearts to the suffering of another without letting our own needs and desires (for comfort, for being seen as one who is compassionate, for superiority over the sufferer) getting in the way, we can truly say we feel compassion. The key to this definition is that what we feel is not for us but for the other, the one who suffers.

Each of the brahma viharas has what is known as a near-enemy, something which masquerades as the real thing but which actually is a form of avoidance of the deeper emotion. In the case of compassion, this near-enemy is pity. Pity is thinking sympathetically of another's woes without engaging one's heart and has an aspect of subtle superiority to it ("poor dear") through which we actually use it to distance ourselves from the real experience of "feeling with".

Pema Chödrön also mentions a form of misguided pseudo-compassion she terms "idiot compassion":

Don’t impose the wrong notion of what harmony is, what compassion is, what patience is, what generosity is. Don’t misinterpret what these things really are. There is compassion and there is idiot compassion; there is patience and there is idiot patience; there is generosity and there is idiot generosity. 

For example, trying to smooth everything out to avoid confrontation, not to rock the boat, is not what’s meant by compassion or patience. It’s what is meant by control. Then you are not trying to step into unknown territory, to find yourself more naked with less protection and therefore more in contact with reality. Instead, you use the idiot forms of compassion and so forth just to get ground. 

So you sit there and you say, “Okay, now I’m going to make friends with the fact that I am hurting and afraid, and this is really awful.” But you are just trying to avoid conflict here; you just don’t want to make things worse. Then all the guests are misbehaving; you work hard all day and they just sit around, smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, eating your food, and then beating you up. You think you’re being a warrior and a Bodhisattva by doing nothing and saying nothing, but what you’re being is a coward. You’re just afraid of making the situation worse. Finally they kick you out of your house and you’re sitting on the sidewalk. Somebody walks by and says, “What are you doing sitting out here?” You answer, “I am practicing patience and compassion.” That’s missing the point.

Sometimes it is compassionate to turn the beggar away from our door. Sometimes it is compassionate to say to the addict or alcoholic is our lives, "no, this time I cannot help you". Sometimes the most compassionate thing we can do for our children is allow them to fail.

I recall an event in my son's life that can still fill me with deep feelings of sadness and pain. He was looking for a job after college and was very reluctant to approach businesses to put in applications because he was such a shy, reticent, hesitant fellow. I could have helped him do this. I even knew a couple of people who probably would have given him a job. But I knew, deep in my heart, that the truly compassionate road was to let him go through this experience, even if it meant he didn't get a job and could not meet his financial goals, which were very important to him. He was not asking for my help, so in this instance my compulsion to assist him was wholly centered in my selfish desire to avoid feeling the discomfort of grief and empathy for the struggle through which he was going. It hurts even now, almost a decade later. But I knew and know now that I was doing the right and the compassionate thing.

So what about this "compassion fatigue" idea? Can we truly open our hearts so wide as to wear out their ability to feel compassion?

No.

As a nurse, this is a phrase that comes up quite often. I confess that  I truly despise it, mostly because it means (so far as I can tell) absolutely nothing. Someone brought this idea up to me the other day in connection with a family member and I think she was fairly surprised by the vehemence of my reaction. So, what is this compassion fatigue stuff, anyway?

The first context in which I heard this term used was that of refugee workers who saw so much suffering each day that they could no longer feel compassion for the individuals in front of them. Perhaps if one is trapped in such a situation (by a long-term contract, for instance) and there is no escape, this term might occasionally have some validity. But in the ways it is usually trotted out, I find it a thinly masked form of emotional laziness and self-pitying martyrdom.

The example my family member brought up was this: a man we both know, who is in his 70's, owns a pickup. Because of this, many people ask him to help them move. After having done several of these moves, he admitted to being exhausted and wishing he could stop saying yes to these requests. This was diagnosed as "compassion fatigue". In my work I hear it used to describe the experience of being around too many sick people with too many demands on one's energy, which is a more common use of the term. What I find disturbing in both cases is that the persons involved did not take responsibility for their feelings. In the first instance, of course, what is required is the emotional maturity to simply say, "No, I won't help you move." It can be said without rancor or apology, simply, "no", full stop. As for my fellow nurses, doctors, and others in our field, I would say that what they are experiencing is more likely pity than true compassion. Because compassion does not involve my needs at all, there is nothing to burn out or decay. I suspect, as Pema noted, that what is truly fatiguing is the need to control and the failure of our strategies to do so, which failure is bound to happen in the face of the uncontrollable which, for the most part, both other people and their diseases are.

The 14th Dalai Lama

We must also consider those for whom compassion has been and is a way of life: Jesus, Mother Teresa, Quan Yin, Buddha, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, Thomas Merton, Pema Chödrön, Albert Schweitzer and others. All of these felt/feel great compassion for others at all times and did not fatigue in the process. One of the greatest dangers we face is when we label such people as saints and their deeds beyond our ken. Central to the Buddha's message is the fact that he was a man like any other, the implication being that any of us could achieve what he did if we orient our hearts toward true compassion.

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion--The Dalai Lama