Whoops - a few corrections and I forgot the simple poem. Ha. I'm nobody. Who are you? Are you nobody too? Then there's a pair of us. Don't tell - they'd banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody, How public - like a frog - To tell your name the livelong June To an admiring bog. ~Emily Dickinson ________________________________ From: Emily Reyn <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, January 20, 2012 1:10 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Compassion (to Robin) Dear Robin: I very much appreciate your response as it helped me to articulate within myself what the concept is and how I might think of it. What you say is largely consistent with the idea that compassion as a concept is ultimately a virtue, so to speak (although *virtue* does not really do the concept justice either in that it doesn't capture the depth and breadth of the idea), and perhaps unattainable in that respect. As a term, it is used interchangeably with empathetic or sympathetic, as you mention, and those are better descriptors for the kind of behavior attributed to a person acting out of compassion, for example. I have been batting the word around in my head, along with the word "forgiveness" for some months now. Amma was supposed to embody compassion and I really wanted to know what compassion "felt" like through a supposed saint, but I couldn't recognize such a "feeling" in her hug - my expectations were probably a bit high :) Interestingly, this was a comment on the Buddha at the Gas Pump's comment page for Rick's latest interview by a poster named Valentino. "The depth of one’s compassion only comes from the depth of one’s personal experience with suffering. By fully being, experiencing, embracing, feeling and processing through one’s own suffering, that allows a person to relate to suffering of others. However if you use spiritual teachings as a method to confuse, avoid, deny, distract, bypass, dissociate, and/or hide from your own suffering, then you have little compassion for yourself let alone for anyone else." On another topic, I looked through my books and lo and behold, I found some poetry. Not much...Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Denise Levertov, Spoon River Anthology and a book of Major American Poets, which includes a sampling from many. So, I started with Emily Dickinson and was soon depressed. But, after reading of her life on the ever-helpful Wikipedia, I can appreciate her more. Anyhow, it is all good for my recovery. Thanks again for taking the time to respond to my question. ~Em ________________________________ From: maskedzebra <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2012 12:52 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Compassion (to Robin) --- In [email protected], Emily Reyn <emilymae.reyn@...> wrote: Dear Robin: Can you explain this statement below? I cut it out of the post it was in, but think that it can stand on its own without the surrounding context of what you were discussing then (the SC quote) - however I may be wrong there. Are you saying simply that *man's existence and behavior* does not demonstrate compassion and that *the use of the word* is unwarranted, in this respect (in the 21st century)? Or, are you saying something else? [Robin: Just my own bias here, Emily, but I find the use of the word compassion—almost in any context inside 21st Century existence—unreal and unmeaning.] Wiki discussion of compassion for different religions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassion Dear Emily, Your posts have become so good that I feel much more drawn to praising you for what you are now contributing to FFL rather than trying to answer your question here about compassion. I remember writing this, but after reading the wikepedia definition you provide here I think I have been outthought on this one, and that it would be better for me to just shut up about my problem with the reality of compassion. I think in some very specific sense I have always felt that compassion was too profound an idea to really connect up with the experience of any single human being. There is a depth there in the meaning of the word which makes it seem beyond what is humanly possible to experience. The Dalai Lama is said to be the embodiment of compassion—and I remember a friend of mine attending one of his lectures and insisting to me that he (the DL) radiated so much compassion that the entire auditorium filled up with the energy and light of this compassion. An aura of compassion, then, seemingly physicalized. But I don't know to what extent this kind of mystical compassion (ever heard Tibetan chanting? Doesn't sound like something close to what it means to be a human being—that is, to me. Like so much about the East it feels alien and impersonal) can be effectively translated into acts of grace and unselfishness—at least inside the natural movement of the human personality. I think compassion tends to have the ring of something very praiseworthy and noble and spiritual, but that I have not seen (I speak for myself only here) the display of this trait inside the personal actions of any human being I have met. I understand empathy, sympathy, unselfishness, generosity, feeling the pain and suffering of others. It is just, Emily, if someone told me: So and so is a compassionate person, I would tend to think that person was constructing and performing an act which carried with it the tokens of compassion, but then I would wonder: Is this so-called compassion something intrinsically real and personal to that person or is more a kind of posture of the very sincerest of intention? Is Richard Gere, the devout Tibetan Buddhist and long-standing disciple of the Dalai Lama—who has received all the techniques available to the aspiring Tibetan Buddhist—someone who manifests compassion in any true existential sense? What actual good does the radiation of compassion do for anyone? For the world? For the universe? I am biased here, Emily, because once again I refer you to the excellent wikipedia article where I think a case *is* made for the human application of this idea. For myself, however, compassion has become one of those spiritual words which does not translate into an intense and beautiful (in terms of the aesthetics of the human heart) expression of the unique human person. Have you ever met someone, Emily, whom you would say: That person is compassionate—and mean by this that the person holds within their own self a certain quality which is wholly what they are, but which could be said to be the personal instantiation of this word compassion? Now let me switch topics here and just say again how splendid and interesting are your posts since you really let loose around here. The fact of your not having done TM or known Maharishi appears at this point to make no difference; you are as much a part of this forum as anyone posting here, even though nearly every one of us (still here) is, I believe—with one exception—a TMer or former TMer. So we are all enjoying your intelligence and your perspective as you tell us about how you feel about all manner of things. FFL needs someone who writes as you do, Emily, and who can make us all so very interested in what you tell us about your experience of being Emily. Writing about compassion more or less became for me, Emily, merely the pretext to talk to you. I really like what you say, Emily, and you are one of my favourite posters at FFL. I am sure I speak for the majority of FFL readers. And most importantly you have, it would seem, earned the respect of certain posters here who perhaps would have liked to dismiss your views, but have been forced by the strength and passion with which you write to accord you your proper place here at FFL. No, you are one of the bright and thoughtful persons writing at FFL. You are someone that one comes to—yes, I must say it—love. And you might even come pretty close to being able to be called someone who is "compassionate" :-) I leave you with a passage from Yeats: All perform their tragic play, There struts Hamlet, there is Lear. That's Ophelia, that Cordelia; Yet they, should the last scene be there, The great stage curtain about to drop, If worthy their prominent part in the play, Do not break up their lines to weep. They know that Hamlet and Lear are gay; Gaiety transfiguring all that dread. All men have aimed at, found and lost; Black out; Heaven blazing into the head: Tragedy wrought to its uttermost. Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages, And all the drop-scenes drop at once Upon a hundred thousand stages, It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce. (Lapis Lazuli) This is Good Night, Emily. Robin
