Compassion

The highest form of intelligence is compassion. It cannot be tested or graded in any classroom.

Compassion is never a means to an end. It is not a spiritual practice. It cannot be imposed by a religious commandment.

Compassion arises like a tear welling up from inside. It happens when the heart is silent, and the mind is silence itself.

When there is no demand, when the breath of creation arises by its own mysterious power, without any imposition of mind, without any compulsion for "self-improvement" or "salvation," "justice" or "progress," "enlightenment" or "spirituality" -- then compassion awakens as one's own graceful nature.

Compassion is neither a technique nor a teaching. One catches it, the way one catches a disease, by contact. But compassion is an ease, not a disease. By being in the presence of compassion, one catches the ease of compassion. Compassion lives only by example.

Our work is not to save humanity, or to save the earth, but to spread the ease of compassion by simply being who we really are.

Yet our mind gets in the way. Isn't that the real problem? We think that we have to DO something. From this thought, "I must DO something," arises all the mischief, stress and injustice of human civilization.

Animals don't have this thought, "I have to DO something." They simply do what they are doing, and nature works her infinite design through their organic spontaneity. Only humans impose mind - the little "me" of self-will - between nature and action.

You are called to be a blessed animal: an animal blessed with awareness. But in order to be blessed with awareness, you have to let go of thoughts. A life of compassion cannot be lived through the mind clinging to the concept of "compassion."

The life of compassion is only possible through the ease of an awakened animal body, freed from every belief. A body of awareness.

Painting by Bruce Yung