We Need To Practise Compassion By: Arup Mitra

Every faith promotes compassion, for once the majority is compassionate, Earth would turn into Heaven indeed. Since today, most societies are dominated by selfish individuals, it is natural for one to dismiss the path of compassion as foolhardiness.

In this situation Swami Vivekananda’s argument appears very convincing. Serving others, if taken by an individual as an opportunity to refine oneself and go a step closer to God, would ensure that one is not bothered by consequences even if he ends up being exploited by others. That is, one begins to feel grateful for having the opportunity to serve another. It would be churlish on my part to think that I am doing good to the poor.  Rather I should be grateful to the poor that their suffering has actually brought me an opportunity to improve myself and thus progress further in the pursuit of higher goals in life.

There are several instances when the benefactor gets hurt by the beneficiary. In fact, that is human natur: once you get served by someone you enjoy the benefit and forget the benefactor and his act of compassion. It hurts your ego to remember that you have taken a favour from someone. So by pretending to be superior or by trying to demean the benefactor we nurture our ego and convince ourselves that we haven’t really been helped by anyone. However, heart of hearts we know that it is not true but by repeating it to ourselves we try to get convinced by what we want to be true.

In such a situation remember the tree. The tree does not judge anyone: its nature is to give and it goes on doing what it is does best -- nurturing.  Even if someone hurts the tree after enjoying the shadow it offers and flowers and fruits, it remains indifferent. It continues its karma of giving always. It does not matter even if an undeserving person has taken full advantage of you and at the end pushed you down. What matters is your state of mind. Who you give to is unimportant; the fact that you could give without any expectation is something that is desirable. Rather, one should be prepared for negative outcomes while serving others. Ishwar Chandra, the educationist from Bengal was once informed by a colleague that someone was abusing him. He quickly asked, “Why so? I don’t remember having done any good to him!”  We often are worried about harm caused or caused to us by others. But if we introspect, then we will find that what can be harmed is temporary and what we belong to is permanent, which cannot be harmed in any manner.

Ramakrishna says, who are you to show mercy to others? The all-merciful has been rather generous to you to give you the ability and a full-fledged opportunity to utilise it selflessly. Hence, it is compassion for others, not mercy that we should be striving to practice. If we start thinking in this manner then the selfish attitude of the rest of society cannot disturb us or de-motivate us from pursuing what we believe in.

Another way of avoiding frustration is to forget completely if we ever did any good to others but remember always what we took from others and try to reciprocate in whatever way we can. Forgetfulness in certain contexts can indeed be bliss.