By Cathy Hird
"We can reject everything else: religion, ideology, all received wisdom. But we cannot escape the necessity of love and compassion. This, then, is my true religion, my simple faith." Dalai Lama XIV

Compassion is an essential concept in Buddhism so it is not surprising how often the idea appears in the work of teachers like the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh. It is not the form of love most discussed in western thought, however. So what does compassion look like?

The Oxford English Dictionary On-line defines compassion as "Sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others." Sympathy feels passive and weak. Pity is not something we value, and concern is a thought in our heads rather than an action. With this definition, compassion feels like a weak form of love.

But let's think about this. What would sympathetic pity look like?

We have an expression: don't judge until you have stood in the other person's shoes. Sometimes we say this to make the point that we should not judge. But what changes when we place ourselves in the other's shoes?

Years ago, I took a training program for those who worked with inner city homeless people. One of the essential components was a "plunge." Trainees spent a weekend on the street with five dollars and two quarters in our pockets. We stayed in hostels and ate at soup kitchens. We hung out downtown with nothing to do. The point was to experience a taste of what it is like to sit on the other side of the desk, to eat the food being served, to live on the street.

This experience helped give me a sense of shared community. Rather than seeing the workers as one group and the street people as a separate group, we were together a community of people in the inner city. I needed to remember that I had more freedom: I could move out of that area and into other work where many of those I worked with could not. Still, the way I worked changed when I learned to respect panhandlers.

Compassion grounds action in respect for and understanding of the other person.

Charity is a form of love that recognizes a need and acts to address it. But charity can be about the giver: we give so that we can feel we have addressed the problem. We give and go on with our lives. We give and forget.

Compassion suffers with the other. Compassion recognizes the common humanity in the person who suffers and the person who sees the suffering. Compassion sees that both are part of the same community.

Among community workers today, there has been an effort to express this idea with the language we apply to the people who use the services. "Client" was the typical word, but that assigns power to the worker. People are trying the word "consumer." In retail, the "consumer" has choice: the buyer chooses which store to go to, decides what products they need and determines themselves which brand to purchase. Buyer and seller are part of the same community, and there is a kind of co-operation between them. If the person who uses a service is a thought of as a "consumer," there is a recognition that they should have choice, the power to make decisions. The person working for the service and the person receiving the service co-operate, work together.

We do need to make sure that our words do not hide the challenges people live with: poverty limits choices. But the way a service is delivered shifts when it is not a charitable gift but an act of shared community.

When we recognize that we are part of the same community with those who suffer, we feel the suffering ourselves. We hurt with them. Perhaps this is why we choose charity rather than compassion: we would rather not hurt. But it is what makes compassion the stronger kind of love: rather than just doing something that makes us feel good, actions grounded in understanding of the other's pain will be more appropriate, more helpful, stronger. It is the way to heal the whole, including the one seeking compassion.
Cathy Hird is a farmer, minister and writer living near Walters Falls.