CHAPTER 1
A PSYCHOLOGY OF COMPASSION
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Sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness.
–Galway Kinnell
Compassion is the basis of connection, intimacy, openness, kindness,hospitality, and joy. It is an expression of human freedom, flowing from a soundintuition of the unity of life and all living things. "Even when we arephysically alone and experiencing loneliness we are still essentially withothers; indeed, the very fact that we can feel lonely indicates thatparticipation is a basic structural element in our being." Our connection toothers does not negate our aloneness. We are simultaneously separate and inrelation, and these two truths are ultimately revealed as coexistent and non-contradictory.We are, in the very midst of our aloneness, inextricablyconnected to others.
This dimension of being does not derive from external factors. We are by natureembedded in relationship with the world, in all its sorrow and beauty. Jungcommented on this, saying, "The individual is not just a single separate being,but by his very existence presupposes a collective relationship."
Compassion is at once both deeply personal and thoroughly social. It is thefinest expression of our relationship to self and others. It begins with awillingness to open to ourselves and to life as it is. Instead of rejecting onepart of life and grasping at another, compassion moves closer to all of life. Itresolves the continual struggle against reality by fostering a willingness to beunconditionally present to the whole range of human experience. Compassion is,in part, a practice of unconditional presence. Being unconditionally presentmeans not only seeing ourselves and others, but feeling ourselves and others.Unconditional presence is both receptive and penetrating, it is both discerningand tender-hearted. Like the sun, it simultaneously illuminates and warms.
Compassion dissolves barriers and distance. Unlike pity, "compassion has thequality of respect." Respect for others comes from a sure knowledge of both ourcloseness with others and our likeness to them. The Dalai Lama, in his appeal atthe end of Ethics for the New Millennium, makes this point by reminding us ofthe profound similarity we have to others, and the respect we need to cultivatetoward those who are downtrodden, impoverished, or beleaguered. "Try not tothink of yourself as better than even the humblest beggar," he entreats. "Youwill look the same in your grave."
Compassion is the foundation, process, and goal of psychological health andwholeness. It grounds and guides us, and is the fruit of psychological work.Joseph Campbell refers to it as "the purpose of the journey." He then adds that"once you have come past the pair of opposites you have reached compassion."Arriving past the pair of opposites marks the apex of Jung's psychological goalof individuation. According to Jung, this goal is achieved through what hecalled the transcendent function, or a "quality of conjoined opposites."Conjoining the opposites or arriving past them are simply different ways ofdescribing the same thing. In either case, a dynamic unity emerges out of whatwas before a warring tension. Drawing on Jung's alchemical metaphor for thisphenomenon, we could say that compassion is the alchemical vessel holding theturbulent prima materia. Compassion transforms the original base substance, andcompassion is the purified gold that results.
Freud, Jung, and Depth Psychology
Freud and Jung are towering psychological masters whose explorations andinsights shaped the first 100 years of depth psychology. They devoted theirlives to studying the multivalent terrain of human nature, and to caring for thesuffering soul. While Freud and Jung were both remarkably independent andinnovative thinkers, they were still deeply influenced by the cultural milieu inwhich they lived. The philosophical moorings of depth psychology reveal adynamic tension between the conflicting perspectives of Enlightenment andRomanticism. Both Freud and Jung developed their psychological theories out ofthe crosscurrents of these divergent worldviews.
Freud has been called "the last great representative of the Enlightenment" and"the first to demonstrate its limitations." He championed reason as the supremehuman endowment, and simultaneously embraced the artistic and imaginativeimpulse so celebrated by the Romantics. Freud was pulled between the imaginaland the rational, and his theories reflect this. His work is suffused withimages of struggle and ultimately irreconcilable conflict between opposingforces.
Freud perceived an innate aggressive streak in human beings that was foreveropposed by an equally powerful Eros. These two impulses, one toward life and theother toward death, were engaged in eternal battle within the human psyche.Bruno Bettelheim describes Freud's conviction that "the good life—or, at leastthe best life available to man, the most enjoyable and most meaningful—consistsof being able truly to love not oneself, but others." This belief in theimportance of loving others was coupled, however, with Freud's view thatpositive states such as love and compassion were the result of either thesuppression or sublimation of narcissistic, selfish motives, and were thereforealways fraught with struggle. For Freud, there was simply no transcending thepull of opposites; there was only learning to manage them skillfully.
Jung's analytic psychology also rests upon a theory of opposites, but unlikeFreud, Jung believed these opposites were ultimately reconcilable through theprocess of individuation. In general, Jung held a more optimistic view of humannature and its potential. Distancing himself from Freud, whom he accused offocusing too narrowly on weird and neurotic states, he said, "For my part, Iprefer to look at man in light of what in him is healthy and sound."Furthermore, Jung believed the impulse toward health and wholeness was intrinsicto human life, because "within the soul from its primordial beginnings there hasbeen a desire for light and an irrepressible urge to rise out of the primaldarkness."
Yet, despite the intimate connection it has with suffering and its alleviation,neither Freud nor Jung concentrated their far-reaching and formidableintellectual powers on the subject of compassion, or more specifically onmethods for developing it.
Tibetan Buddhism and Inner Transformation
While compassion has been largely ignored in the field of depth psychology, ithas been the main theme of study and practice in Tibetan Buddhism for over 1000years. I have never come across a single instruction within this infinitelyvaried and rich tradition in which compassion and its development are not insome way central.
Protected by geographic remoteness and encircling mountains, Tibet exists in anenvironment not unlike an alchemical vessel. The contents of this vessel are theconcentrated study and cultivation of conjoined compassion and wisdom. Tens ofthousands of Tibet's finest minds devoted themselves, over many centuries, tothis endeavor. Unlike the modern West, where outer progress and military prowesswere pursued with zeal, Tibet's passion was directed toward cultivating the soulof the individual. Robert Thurman observes that this concentration onindividuals' evolutionary potential contributed to a "unique social andpsychological creation, which I call inner, or spiritual modernity, an exactmirror of the outer, or secular modernity just taking off in the WesternEnlightenment" Here, Thurman says, "The soul was thought of as a subtle,relative, totally and inextricably interconnected process, powerfullyinfluencing and influenced by its environment." And the primary therapy forthe soul was altruism grown out of love and compassion.
James Hillman notes that the "insights of depth psychology derive from the soulin extremis, the sick, suffering, abnormal and fantastic conditions of thepsyche." This parallels the insights of Buddhism to a point, but with animportant distinction. While the principal insights of Buddhism give significantattention to states of suffering and sorrow, they are not derived from it, 'butfrom those who have achieved the most extreme states of awareness, compassionand health."
Suffering is emphasized in Buddhism because we are caught in it, and we sufferit. The true message of Buddhism, however, is not a message of suffering—it is aproclamation of freedom. Our innate capacity for freedom and joy are the heartof the Buddha's realization and the foundation of his teaching, and they formthe basis of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist psychology. In Tibet, all three paths ofBuddhist teaching were preserved and practiced as a graded path, with each leveltranscending and including the other. These three paths, or "vehicles," arecommonly referred to as Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana, although there arealso other ways of classifying them.
An individual following the Theravadan path focuses on uprooting ignorance—thecause of suffering—and attaining the personal liberation of an Arhat. In theTheravadan tradition, also known as the Way of the Elders, compassion for thesuffering of others is certainly cultivated, but the goal is individualliberation from suffering through the realization of wisdom.
The Mahayana, or Great Vehicle, subsumes all the basic principles and practicesof the Theravada, but adjusts the focus to others and the aim to totalenlightenment. This vehicle stresses the view that we can never be completelyfree as long as others to whom we are inextricably linked suffer. Mahayanapractitioners are not concerned with "ordinary liberation" for themselves, butrather commit themselves to total enlightenment—thereby fulfilling the purposeof both self and other. The lojong text and practice introduced later belong tothe Mahayana teachings of Tibetan Buddhism.
The Vajrayana, or Diamond Vehicle, is a Mahayana path that introduces anelaborate combination of meditation and visualization techniques intended toaccelerate the process of transformation by which an individual may reachcomplete enlightenment.
Tibetan Buddhism uses the fully awakened state as a blueprint for optimalhealth, encouraging those who practice to set their sights here. A vision oftotality, of complete awakening for the benefit of all beings, inspiresindividuals to aim for the development of unconditional and unlimited compassionand wisdom. Methods for deepening insight and developing compassion areinseparable from the committed effort to transform habitually painful states.
In contrast to this approach, the intentional cultivation of innate mentalhealth is not generally found in psychology. Mental illness is far more studiedand better understood than mental health. Walsh and Vaughan note that, "whereasconventional Western therapies have excellent techniques for reducing negativeemotions, they have virtually none for enhancing positive ones." Jung alsonoted the unfortunate absence of such methodology in the field of depthpsychology, and called for his colleagues to find a "bridge" to "self-development."
Among the obstacles to finding such a bridge has been the distinction made bydepth psychologists between the heart and the mind. Western civilization haslong separated the spheres of heart and mind, relegating thinking and reason tothe mind, and emotion and feeling to the heart. This may, in part, explain theabsence of words like compassion from most of the literature of depthpsychology. Commitment to an affiliation with science and medicine prompted manyof the pioneers in the field to distance themselves from subjects that mightsuggest a departure from, or contamination of, the "pure" reason applied in thenatural sciences. Even Jung, who was accused of being mystical and"unreasonable" by many of his detractors, always defended the scientificempiricism of his work, wanting to be seen by his peers as a man of science.
Despite a movement that had long been underway to distinguish betweenhuman/inner science and natural/outer science, Freud and Jung were trained asphysicians, and both men sought medical and "outer science" credibility.Following his split with Freud, Otto Rank denounced what he called Freud'sexcessive preoccupation with reason, saying that the dynamic and creativeprinciple of irrationality is the "basis for the emergence of everything ofwhich mankind is capable in personal and social betterment."
In Tibetan Buddhism, this conflict between inner and outer science does notexist. Inner science is viewed as legitimate and empirically verifiable viainner experience, just as outer science is empirically verified by outer meansand measures. The development of compassion is within the domain of innerscience and depends, not upon the irrational, but upon sound thinking andreasoning. Thus, the particular strength of the Buddhist teaching is that "itshows you clearly the 'logic' of compassion." The heart, from a Buddhistperspective, is not without reason; it is the "place" of a higher reason.Moreover, the same term—chitta—is used for both mind and heart.
In Buddhist teachings, the heart is not an adjunct to thinking. It is "a directpresence that allows a complete attunement with reality." Tibetans touch theirchests when referring to the mind. They understand the unified heart/mind tomean our most subtle being, our Buddha-nature, the stainless jewel of our innatefreedom. Buddha-nature is primordially pure and unconditionally open.
The heart, in this case, is the basis for cultivating both the wisdom thatdirectly perceives the nature of reality and unconditional compassion. Thematuration of these two qualities into an integrated and synchronized wisdom andcompassion are the principal characteristics of a fully enlightened being. Everyindividual-in fact, every living being—is endowed with this pure nature, andhuman beings with wholehearted commitment and skillful guidance can develop thisinnate quality to an infinite degree.
Primordially pure mind is our innermost and subtlest being, dwelling much deeperthan the conditioned personality. It is present in every living being, but isawakened to different degrees within different individuals. The existence of anaturally pure mind does not, however, negate or trivialize the greed,aggression, dissatisfaction, and cruelty found in human beings throughout time.The tension between Eros and Thanatos (death)—yearning and despondency,attraction and repulsion—is a deeply embedded, instinctive pattern within thepsyche. There is a colossal struggle between these forces within us, andattending to this dimension of life is crucial.
In this sense, Buddhism and depth psychology are in accord. Buddhism diverges inits contention that a nondual, primordially pure mind reflects our truest anddeepest nature. Because of our fundamentally pure nature, we each have in ourhearts the potential for unlimited love and compassion. This is the treasurewithin. If we suddenly discovered a priceless treasure buried beneath our home,we would not delay a moment digging for it. Yet, all too often, we squander the"wish-fulfilling jewel" of our minds.
Lojong
There are countless texts in the Indo-Tibetan tradition devoted to instructionsfor developing compassion. I will introduce the Seven Points for Training theMind, which belongs to a tradition of teachings called lojong, or thoughttransformation. The origin of the Tibetan Buddhist lojong tradition isattributed to the great Indian Buddhist Master, Atisha (982–1054), who broughtthese teachings to Tibet. The word "lojong" has two parts: lo means mind, andjong means to train or transform. Lojong trains the mind in practices thatinduce the qualities of kindness, love, compassion, tolerance, inner strength,and wisdom.
The lojong is a sacred technology—the "technology of peace, the technology toproduce love, kindness and open-heartedness." Whereas all the great wisdomtraditions teach the value of love and compassion, lojong actually provides aclearly articulated methodology for developing them. It has, thus, been praisedas "the most profound form of psychology and the best form of meditation."
For generations, these teachings were passed on in whispered secrecy from masterto disciple. Much later, they were written down in a variety of forms, the mostwidely known being The Root Verses of Seven-Point Mind Training, composed byGeshe Chekawa Yeshe Dorje (1101–1175). The lojong is now widely taught in allschools of Tibetan Buddhism. Mind training, or thought transformation, has twoprimary components: the main instruction, which is given in the form ofaphorisms, and the practice of tonglen, which combines giving and receiving withthe breath cycle. Inhalation becomes a vehicle for breathing in the suffering ofourselves and others; exhalation gives away the goodness we cling to and hoard.Lojong, which identifies selfish desire—the continual chorus of "me, me, me"—asthe shrewd underminer of our happiness, is specifically designed to counteractingrained selfishness and strengthen the nascent force of compassion.
