Let’s look at compassion and what we mean by it in the ordinary world. Based on our assumptions that things happen unfairly, of evil people over there and nice people over here, monsters over there, victims over here, which this is the view we have of the world, look at the people we have compassion for now.
First, we have compassion for those we’re attached to; we love them, too. And we have compassion for the victims, don’t we? If you’re a fanatic political activist you’re very compassionate for your people, and they’re the victims. To that extent, you have hate for those who do it to you, because your philosophy tells you that they cause it. Then, you feel righteous in dropping bombs on them, killing them, calling it a noble action. This is the wicked thing about fanatic so-called religious people: how we turn it into something as a tool to suit our own delusions.
Equally, you get some fanatic with the opposite politics, who truly believes that they are the victims and these monsters over there are evil and we must drop bombs on them. You have compassion for the victims, your people, and to that extent you hate the oppressors. Look at the world, look at your own life, look at rats and dogs and cats, we all do it. This is the view of the world, and Buddha is arguing with this view.
We’re all in the same boat
Having looked at karma, the law of cause and effect, and at the way the mind works—for ourselves; this is first level of practice—we now are very comfortable in taking responsibility for our own stuff and really developing ourselves and really growing up.
Having worked this out for ourselves, it’s now easy to look at the rest of the world, all the victims, all the oppressors and see them all in the same boat: this life as a victim, next life you are the oppressor; the oppressors of this life are the victims of a past life, and will be the victims of the future; the victims of this life are the oppressors of past life and will be the oppressors of the future. We just go round and round and round. You hit me, then I’ll hit you. “Oh, but she hit me!” “Oh no, then you hit me back.” “But she hit me, it’s her fault.”
Look at us all, never taking responsibility! That’s the reason to have compassion for sentient beings, that’s the Buddha’s point. Not because you’re attached to this group and you feel sorry for them. That’s not really compassion at all. It’s better than nothing. But it’s not much help because in the end the aggression, the anger towards the oppressors, and the wrong philosophy that they are the main cause of the suffering of the victims, that’s what puts you deeper and deeper and deeper into the bigger hole of samsara.
Compassion for the harmers
What is real compassion? Well, compassion has to be equal for all beings, for it to be genuine compassion. Compassion is simply seeing that others are suffering and, even more sadly—this is the point—that others are causing themselves suffering by being angry and blaming everyone else. From this point of view—it sounds shocking to say this for the world, but you check—actually you’d have more compassion for the harmer than you would for the victims.
Given the view of karma, it is logical. The victims are experiencing the fruits of their past harming that caused that suffering. They now have just finished that suffering by having that terrible result, they’ve purified that. The very having of suffering is the finishing of those seeds. The fruits that fall off the tree, that’s the finishing of that seed, isn’t it? If you have suffering, that’s the fruit of your past negative karma. Then if you have it, it’s now finished. This is a very marvelous attitude to have towards your suffering: it’s the fruit of your own junk coming past, coming up, now you experience it: “Oh great, what a relief.”
There was this rabbi, a Kabbalah rabbi I was in a conference with a few years ago in Florida—because he said they have a view of karma also—he said they have this saying: that every time something bad happens you think, “Great, one less debt to repay!” It’s a really good view, you know.
That’s the view here. That’s how come a couple of Tibetan nuns, whose story I often mention, could have such compassion for their torturers: “We know that we must have harmed them in the past and, for sure, they will suffer in the future.” They know it is their own seeds ripening, so then you can bear them; that gives you the courage to bear them and even to be grateful that it’s now finished.
Without thinking deeply about the philosophy of karma, which is at the heart of the entire Buddhist worldview, this has no meaning. But when we understand it, it’s powerful, transformative, for ourselves and others.
We are all in the same boat, that’s a fact.