We share this planet with almost 7 billion people, and we've never met most of them. They are faceless strangers. We don't feel them, see them, communicate with them or even get to share our intimate thoughts with them. They exist only in our minds, even though, like stars in the universe, we see them, but we don't interact with them, at least in a personal way.
Similarly, there are millions of faceless people in this country who are dying every day from violence, hunger, and self-induced addictions, and we don't know anything about them. They, too, are faceless numbers with no real connection to us, except as we imagine them to be.
Many of us form relationships with people based on the information we get from television, books, movies, or other forms of communications. From this information, we forge psychological relationships based on the information we have about who they represent to us. From this data, we pity, despise them, and some situations, we vicariously suffer with them
As many of us know, it's difficult to express genuine compassion for others, particularly those we don't know personally. So, in the face of such daunting challenges, many of us feel overwhelmed by the sheer numbers. We have no idea how to begin to connect with seven billion people, much less express compassion for them. In the main, their lives have little or no effect on us.
People dying in Afghanistan, Iraq, Africa, Europe, or China don't evoke tears, deep grief, or a feeling of lost. We don't take off from work, request a leave or absence to attend their funeral or anything like that. We just read about their deaths or watch a report on television, and continue on with whatever we're doing.
Whenever a star dies in the universe, we don't grieve about it. Most of us don't even notice its absence. And whenever people die in other places, we don't even miss them. We explain their deaths within the context of social and political correctness. In other words, we might opine about how horrible it was for so many soldiers, women, and children to die in the war zones.
Are we suppose to care about the death of others? If so, what level of pain does this cause us? Obviously, we are not responsible for their deaths. So why should we feel any compassion for them?
Compassion for human life is inextricably tied to our self-awareness of enlightenment. The more enlightened we become, the greater our compassion for human life. We are able to connect ourselves to the lives of seven billion people and know that their suffering affects the lives of all of us. Their suffering is important because we are important.
Our abilities to express compassion is rooted in our understanding of relationships. We are related to people in the manner we are related to animals, plants, and even stars in the universe. We are all connected to each other and our existence depends on each other. While this might seem silly, perhaps even too difficult to comprehend, it is something that we all must embody if we desire to achieve enlightenment.
Our victim-driven minds cause us to seek selfishness by embodying egoism. We are here, others are there. WE must take care of ourselves by creating psychological and physical walls of separatism. And from behind these walls of separatism, we begin to express compassion in isolationism by denying our relationships with others.
When we gain the insights to tear down the walls of victim separatism, we are able to understand that compassion originates in us. We must first express it in our own lives. WE must have compassion for ourselves, especially whenever we are feeling inadequate or victimized by problems in our lives.
As enlightenment-seekers, we are constantly searching for results to measure our compassion. Some of us believe compassion is the ultimate goal of an enlightened mind. So we are mindful of our actions toward ourselves and others. And whenever we feel out of sync with our actions, we sometimes judge ourselves harshly. We cannot seem to find any compassion.
Meanwhile, on the enlightenment journey, we are always mindful of where we are going. This means we are constantly vigil of our actions and how we interpret them. If we slip into victim consciousness, then we tend to misjudge them.
So it's important for us to understand that we are on a journey to overcome victim beliefs by achieving enlightenment. And that compassion is one of the tools we are using. It's that simple.
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