Mera Bharat Mahaan !! About Compassion and Pity

[Guest guest]

Namaste _/\_ all.

 

An excerpt from a good book -

'The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying':

 

"Compassion is a far greater and nobler thing than pity. Pity has its

roots in fear, and a sense of arrogance and condescension, sometimes

even a smug feeling of "I'm glad it's not me."

 

As Stephen Levine says:

"When your fear touches someone's pain it becomes pity;

when your love touches someone's pain, it becomes compassion."

 

To train in compassion, then, is to know all beings are the same and

suffer in similar ways, to honor all those who suffer, and to know

you are neither separate from nor superior to anyone.

 

So your first response on seeing someone suffer becomes not mere pity,

but deep compassion. You feel for that person, respect and even

gratitude, because you now know that whoever prompts you to develop

compassion by their suffering is in fact giving you one of the

greatest gifts of all, because they are helping you to develop that

very quality you need most in your progress toward enlightenment. That

is why we say in Tibet that the beggar who is asking you for money,

or the sick old woman wringing your heart, may be the buddhas in

disguise, manifesting on your path to help you grow in compassion and

so move towards buddhahood."

 

Jaya Sri Radhey!

 

, "Baba ji" <beirut_ka_baba>

wrote:

 

 

> Is charity not a sort of pampering our own Ego?? When we see a

> begger or a person in pains, do we not feel ourselves having upper

> hand ?