The Art of Zen Living

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.
Dalai Lama

While Loving Kindness is a mental state, Compassion is not.  Compassion is an action.  It is the activity of Loving Kindness.  Or, if you prefer a more groovy sort of feel, let’s say that Compassion is Loving Kindness arisen.  Except when it’s not.  That’s what I like about thinking of Compassion as an action.  You don’t have to be in a particularly compassionate mood, or even a good mood, really.

A few weeks ago, I was on my way to meet a friend for dinner.  As I was driving along my way, listening to some music and enjoying the day, I came across a car along the side of the road.  Flat tire, looked like a woman and her child, possible grandchild (the car was a bit off the road on a driveway to an development) who looked to be in the ten-ish years old range.  She was on her cell phone, and it was a busy road, so safety wasn’t a concern.  She was on her phone so help was likely already on the way.  And I was hungry.  I’d been looking forward to that calazone all day!

I took a deep breath and turned around.  Turned out it was a woman with her 2 daughters - the youngest around 4 or 5 and the older one was 12 year old range.  She’d had a blow out, and the tire had shredded badly enough to cause some minor body damage.  She didn’t have a jack.  I had two, so we used one of mine.  She had a full size spare tire that would have worked fine, except that it was flat.  I didn’t notice unil we got it on the car.  So we put the donut on, which while low on air was good enough to get her to the nearest gas station where she could get some air into it.  As I was putting away my jack and tire iron, it started to rain pretty hard.  The kids were already in the car, so they were ready to go.  Me, I got a little wet.  All in all, stopping when I did meant that they were on their way more quickly, and that no one had to change a tire in the rain.  The net effect was that it reduced suffering in the world, and that’s what made it compassionate activity.  Was the intention behind it Loving Kindness?  That’s a seperate question.  But the activity itself did manifest in a compassionate manner.

I never did get her name - nor give her mine.  I decided to be anonymous, just one part of humanity helping out another part.  We are all connected, after all.

Then something really interesting happened.  As I was back in my car, wet and dirty but on my way to dinner, I found myself reaching out to turn off my radio,  and I started running through my Loving Kindness meditation.  As much as I wanted to think about it at the time, I set it aside and just enjoyed the moment.  Looking back on it later, I reflected that while the compassionate activity had not arisen out of Loving Kindness, my mind state had changed as a result of the compassionate activity.  The two are connected, but in an equal manner.

Compassion is an activity.  I know a lot of people that say they’re compassionate, but they won’t get off their butts to go do anything.  I’d argue that makes them empathetic or sympathetic rather than compassionate.  You can sympathize and empathize without getting up and going out and doing, but compassion requires action.  It can be great or small, planned or spontaneous, as long as it reduces the suffering in the world.

My challenge is to ask myself everyday, as many times as I can remember to ask, what can I do today, right now, to be compassionate?