What is Compassionate Living?
Everything that matters most — from the quality of our character to the survival of our species and the health of our planet — depends greatly upon our practice of compassion. Most of society’s pressing challenges arise from our failures to act in accord with informed compassion, and likewise the best solutions are born from our successes in putting compassion into action.
Compassionate living defined
Com•pas•sion | kəmˈpaSHən | : A state of being in which one’s heart is open to feel empathy and caring for all beings.
Compassionate living: A mode of living in which one’s heart is open to feel empathy and caring for all beings, one’s mind is open to understand the experience of others and the interconnectedness we share with all of life, and one acts from that place of informed caring.
Put simply: minimize harm & strive to help
Compassionate living means caring enough to be sensitive to the impacts (both positive and negative) that our choices and actions have upon ourselves, our planet and all the beings we share it with, and doing our best to ensure that our presence in this world does the least harm and the best good possible.
Four practices of compassionate living
1. Non-harming
As the Dalai Lama says, “Try to help others, but if you can’t, at least don’t harm them.
And this goes not only for humans (including ourselves) but also, equally, for all sentient beings.
2. Service
It is good to aspire “not to be a part of the problem,” yet even better to be part of the solution. Compassion does limited good if it’s just a feeling, without action in the world. The altruistic act of offering service to a greater good is putting compassion into action. And one of the highest expressions of this is working to make the world a more compassionate place.
3. Sustainability
Caring for the planet and its life means caring about sustainability, doing our best to inform ourselves about the impact of our lifestyles on the planet, and always striving to make more sustainable choices in all realms of life (e.g. food, energy use, consumption and waste, shelter, career, etc.).
4. Personal development
Because we care, we aspire to evolve — to be the best versions of ourselves, so that we can make our best contributions to the world, and so that our inner life is healthy and thus our work in the world becomes more fruitful, nourishing and sustainable.
These four are referred to as “practices” because they are more a journey than a destination: they are lifelong aspirations to be cultivated in daily life and continuously refined with the insight that comes from reflecting on our experience.
Three guiding insights of compassionate living
1. Compassion is our nature, so harmony is our birthright.
Everything in nature exists in balance and harmony unless and until it is disturbed — and fortunately once the disturbance is removed, that natural harmony returns automatically. Every human is born with the same potential to be a great force for compassion in the world, but of course every human also encounters disturbances in life, which knock us out of that natural state of harmony. Fortunately, nature heals itself when conditions are supportive. Thus, every person deserves to have that precious seed of natural compassion watered and nourished, and to receive support in overcoming the disturbances we encounter, so that we return to the most natural, harmonious and innately compassionate expressions of ourselves.
2. All is interdependent, so solutions must be holistic and cooperative.
Nothing exists in isolation. Like a pregnant mother and her child, like every living being and the earth that supports us to live, we all exist as interdependent organs within the larger body of nature — so we’re in this together. No one truly wins until everyone wins. To thrive sustainably, we need win-win collaboration, not zero-sum competition.We need the insight that arises through sensitive observation of our interconnection, as only that can lead us to holistic solutions that recognize the many factors at play in every system, from the micro to the macro, to achieve sustainable flourishing for one and all.
3. Everyone can evolve, yet evolution is a process, so we must nurture self and others with patient grace.
Warm-hearted spaciousness makes great things happen — when the the time is ripe! When one feels passion for compassion, it can be tempting to judge oneself or others for falling short of an ideal. Yet the reality is that all of us do fall short, and that is always due to complex causes and conditions already set in motion, so we all deserve a little slack, some room to ebb and flow as we grow. Moreover, compassion isn’t a competition! All humans feel stress under pressure and naturally recoil from sharp criticism and aggression but can soften and open over time when consistently embraced with genuine love, so patience and understanding are wiser and more effective motivators than judgment and pushiness. We must give ourselves and others the space and time to ripen on the vine, and meanwhile just keep offering sunshine and water where we can.
› Deeper dive: Pedagogy of the Heart: Education for Compassion