Quantcast
Channel: Cult Education Forum - "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 12838

Different Understandings of Compassion

$
0
0
Corboy wants to know if this is clearly and openly discussed at interfaith conferences in conversations with Jews, Christians and Vajrayanists.

All this is a portion of two earlier essays on this thread.

Quoted from above.

In English, the root words for compassion are the Latin, 'suffer with' or 'co-suffer' -- to share pain with someone, which in turn leads to concern, accompaniment, and often some attempt at relief.

In an article on the meaning of compassion in the Buddhist tradition, compassion has an entirely different meaning from that of 'suffering with"

In the Judeo Christian traditions compassion is experienced by an individual. In these faiths, the individual is understood to be real in the sense of being a real entity with an actual separate existence. Compassion is that which
bridges the distinction, the distance between individuals leading to accompaniment, community, communion and love.

In Vajrayana Mahayana compassion is understood as not as a feeling or sensation but as something practiced by the person on the dharma path.

The practice of compassion is to dissolve the misleading perception of any distinction between oneself and other. By attaining this realization, compassion is realized.

There is no entity or person or self with inherent separate existence, thus there exists no separation, no estrangement, no loneliness no anguish.

Estrangement, loneliness, anguish arise only in a mind not yet awakened to\
the true nature of reality.

It appears that a mind which the Judeo Christian traditions would regard as a compassionate mind, a mind suffering with someone elses pain, would to the Vajaryanist be a deluded mind, not a compassionate mind.

For to the Vajrayanist, the compassionate mind is liberated from the types of mental reactions that produce the capacity, valued by Jews and Christians of suffering with.

What Jews and Christians regard as empathic compassion, a desirable condition
would actually be regarded as the product of a deluded mind, a mind not yet
awakened by Mahayana/Vajrayana practice.

Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 12838

Trending Articles



<script src="https://jsc.adskeeper.com/r/s/rssing.com.1596347.js" async> </script>