| issue number one - September,
2000 Nonduality Salon Magazine
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Compassion
Christiana
Duranczyk
(Someone
posted on the NDS list:) My dictionary defines compassion
as: "sorrow for the sufferings or trouble of
another, with the urge to help; deep sympathy;
pity."
My heart defines compassion as: nothing to do with sorrow
or suffering or sympathy. It is a movement of Being,
which knows, with no belief, that beyond the appearance
of flaws and brokenness and masks, we are the same. It is
an employment of the energetic Eye of sameness, blazing
through the narrow eye which thinks it sees an appearance
of difference.
It is not a choice.. it just is.
The
next day, Christiana revisited what she wrote above:
I
find it very interesting to look at how we use words and
the metaphors of meaning we have aligned with them.
Last night as I read the posted dictionary definition of
compassion, I noticed how mismatched it felt with how
I've come to live that word and sat down to look at what
it means to me (sans etymology).
Then Andrew mentions "passion" as akin to
suffering, and I note that passion is a term I use more
akin to enthusiasm (en theos with God, avec etymology).
Since joining this list, I've held a deep inquiry into
the ways that the word suffering is used. I've often
resisted this word, thinking "I'm not suffering,
what do they refer to?". Then the other day, this
posted on the Jean Klein list:
"Every moment in which we wish things to be
different than they are, we are suffering. Every moment
in which we are not facing What Is, we are
suffering."
And I saw more clearly the endless moments of Shmee (my
friend Elysha's term for screaming me) and recognized the
endless subtlety of attention shifted to the foreground.
As I reflect here, I see that compassion, as ordinarily
used, is foreground behavior to foreground behavior
(civility); yet there is an unshakable background
awareness which has been solidly with me since childhood.
So, I'll modify my words of last night, as I do notice
choice involved. It is choice to lift the "magnetic
needle of attention" from the impermanence of the
foreground and allow the viewing field to open in
awarness.
David Hodges posted this quote from Ramana in his
journal:
"Your duty is to be and not to be this or that. 'I
am that I am' sums up the whole truth. The method is
summed up in the words 'Be still'. What does stillness
mean? It means
destroy yourself. Because any form or shape is the cause
for trouble. Give up the notion that 'I am so and so'.
All that is required to realize the Self is to be still.
What can be easier than that?"
And it seems to me that to know this, is at the core of
compassion. To re-mind the flotsam of appearance, of this
inherent duty simply by living from there.
This passion (God, I AM) is what I rest in. It is quite
simple to be there with self or with other. Compassion is
merely reminding mind of suchness, upon which
impermanence dissolves. And that surely aligns with
Gene's Socratic reflection of the "truly" good.
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