道德经中的三宝之Compassion

今日细细体会道德经中的一段话：“我有三宝，持而宝之:一曰慈，二曰俭，三曰不敢为天下先”。

本句出自老子《道德经》第六十七章，查了很多注解，虽然对于“不敢为天下先”有些自己的理解，但是鉴于本人没有依据去推测老子的原意，所以觉得还是将我认为比较接近原文意思的在网上非常流行的中英文摘录如下：

“Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
To be patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.” 
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“我道之人拥有三件宝贝，持有而珍重它。第一件叫慈爱，第二件叫节俭，第三件叫不敢处在众人先。因为心怀慈悲，所以做事勇敢精进；因为对自己节俭，所以对众生可以宽容大方；做人要给别人留下存在空间，才能成为万物的尊长。”

- 老子， 《道德经》

对于英文中的“Compassion”，发现老外也象我们理解中文部分一样，有很多不同的看法，而且，和大部分中文的注解有一些微妙的不同。所以，摘录一些网上对“Compassion”的分析，帮助自己和需要的朋友参考：

Being Compassionate Toward Others {Not To Be Confused with a Doormat}

http://theorganicsister.com/being-compassionate-toward-others-not-to-be-confused-with-a-doormat/

I have been dealing with a family that I assumed was normal and was trying to be compassionate with. It turns out they are sociopaths with no conscience. 

 How can we be compassionate without being taken advantage of? – AFacebook Sistah

Ah, boundaries come to mind first.

Compassionate doesn’t mean sacrificial. Compassion includes yourself. It means seeing beneath another person’s behaviors to the pain or fear or (tragic) attempts to meet their needs. It means choosing to see them with empathy, to understand what brought them to this place. And sometimes it means compassionately saying “no” or “I love you and I’m not okay with this” or stepping away, removing yourself from something that is hurting you or others.

Even “sociopaths” are human beings with a long history of hurt or fear and no other tools, still doing the best they can, even if that’s not very wonderful at this point. Whether it’s your job to help them or simple love them is the question. if it’s not your place to help them, it is still compassionate to walk away…without judgment or labeling, or anger, or throwing more pain into the mix. But just simply, with love, saying “no more”.

There is probably a lot more to the work we get to do in situations like this. Things to DIG IN to. Empathy to practice. Hurt and expectations to examine. Judgment and reactions to release. But I think, for most of us, establishing boundaries that allow us to do that work comes first.

What Compassion Is

The real meaning of compassion

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/happiness-in-world/200911/what-compassion-is

The other day I was out walking my son in his stroller (my now constant occupation) when a homeless woman approached me asking for money. I'd seen her before in the neighborhood many times, including behind our condominium using drugs. I turned down her request and continued walking, to my chagrin, as if the wind had blown a newspaper against my leg and I'd kicked it away without any thought.

I used to get angry at strangers who asked me for money, projecting onto to them a rage I actually felt toward myself for having such a difficult time turning them down. Then I learned to set boundaries comfortably and myanger gave way to inconsistency: I'd sometimes acquiesce to requests for money and sometimes not, the likelihood of one or the other depending randomly on my mood, how much I believed their story or how much it entertained me, or my belief about what it meant to be compassionate at the time.

Given that at least one study(link is external) has suggested roughly 95% of homeless men (at least, in Munich where the study was done) suffer from some type of mental disorder (substance abuse being the most common by far) and that numerous other studies have shown similar, if somewhat less dramatic, results depending on study methodology and the city studied, my standard response now is to refuse all requests for money, believing as I now do that money is not the best long-term, or even short-term, solution to help the homeless. Yet each time I'm asked, I wonder again about what it means to be compassionate, and my recent encounter with our neighborhood homeless woman caused me to reflect again how I continue to fail to live up to my aspiration to consistently manifest the compassion of which I'm capable.

WHAT COMPASSION IS NOT

Compassion, in my view, is neither empathy nor sympathy, but requires both. Empathy involves responding to another person's emotions with emotions that are similar. Sympathy entails feeling regret for another person's suffering. Compassion, on the other hand, is caring about another person's happiness as if it were your own. The challenge with this definition, however, is how easily it causes us to mistakenly infer that compassion therefore means:

1. Giving people what they want. Which is what I used to think—but only because I would routinely find myself practically incapacitated by the thought of disappointing anyone. And though giving people what they want does make them happy, it does so only transiently and usually leaves them unimproved, denying them the motivation to take on growth producing challenges. Also, people quite often want what isn't good for them (the child who wants to watch television instead of doing homework, the gambler who wants to bet his life savings, the alcoholicwho wants to drink). If our aim is to help others become happy we must apply our own judgment to the actions we're asked to take on their behalf. As I suggested in an earlier post, Become A Force For Good(link is external), compassion without wisdom is dangerous.
2. Sacrificing ourselves. Though the size of our compassion is often measured by what we're willing to sacrifice, we shouldn't therefore conclude that an act requires sacrifice to qualify as a compassionate one. Acting compassionately may often be inconvenient, but if you find yourself actually sacrificing your own happiness in some significant way you've allowed yourself to be deceived into thinking one person's happiness is more important than another's—your own. A wise person's own happiness matters as much to him or her as the happiness of others—no more and no less. In fact, sometimes you may care about another person's happiness but find that other person not only beyond your help but a serious risk to your own happiness. In such cases, the person toward whom you must turn your compassionate gaze is yourself.Detaching with love means removing yourself from another person's zone of destruction without ceasing to care about them in your heart. It would be far less compassionate to allow two lives to be ruined when one (yours) could be saved.
3. Being constantly gentle. Many believe being compassionate requires you to adopt a passive, non-violent demeanor and express only loving kindness at all times. Though compassion certainly can be all those things, to be effective, compassion must sometimes be harsh, angry, and forceful. You can't judge the quality or intent of an action only by the envelope in which it's mailed. With the intent to increase another person's happiness as your constant thought, you may sometimes find yourself taking action that paradoxically seems on the surface to lack the very compassion that drives it. By some accounts, Mother Teresa was at times a pretty tough son-of-a-bitch.
4. Getting a reward. True compassion expects no reward or recognition. Not that there's anything wrong with wanting either, but when they become the predominant motivation for acting compassionately, you risk shifting your focus from increasing the happiness of others to the gratification of your own ego, which then risks behavior that harms instead of helps.
5. Liking everyone. There's no requirement that you like anyone in order to be a compassionate person. You can, in fact, actively dislike someone towards whom you feel great compassion. Being compassionate may mean thinking benevolently about a person despite their flaws, but it doesn't mean pretending those flaws don't exist. You don't have to pretend that people don't annoy you, nor do you have to open yourself up to establishing personal relationships with people you try to help.

WHAT COMPASSION IS

If compassion is none of those things, though, then what is it? I would argue the following:

1. Unconditional acceptance. Compassion focuses itself only on the potential all people have for good, ignoring everything else. Which isn't to say compassion deludes itself into thinking all people are good. Just that the capacity to become good can never be destroyed by a thousandevil acts and must therefore always be sought. Which requires—
2. Endurance. The people for whom you care may refuse to stop suffering. They may rail against you for your efforts and treat you even more shabbily than others who don't care about them at all. Having true compassion for them is refusing to be defeated by such transient concerns. Even if, as discussed above, you eventually must detach with love, never stop loving them, even when they try to destroy themselves or others.
3. Action. Another person's happiness may feel important to you, but if you have the opportunity to take compassionate action yet don't, your feeling was only ever theoretical.
4. Courage. Josei Toda(link is external), the second president of the SGI(link is external), once said that if we don't have enough compassion, we should substitute courage. The action that arises from courage is invariably equivalent to action that arises from compassion. We also require courage to withstand the criticism that often results when you take compassionate action.

HOW HAVING COMPASSION FOR OTHERS BENEFITS YOU

In the Lotus Sutra(link is external) (the highest teaching of the original Buddha, Shakyamuni), luminous beings known as the Bodhisattvas of the Earth make a great vow to help all people attain enlightenment. In Nichiren Buddhism, a bodhisattva is anyone who manifests the life-condition of compassion.

This, then, is the ultimate goal to which I aspire: to expand my capacity for compassion and become a bodhisattva. The reason is simple: the feeling of genuine compassion for another person is, in my view, one of the most joyful experiences available to human beings. Further, only in the life state of the bodhisattva does it become clear how making the happiness of others the ultimate goal of one's life entails no personal sacrifice at all. Finally, I don't believe that indestructible happiness is possible to attain in isolation. How can anyone be truly happy while everyone—or anyone—else around them continues to suffer?

One other random fact: compassion cures all social awkwardness. It's hard to feel awkward in a room full of strangers whom you genuinely want to be as happy as possible. But to establish a life-condition in which you actually feel that way—ah, there's the rub.

So compassion remains my goal, but one I constantly to fail to reach. When asked for money by strangers, my typical response is a rapid-fire, "Don't-have-any-money-on-me-sorry." But this is often not even true. I'm certain the reason I lie ultimately comes down to cowardice, though why I'm afraid to tell them the truth is not yet entirely clear to me.

It's not that I lack compassion for the homeless—just that my compassion for them remains only a feeling, only theoretical. I say this not because I refuse to give them money. As I said before, I don't believe giving them money represents the most compassionate action I could take (though I certainly recognize it may be yours—no judgment intended). I say this because the most compassionate action I could take would be to introduce them to Buddhism, a practice I genuinely believe has the power to help anyone in any circumstance become happy, but I don't do that either.

There are several reasons I don't, all of which I'm sure will sound reasonable: I'm reluctant to proselytize; I don't want to become embroiled in a stranger's life; I don't want to take the time. And I'm sure many would argue I'm expecting more from myself than I should. But I'm not just writing about homelessness here (and don't pretend to have the answer to that complex and difficult problem). I'm writing about the part of me that believes enlightenment is possible and that an enlightened person would be overflowing with compassion I feel only rarely—a compassion that makes all men feel like brothers and all women like sisters. I'm writing about the part of me that keeps asking if there really is any greater value we can produce as human beings than to help another person to become happier. Because every time I turn down a homeless person's request for money what I think to myself (other than somewhere out there must be someone worried about them) isn't that I should have given them what they wanted, but rather that a Buddha would have given them something they need.

If you enjoyed this post, please feel free to explore Dr. Lickerman's home page, Happiness in this World(link is external).

On compassion towards bullies

https://medium.com/@andrea.toole/on-being-compassionate-towards-bullies-af1b0e5de658

“Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.” -Albert Schweitzer

I have been thinking a lot about compassion this week. The concept of Love over fear and Love over anger is a common theme in my life, but I feel like a new spotlight has shone on the idea of loving-kindness since I wrote about it two days ago. I’ve been thinking about grace and benevolence and about giving people the benefit of the doubt.

Moreover, it has been a challenge. Some people, myself included, believe that the Universe sends us challenges to help us learn and grow and evolve. I have had a couple of challenges to my loving-kindness perspective in the last few days.

I am an empath. I feel people’s feelings. I am naturally a helper and a nurturer. I nearly always give people the benefit of the doubt because I believe that most people are good. I refuse to let a few bad apples change my mind about that. To be human is to be screwed over on occasion but that doesn’t mean that the right thing to do is to stop seeing the good in people. I feel sad for those cynics.

[Note: I updated this post the week after I published it, because after some time I was able to provide more specifics.]

My partner and I have been dealing with a few bullies this week who have been bullying independent of one another, though evidence points to them being in on it together. He owns restaurant. He had three delivery customers complain with a very similar story. Two or three were abusive over the phone.
[Updated details: It was confirmed that whey all provided the same delivery address. The person I communicated with was over Instagram and she insisted that her “boyfriend” had called and was very polite, while some research revealed that the couple who live in the house are married.]

He and I took a very different approach. It has felt a little bit like a good cop/bad cop scenario.

My response (paraphrased): Give everyone the benefit of the doubt! Show compassion! People want to be heard and validated!

His response (paraphrased): I’m right, they are bullies.

Although this story may not be one of my strongest because of it, I do not want to reveal details right now because I want to preserve anonymity and I don’t want to lead you to these complaints. However, I will say this:

• It is difficult to be kind to a bully/troll
• It is difficult to be pleasant to a person who is verbally abusing people you care about
• It is difficult to show compassion to a liar
• 
  

These are tests.

At one point I demonstrated compassion toward the person I later discovered was a typical internet Troll. I expressed kindness. I apologized. I showed that I’d heard the bully. I validated the bully. Bully indicated that the apology was accepted. I thought the issue was resolved. Compassion FTW!! Except the vitriol and bullying continued.

“The light in you is all I see.” -Gabrielle Bernstein

A Social Media world

I’ve been communicating online for longer than I’ve been blogging and building websites. I’ve been on “social media” since before it was called that. I was a CompuServe IRC user, and a newsgroup user. I know that internet Trolls have existed since forever. For a few years, it seemed that many people with blogs had a sense of entitlement because their voice was public. I had a friend who joked that she wanted to start a blog called, “Will Blog For Free Stuff.” PR companies and businesses often offered me freebies. Sometimes I accepted, sometimes I declined. Either way, I always expressed gratitude to the person who offered it to me. I was a brand ambassador a few times. I appreciated every free meal, every free event, the hotel stay in wine country, and everything else. I never took any of it for granted.

Now it is people with high social media follower counts, some of which are real, organic followers, some of which are bought. The Internet Troll who has been bulling us bought an estimated 60% (rounding down) of their followers. This estimation is based on analysis with a few different tools. First they (or their partner) uttered the threat of their 50,000 followers by phone, then they executed with lies and other bs. Oh, and their is absolutely no indication of their identity on their account. Internet troll.

I posted the following on Facebook a couple of days ago:

I don’t care how much a person has, I care what kind of person they are. No amount of money, stuff, friends or social media followers can make a person more respectable if they act like a dick. I don’t care how expensive or big a person’s toys, gadget, house, etc. are either. If a person lives in a shithole of a dwelling, that’s fine as long as they’re comfortable (and if they’re not, I’d worry about them). One’s sense of status and their need for it does not interest me. It instead indicates their fears and insecurities and need to feel important and validated by numbers.

In other words, I have no more or less respect for a person regardless of what they have. Being a good person is what makes me respect someone. Showing compassion for others, showing kindness to the world, humility, and not acting self-entitled, are traits that make me respect a person.

I think that love and compassion always win, but some people are so in their egos, the stories in their minds and their mob mentality that they’re not willing to let go and go back to a state of peace.

Flaunting followers is no different than flaunting cash or belongings. It doesn’t automatically make you a good person.

The sense of entitlement is infuriating. I want to have compassion for what’s causing it, such as insecurity, feeling inferior, or a spoiled upbringing by parents who gave their screaming child whatever the child wanted to pacify that child. In the case of parents with a screaming child, I have empathy for the parents. I like to think I don’t judge. I also know that children need boundaries and need to hear “no”. But really, I’m speculating here. I have no idea where a sense of entitlement comes from, and I know that the root cause varies from person-to-person.

I have compassion for people’s insecurities but must one must love themselves. One must have self-respect. You’ve got to show compassion for others and understand that acts of hostility have consequences. Respecting people is a way to get respect. Bullies can’t be given positive reinforcement. Tantrums can’t be rewarded. You need to support people, not tear them down because you think you they owe you something. No one owes you a thing.

“See the light in others and treat them as if that is all you see.” -Dr. Wayne Dyer

If someone asks for a refund but is offered something free to be redeemed at any in the future instead, the correct response is gratefulness. The wrong way to respond is to complain that you were offered something free or equal or higher value instead of your money back.

How do you love a troll or a bully?

So how do a feel after being challenged to show loving-kindness towards bullies? Can you show kindness towards an Internet Troll or a bully?

That’s what the internet's for; slandering people anonymously -Banky Edwards (played by Jason Lee, written by Kevin Smith), Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back

We definitely should not feed the trolls. I can’t decide whether trolls are worth compassion. I want to think that everyone is worth compassion.

Anonymous trolls are the worst kind of online bully, for their lack of credibility is clear to some people but not others and trolling seems to propagate more trolling. People like to be a part of something. People like to join causes and crusades. A lot of people like to hide behind the anonymity of the internet. We don’t get aggressive complaints and demands via Facebook. We get those where anonymity is possible.

I feel we need to approach bullies and with kindness and cynicism. We cannot be taken advantage of. We can’t be gaslit by bullies or trolls. We cannot be torn down. We cannot “give the benefit of the doubt” at the expense of ourselves. We cannot allow ourselves to be mistreated. We must be aware. We must keep our wits about us. We need a healthy amount of cynicism. Some people are absolutely horrible, miserable people that aren’t worth our energy.

We need loving-kindness. Even the shitty people deserve loving-kindness. We can’t ignore that they are despicable, but we don’t have to. As I said in my story earlier this week, when people do vile things, I try to find even a grain of compassion within me. Sometimes I have to reach hard for it.