Wellness Wednesday: Radical Compassion.....

A few days ago, I wrote about knowing when to take refuge which has a specific meaning. It's not just isolating from something. It is about understanding that sometimes we need to be surrounded by certain things, certain people and certain ideas. In the Buddhist sense, it's called "taking refuge" in the (teachings of) the Buddha, the dhamma and the sangha. The dhamma being The Path and the sangha being community.

As usual, I interpret things fairly loosely. Sangha can be any community, as long as it feeds us. The dhamma can be any path, as long as it teaches us something and improves our lives. The Buddha obviously is the Buddha and can't be configured into something else for convenience.

Those other things though - well, it's open.

There are times when I do read Christian books. "The Shack" immediately comes to mind. Recently, I read "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan. He makes some points that I've been needing to hear. Ideas are ideas - and it rarely makes much difference what the packaging looks like. Either the idea has merit - or it doesn't.

When I wrote last week about the blog post that made me weep and the thinking that had become such an assault on my spirit, I knew it needed to be resolved. It is impossible to be the person I want to be, caught up in anger and frustration. And judgement. Yapping about it wildly wasn't going to solve the problem. As an academic type who believes talking things out always comes to resolution, I've had to accept that it is wrong in this case. What I needed to do is sit quietly and see what the Universe/God/Pick A Name of Your Choice To Describe Divinity would reveal.

Sometimes words can get in the way. They obfuscate the main issue, a character issue, by turning it into an intellectual challenge instead of an opportunity for growth in the silence.

I stayed with it. Silently. For a while. I sat still and opened my mind and my heart to where that lesson should take me. I spent considerable time in prayer about it.

The most important thing that came to mind is that compassion is always the highest value. Nearly every virtue that comes to mind can be prefaced with "compassion". Compassionate justice. Compassionate loving. Compassionate honesty. Compassionate generosity. It changes the flavor just a bit. Compare it with "righteous justice". Righteous honesty. Righteous anger. My anger at a way of thinking that I consider destructive and harmful is just as destructive and harmful as the ideology I condemn. My efforts to insulate from it, to put it out of my life, to hide in a cove of likemindedness was entirely antithetical to the kind of growth I need to develop in this lifetime.

All the Wisemen and Wisewomen throughout history have not hidden from destructiveness but have actively allowed themselves to become a beacon, someone who offers another way of thinking or another way of doing things.

Trying to retreat is a rather insidious form of selfishness. It is saying in essence that my comfort is the highest value, the most important thing. It is self-indulgent to hold the view that because it is uncomfortable or difficult that I have no obligation to shed light in the world.

I'm not a proselytizer. I'm not going to use this forum or any other to sell my philosophy or my culture like a vacuum cleaner or a car. I am not Cal Worthington and I don't have a dog named Spot. That isn't what it's all about. What it's about is living it, living compassion, sharing the things I value with others - whether they choose to change or not. I can't attach myself to a particular outcome. Attachment to the outcome invariably leads to judgment.

While I'm sure other blog posts at some point will make me cry - or something I hear or see in my daily life will make me angry - the main thing is to turn that anger into compassion, lovingkindness - to replace the negative with the positive. St Francis of Assisi once prayed, "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace."

That I can consider growth.

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