Tag Archives: compassion

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fierce companion

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Anne Lamotte’s wonderful comment about the nature of mind is something I hold onto when the lights go out on various parts of my life:  “The mind is like a dangerous neighbourhood.  I don’t go there alone.”  When the furies of insecurity and self-denigration mount their surgical strikes on my sense of worthiness, it’s a challenge to keep up a steady defence.  I’m fortunate to have wonderful friends who are willing to sit with me through the mental games I play with myself and the darkening nights of facing the reality that our dreams don’t get fulfilled with fidelity to the blueprints we drew up when we were 4, 16, 28, or 50 years old.

Having a bevy of shrink-type friends can be nice because there are re-framings galore; these act to reassure more than just me, I suspect.  There are also inexhaustible words of comfort, concern, and “fix it” suggestions.  The best, of course, are the baked goods – and especially from the ones whose thwarted dreams involved chef and pastry schools.  I love them all and know that they are variants of compassionate action.

And yet, what I sometimes crave is something akin to the angel alter ego of a child character in one of the daily cartoon strips I read.  Pudgy and surrounded with flowers and stars in one moment, he transforms into a fierce warrior/protector when needed in another moment.  It lead me to question the typical rationale we used to explain compassion.

Typically we state, “Compassion is ‘being with suffering’ because Com means with and passion is a derivative of suffering.  Passion does derive from the Latin (pati) meaning suffer but not only that.  It can mean to bear, to experience intense feelings such as wrath, ire, or fury.  It can relate to being zealous, fervent and desirous or lustful.  It also means to submit.  These variations of passion are heated red and to be with such power seems to run counter to the typical construction of compassion as being quiet in its support.

Compassion is an expression of fiery love.  It is a fervent submission to what is unfolding in this very life, in this very moment, in this breath.  It is welcoming of all the furies and stands steadfast in the presence of the wild tearing winds of suffering.  It is at the heart a fierce companion determinedly walking with you in the darkness of your path and eternal in its loyalty regardless of any outcome.

To be a fierce companion requires steadiness in being.  The third stage of our three stage meditation this week then is appropriate in grounding us.  We began by opening to the entirety of our experience and then returned to the breath.  Now we bring our awareness to the solidity of our body.  Sitting or standing, we feel ourselves fully rooted in the earth able to be steadfast and solid.

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window on self-promotion

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An interesting concept: self-promotion.  Some of the events that stirred the dukkha pot over the last weeks have been encounters with the manifestation of self-promotion.  Actually it hasn’t been obvious, coming couched as self-compassion.  However, the language should have tipped me off.

“It’s really important to me to do this on my own.”

“I don’t want to be part of a group.”

OK, I take that back.  The language didn’t tip me off because it sounded very assertive in setting boundaries.  The only thing at hinted at something being fishy was a felt sense of the ground shifting, the subtext sliding from goodness to grasping.  And, I tend to give a lot of credit to the inherent goodness in the Other.  That is, I give credit forgetting that inherent goodness is not necessarily goodness manifest.

Am I being harsh?  I probably am.  My downfall always comes from looking at ways connection and community can be cultivated.  If we dug deep, it’s likely tied to losing culture and community at a young age.  Or maybe it’s having had a powerful family and community which trained a mind that knows there is safeness in numbers, that the work is easier when the aspirations are embodied by many.  Who knows.

Whatever the reason, I know community is critical and it’s always a shock to realize the Other may not share that vision.  I think getting through the koan window on this one is to stop assuming that building sangha is a common aspiration for all Buddhists.  The other part is to develop a discernment of self-compassion from self-promotion.  Paul Gilbert, author of Compassionate Mind, notes that self-compassion and compassion for others go hand-in-hand.  He also is very clear in pointing out the difference between self-compassion and self-promotion.  In fact, as I read it, the latter is a shadow side of the former, cultivating competitiveness, entitlement, and personal indulgence.

It’s hard to differentiate just by listening to the words.  Is it setting a boundary?  Or is it holding a possessive view?  Is it clarifying the nature of self?  Or is it clinging to Self?  It’s a tricky line we all cross over and over.  And I see myself caught in its sticky web when I blunder along assuming the other has not only the same aspiration for a mutual outcome but the same North Star to guide us there.

Thank you for practising,

Genju