On Saturday morning, I had a meditation class and most of the people in my class are kids from a local high school. We took time out to talk about other topics besides meditation and it turned into a discussion about compassion and what it meant to each of us.
One girl says, "why live with compassion? I mean, it means feeling sorry for people that are not in a good way." That quieted the class for some time as we all thought. Now that was an interesting way to see it.
Most people are taught how to think what compassion means but do we have it right? So I picked up my phone (which is a no-no in my class) and looked it up on Dictionary.com. She had it down correctly.
Compassion = a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.
In a way, it is feeling sorry for those less fortunate but it follows with the feeling of trying to rectify or resolve the situation as well.
Maybe we need to feel something else, so I asked the class to stay in their seated position and to give it some thought with their eyes closed. Kind of like meditation but with thought. Let the inside speak out to you as you sit quietly and see what comes up.
What came up with me was empathy. Perhaps we needed more empathy rather than compassion. In my book, empathy was to understand how the other feels because you have been in that situation at one time in your life and to not judge the person as you would have felt terrible being judged for your situation.
As people started to open their eyes and look around, we went around the room and gave our thoughts. What each person said was interesting and some were quite intense in their feelings. Some felt that sympathy would be better to feel. Others thought rather than compassion, feel passion for mankind. I liked that one. There were a few that came up with empathy as well. So naturally, to make sure we were saying the "right thing" I looked up the words.
Sympathy =harmony of or agreement in feeling, as between persons or on the part of one person with respect to another OR the harmony of feeling naturally existing between persons of like tastes or opinion or of congenial dispositions OR the fact or power of sharing the feelings of another, esp. in sorrow or trouble; fellow feeling, compassion, or commiseration.
Passion = any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, as love or hate.
Empathy = the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.
So I was close to how I thought the word empathy meant and like it better than compassion, though I feel that at times, compassion is important. We started to compare the two words, compassion versus empathy and which we thought was important to live with. Sympathy and passion were not close to what we were thinking so we didn't use them.
What I liked about compassion is not the feeling sorry part but resolving to help the person or situation. Empathy could potentially go hand in hand as you know the feeling of what the other person is going through but you don't feel sorrow because you know that it can some how be "fixed" if that is the right word to use.
As the kids were talking, it came to me that this was our future in the room, speaking about humanity and how they perceived it. It was an amazing feeling to know that at least with this group of kids, there will be advocates to humankind and that they want to see the better of the world, not the destruction.
We didn't conquer anything but everyone was able to give their point of view on whether as humans we should have compassion or empathy and allow us to think more as we finished up the class. We managed to even have a 15 minute guided meditation before everyone took off but it was well worth the time to speak out about what is going on in the world and how small steps can be made to change it for the better.
If you have to live a certain way, which would you choose? Compassion or empathy? I definitely try to live each day with gratitude and love but the conversation did make a good point in which else to choose. Food for thought and I love that!
Sending out grateful and loving energy.
Namaste
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