Questions to Master Deshimaru

Question

What is compassion?

Answer

There are many degrees and forms of love. Universal love is the deepest. If we really feel sorry for someone we are not just conscious of the person's physical or emotional suffering, their distress. We must become like them, have the same state of mind as they. Then how should we act to help, comfort, heal? We must, always, see things not from our own subjective point of view but by becoming the other, without duality. We must not just love but become identical with the other mind. In love we are always two. Compassion, or jihi is unity. When I meet you I become you. "How are you? Not so bad?" Somebody gave me a present yesterday. I must give him twice as much in return. Often, with love, it is impossible to do that, so in the end you escape. True compassion is genuine sympathy. We must forget ourselves and become the other. But compassion must always go hand in hand with wisdom. And wisdom with compassion. A great deal has been written on this subject in China and Japan. The whole world proclaims it, in fact, but in Buddhism it has become a powerful force. In love there is always duality, opposition between partners. But in compassion the two beings are only one. Love is relative. Compassion is total communion between two beings. But without wisdom love is blind. Nowadays many parents love their children with egotistical attachment, and so the children want to escape. Too much attachment is not true love, true compassion.