Quote of the Day – March 18 2012

Three quotes tonight but they all dance around a common theme that has been on my mind quite a bit lately and perhaps more and more in my heart:

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”
― Plato

“for there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.”
–Dalai Lama

For the sake of discussion, let’s define compassion as the ability to put yourself in another’s shoes and thus gain an understanding of them and their needs. Perhaps what empathy aspires to be when it grows up or perhaps when we grow up.
When we feel compassion for someone, it does not mean feeling sorry for them tho it does mean feeling their suffering. It does not mean we give them our agreement as much as our understanding. Often when practicing compassion, it means we are there suffering with them yet we know to spoon feed them what they need to stop their suffering, we are cheating them out of a lesson they will now have to find a new way to learn.
Blessings, G

Click on image to see full-size

Bunratty Castle in County Clare Ireland

One from the archives:

Krishna Playing to the Heart by G A Rosenberg

Still travelling, now back in England. Tomorrow Stonehenge then Tuesday home.. THis trip has been a great one and as I hoped as much an internal one as it has been an external one

Quote of the Day – February 28 2012

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.”
— Dalai Lama

In any vision that I can conceive of of a healthy society, love and compassion are crucial. Empathy is a close third. It’s not necessarily a matter of walking a mile in each other’s shoes as being willing to understand why they undertook the walk and perhaps be willing to rub their feet afterwards. Or perhaps that is taking the metaphor a bit too far.
Far too often we willfully misunderstand each other. I know that there have been people of whom I was so sure that I would disagree that as soon as they started talking I would listen carefully until they said one phrase that I could misconstrue as wrong. It didn’t matter to me that I was taking it out of context. I just wanted to prove them wrong. Eventually a friend helped me out of that, by rubbing my face in what I was doing. I gradually became aware of how often it was happening and started working on it. I at least hope that’s getting better.
Where were we? Oh yeah, love and compassion and perhaps allowance. Allowing people to be who they are not just in an embrace diversity tolerance way but in a way that we acknowledge their choices in the same way we acknowledge our own. While we’re at it that might become easier, once we start forgiving our own mistakes and be a bit more compassionate and loving towards ourselves. Blessings, G

click on image to see full-size

Anima Awakening by G A Rosenberg