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Old 08-15-2012, 04:44 PM   #1
Dwemadayday

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Default Fierce Compassion
I was looking at this short article by Sharon Salzburg this morning and then thought I'd post it here to see if anyone had any comments.


Fierce Compassion

I've spent quite a bit of my life as a meditation teacher and writer commending the strengths of love and compassion. So many times people have approached me and said something along the lines of, "I don't know about developing greater love and compassion. Surely that will consign me to only saying 'yes'/ refusing to take a stand/ letting other people be treated unjustly/ being a wimp."

I think these views to some extent are a cultural legacy, the degradation of love to sentimentality and compassion to a root cause of fatigue. It is sometimes difficult to view compassion and loving kindness as the strengths they are. They are viewed too often as secondary virtues at best in our competitive culture ("If you can't be brave or brilliant or wonderful, then you might as well be kind"). But compassion does not imply ducking our responsibilities or shirking our power. Compassion, instead, is a potent tool for transformation since it requires us to step outside of our conditioned response patterns.

Ordinarily, we're so preoccupied with ourselves and defended against the "Other" that we feel continuously threatened and anxious. We forget how connected we actually are and it is this perceived division that creates antipathy and alienation. This limited perspective prompts responses that are less creative with fewer possibilities for happiness.

My friend, Cheri Maples, used this wisdom to help move her own community forward when she was a police officer. Cheri saw that when offenders were exposed to the extended consequences of their actions, their us-vs.-them behavior could shift. When a petty thief was told that because he ripped off a certain gas station, the kid who worked there couldn't support his sister, who could no longer make the rent and ended up on the street, this information shifted the boy's sense of what interconnection actually means.


continued at the link:


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sharon...b_1775414.html




.
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Old 08-15-2012, 07:08 PM   #2
Toninvell

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People really do get that twisted a lot.. love and compassion have nothing to do with people pleasing.

Say there is a person we'd really like to be able to help out. Sometimes the most helpful thing we can do is to stay out of their life.

In example, when I don't know how to stop enabling someones behavior or if all I do is become neurotic in being around somebody the best thing I can do for myself and them is to just stay away.

Then there are those times when compassion can be exactly like the title of the article; fierce.

It requires very little tolerance for bullshit to be able to really utilize the fierce aspect of compassion.

So in that regard if one is to truly live up to the application of spiritual principles in day to day life they are likely going to be walking alone most of the time as most ordinary beings want nothing to do with somebody walking a path like that because the spiritual practitioner's actions serve as a mirror for all individuals and when the person who doesn't want to look at themselves is confronted with that they have no choice but to see their conscience reflecting off the person.

Most of the time when I have utilized fierce compassion it has been through words strongly spoken, not stemming from a motivation of malevolence.. that is where it gets twisted.. people sometimes think that if one speaks in such a way it is "mean".

The strong words are not the first spoken.. it can get to a point where that is likely the only way any message will get through.

Requires one to be skillful and when it comes to situations like that it can be quite difficult to embody such means.
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Old 08-16-2012, 06:37 AM   #3
rengerts

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Regarding the article, I find the expression 'fierce' compassion a little weird but I agree that love and compassion are necessary in society. However, I think there are a lot of educational, social and economic issues which are at the root of fractured communities, which compassion alone might not heal.
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Old 08-16-2012, 10:26 AM   #4
yespkorg

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I remember back in the day thinking that compassion was pointless, because surely if I was nicer people would take more advantage of me than they already do.
Of course, now that I've decided to pursue compassion people treat me with greater kindness and respect than previously. I think there's something to that.
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