Deciphering Compassionate Action from "Idiot Compassion" in the New Age
The difference between pain and suffering and its implications on the path of liberation for the individual and society at large.
Sometime in the not so distant future humanity will look back at our mental health system, our medical system, at current expressions of our religious, cultural and political institutions and find them utterly barbaric. We will look back at these systems, at the distortions at their foundation and understand how we got to be so far off track onto the paths that are unfolding before us now. Paths that seem at times to be barreling headlong toward an utterly grotesque destination.
Being aware of this, witnessing the needless suffering that arises out of these barbaric distortions in both the individual and the collective, is sometimes overwhelmingly excruciating for me. Witnessing where we are headed and feeling powerless to stop it has been one of my greatest sources of discomfort in this lifetime.
Lately I’m practicing expanding my heart to hold this experience more steadily. Allowing myself to feel the unbridled energy of this pain radiating in my heart. It honestly feels like my heart is being ripped open at the seams. But I’m staying with it in a relaxed body, breath and mind as much as possible.
Sometimes I’m getting to the core of this pain where true clarity arises. Where true skillful action makes itself known.
- And it’s not always what I would have initially assumed to be the right action.
In the Buddhist practices of the Paramitas, sometimes referred to as transcendent virtues, there is an incremental process to cultivating an inner path to the spontaneous wisdom arising from our inner being, of knowing how to actually be of benefit to others.
It’s in these basic steps that I’m finding myself within an intelligent inner unfolding.
In this process, I’m finding that a lot of my defenses are melting away. I used to try to control the world around me in order to not have to hold its pain. I just wanted to stop the pain for me and everyone involved, above all else. I was constantly trying to save people from their own pain, but this was partially selfish because I was really just trying to alleviate that empathic burden for myself.
I used to see easy enemies in people who perpetrate suffering onto others.
This has been especially true for my relationship to my blood family, but it’s also expanded into a more collective understanding in recent years.
Now I’m finding that it takes immense inner courage to see the pain at the center of these perpetrator’s hearts as well, breath even their pain into my heart, and send them loving kindness in return.
There is a peculiar alchemy occurring. This must be what the sending and receiving practice, Tonglen, is all about.
Now I’m realizing that the wisdom to know how to effect true change that is actually beneficial is contained within the heart of this collective human pain.
It’s contained way down underneath my desire to avoid this pain.
Underneath the desire to change the circumstances that seemingly cause this pain.
It’s contained in the root.
The true antidote to the situation that perpetuates suffering is contained down in the root, within the primary karmic cause, deep within our very own hearts.
The intelligence at the center of our heart-of-hearts seamlessly interconnects with the heart of the whole of humanity.
True surrender through the most vulnerable aspects of ourselves, through the places we want to defend the most, leads to a living wisdom that resides deep within the intelligence of the heart.
When we truly touch this internal antidote, we know that it is alive. We feel its aliveness. We’re receiving this living wisdom straight from the source.
The Buddhists might call this cultivating Bodhichitta. It’s a lucid quality of mind where the wise, spontaneous insight that leads to skillful action arises.
So the first step to skillful action is to be able to meet wholeheartedly within ourselves, penetrate all the way to the core of both our own pain and the pain of everyone involved in the situation at hand. Without this ability to stay with the pain in conscious awareness, skillful action based in true clarity is not possible.
The compassion we develop based on the amount of internal pain we are willing to be in direct presence with, is proportionate to the quality and clarity of wisdom we take into action. There is no coming to wisdom in action, or skillful means, without feeling directly, holding in spacious non-resistance, the pain of everyone involved.
In this way, we often might not know right off the bat how to respond to a complex situation in a way that is truly beneficial. There can be a powerlessness involved in this that is truly excruciating. I’ve experienced it many times, as have many of us who have had to standby while witnessing the suffering of others with no immediate power to stop it. These are the times that resting with the pain becomes of paramount importance and the theme of the serenity prayer really starts to ring true from within our own experience.
‘God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.’
Often our desire to change the world around us, comes from a form of selfish avoidance within ourselves. We need to ask ourselves, what am I trying not to feel? Attempting to fix a situation hastily before the pain is fully felt and true compassion is realized, has us at the risk of acting out of ignorance. Sometimes it’s simply not our place to “help” - We have to surrender our desire to be in control.
However, in this practice there will be other times that skillful action arises out of the compassionate wisdom contained in our capacity to hold the pain, and we’re able to be of true service in a situation in ways that do not perpetuate suffering or make things worse.
This is one way that true Dharma expresses.
True Dharma does not arise within our attempts to control, fix, save ourselves or others from the pain of the world, but to be with it in unwavering courage. To be naked and defenseless in it. To stand in unshakable compassion with it.
Now I think it’s a worthy endeavor at this point to explore what compassion is and what compassion is not - To dissect some of the current distortions around this.
Many people misinterpret the idea of compassion as an excuse to avoid the type of pain that is necessary for growth. Often times, skillful action is not necessarily pleasant. The intention is to decrease overall suffering and de-escalate negative karma for the highest benefit of all involved, yes, but not at the expense of having to feel the pain necessary for true growth. Being compassionate and willing to feel our pain, seeking skillful action from this place, does not mean we avoid the hard truths that we might need to confront in order to truly alleviate overall suffering.
Pain and suffering are actually two different experiences and can have unique functions with drastically different implications. Pain is a necessary aspect of growth, whereas suffering can often arise out of an avoidance of pain.
Causing pain is not always the same as causing harm. Fawning and people pleasing are not true expressions of compassion.
In fact, skillful action through the clarity of compassion is often sharp - cutting - swift and direct - it’s deeply penetrating. Once skillful action through the clarity of compassion has been cultivated deeply and consistently in oneself over time it becomes second nature, almost instinctual.
This skill arises from the kind of wisdom that can only be cultivated through having studied one’s own psycho-spiritual predicament, one’s shadow deeply, in radical honesty over and over again.
Our insight only penetrates into others as far as it has been able to penetrate into ourselves. This applies to collective shadow as well.
It’s clear to see in the new age however, that people are mistaking the protection of subjective feelings at the expense of authentic truth and growth, for compassion.
This is called idiot compassion.
You’re using the mask of compassion to hide from something that needs to be resolved, rather than making the necessary direct contact with it. Skillful action that arises out of compassion is not an act of avoidance at all. This does not mean there isn’t an appropriate tactfulness, a kindness, even a subtlety at times, paired with the correct timing for certain inputs. Especially within certain contexts.
It’s often a delicate balance and I don’t claim to be very good at walking that line.
It’s similar as well to what I was getting at in my last article; That it’s not always black and white - what can be defined as “good” or “bad” karma. Compassion, like karma, can have a certain flavor that doesn’t seem indicative of its true essence or what outcome it invokes in the situation at first glance. You really have to have a multifaceted insight into the many layers and nuances often involved with both karma and compassion to be skillful in action.
Avoiding someone’s triggers is not always an act of compassion though, that much is clear. While safety is super important for the healing of trauma, especially within the confines of a therapeutic container, too much sheltering can actually be detrimental to one’s growth. Our triggers are a portal to healing - Even within a therapeutic context, exposure is necessary for growth.
And while emotional safety may be a high ideal within a therapeutic setting, liberty needs to be one of our highest ideals in a societal context, and there is a point where these two ideals will conflict when not applied properly.
Yet this is the trend we’re witnessing all too often nowadays, this suffocating safety through avoidance of pain, the coddling of ignorant egoic delusions, at the expense of losing the path of real spiritual growth altogether that would lead one out of their suffering. At the behest of creating a world that needs to be tyrannically controlled - censored around one’s hyper-subjective feeling states to be deemed “safe”.
I was listening to a story told by Pema Chodron the other day, on how delicate the process of discovering what true skillful action - walking the path through the six Paramitas, can look and feel like in the context of difficult, complex situations where there is a lot of suffering involved.
The story goes something like this:
There is a prisoner out in the prison yard acting out, provoking and yelling at everyone. Another prisoner, who is attempting to practice the Paramitas, witnesses this unfolding. He understands this prisoner’s pain and his acting out as an expression of that. Knowing that this first prisoner is likely to get killed by the other prisoners, as he sees everyone in the yard getting worked up into a frenzy in their agitation and moving toward him, he realizes he has to do something quick to stop the situation from escalating. So he goes over and punches the guy, knocking him out. At this point the guards come over and take the knocked out man away. The guy who punched him gets solitary confinement.
Here we see how difficult it can be to understand what the best course of action would be to halt the escalation of suffering and negative karma. The guy may have been slightly injured, but he’s not dead. Did he experience pain in the short term? Absolutely, but it was likely less suffering than it would have been for all involved, had the situation escalated even more. Instead of a huge riot where multiple people could have been seriously injured or killed, you have one knocked out guy who is safe for the moment from a much more serious outcome. The other guy takes the solitary for the whole situation, which he didn’t really cause to begin with.
Journey to Fulfillment - Six Keys for Opening to Life, by Pema Chodron
This is where you can see that the application of right action rooted in compassion and the idea of what it means to do harm or prevent the escalation of harm are complex, multifaceted ordeals much of the time.
The proper application of skillful action will be unique to each situation and the karma of all involved, as well as unique to your role as a product of your own karma. So the action arises out of the alchemy of the present moment. It is not a predetermined formula or set of instructions that applies universally across situations. It is an insight connected into the present moment from within ourselves on the appropriate action needed from us.
I think this is especially applicable within current wide spread collective cultural and ideological trends that seem to be spreading like a mind virus. One can clearly see that if left unchecked these trends will only lead to immense collective suffering in the long term. Yet if we push up against these trends directly in the short term, this also leads to a certain kind of pain on the other end. We can clearly see that these trends are fueled by people’s fears, trauma and inner pain, yet to avoid the truth in order to protect their pain would not be right action at all. I often ask myself, how can I speak the truth in such a way that these people can hear, so that the overall harm is actually de-escalated? I’ve found this time and again, in the face of these mind viruses, to be insanely challenging.
The whole thing becomes pretty tricky. It’s nearly impossible to speak to some of this stuff without causing major division and escalating a certain amount of collective suffering.
This is where sometimes I’ve had to just get comfortable sitting with the collective pain, even immense uncertainty, and not knowing the best course of action. Perhaps some of the disasters we seem to be headed toward as a collective are necessary? Who am I to meddle? I often see them as some kind of necessary initiation process for the growth of humanity.
It’s not always right action to try to intervene in the natural unfolding of collective karma.
Sometimes you just have to get comfortable bumping up against people’s individual blind spots of suffering though too, because you’re clear that it will help prevent a more wide spread collective suffering down the road. You’re clear that by speaking up, you slow down the spread of this contagion, you become an alternative perspective for those who would have otherwise fallen prey to this mind virus. Understanding the distinction between pain and suffering becomes absolutely necessary. This is extra tricky in the new age when defining oneself by, or hiding behind a victim identity has become an accepted form of trendy covert narcissism.
The perpetrator-victim dynamic has been inverted like many other dynamics in our current collective culture.
In any case, if we really want to be a positive influence for the highest benefit of those around us, it would behoove us to become somewhat artful in the application of evolutionary inputs.
Again, I don’t claim to be very masterful at this, but I have learned to trust my instincts that do often arise out of this penetrating clarity of compassion for our collective situation. However much it might not look like that to those who disagree with my sentiments on the other end.
I have been called many times to stand up against some of the current distortions and inversions taking place that I am clear are only going to feed into and perpetuate much more suffering in many more people down the road. My coming to accept my role here during this time on the planet has been a process of sitting with and holding the pain and suffering of those around me and spending countless hours trying to understand - Dissecting the many layers and nuances taking place within the current collective unfolding.
I have resisted this role much of the time. Being the introvert that I am, I would much rather not have to bump up against this stuff. But time and again I am called back to poke and prod at these inversions and distortions, probably because they interfere with my life’s mission of true liberation on the planet. How can I do my work without bumping up against these obvious subversions from that very clear path? It seems that the situation at hand has made it so that I cannot walk that path without making clear delineations to what that path is and what it is not.
Some of these mind viruses are infiltrating almost every nook and cranny of the self help world. They seek to make the whole world their proverbial padded room and this conflicts vehemently with my highest core value of liberation for all.
My actions and what I choose to speak on comes from a deep sense of where this collective pain and suffering is leading us. I often have a keen sense for how these trauma based, ideological possessions would have us caught in a delusional avoidance loop with our pain and enslaved in the matrix-mind-control, wheel of karma, for eternities.
I’m not an idiot with my compassion however, I know the true clarity of compassion cuts through deception like a hot knife through butter. It’s not always all nicey nice and hunky dorey. However, I can be an idiot at times too, I’ve had to unravel my motives from my own selfish desires many times over and let go a bit - Surrender my need to save others.
People don’t need to be saved, they need to be reminded of their own innate power to heal themselves. To pull themselves out of the mire by waking up from the various cages that might have bound them.
My only desire at this point is to express myself in such a way that others understand that there is a path through life that might be more liberated than what they’ve been offered thus far. That they don’t have to obey the script handed to them by NPC’s marching headlong toward their own enslavement.
I’ve had to take my ego out of the equation over and over again, and keep surrendering to a higher power. I speak to what I’m genuinely called to speak to even if it ruffles a few feathers along the way.
I not only make the distinction between pain and suffering, compassion and idiot compassion, but between what ideals are necessary to uphold for a therapeutic environment versus what values are necessary to uphold for a thriving society based on life and liberty for all, and I act accordingly.
Both actions arise from my deep love and compassion for humanity.
Those of us who are seeking to fulfill our service on the planet at this time must come to understand that it’s in holding the heart’s pain without resistance, whether it be arising from a sense of the world’s suffering or someone closer to us, that we remain in the tenderness often necessary for understanding our role here at this most critical juncture on earth.
If we work at this, then hopefully the inputs we offer will work for the true transformation for the highest benefit of all involved. In these challenging times at least we can try our best to get the heart of the matter before taking action.
I guess one thing I am getting at here too is that its not always cut and dry, we can’t let ourselves be defined by spiritual cliches, dogma that is used just as much to control speech or even thought as some of the other more insidious modern mind control techniques.
What’s the saying? “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”.
The distortions in the new age around what compassionate action actually is, is a perfect example of this. As are much of the current trendy “do gooder” facades, masquerading as a front for covert narcissism..
How do we stay in touch with our courage in tenderness and keep open heart, how do we refrain from hardening ourselves in the face of the growing darkness in the world, while still fiercely standing up and speaking out when necessary? Is there a way to stay in touch with the intelligence of the heart and still resonate with a resounding NO to the things that are clearly the wrong path?
Make no mistake, we are headed for a world that is much more truly aligned than the one we are trudging through now, but the path we must walk to get there might be a little more delicate than we previously imagined.
Very good. Highly perceptive and accurate.