Buddhas in Disguise

As you continue to meditate on compassion, when you see someone suffer, your first response 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 his or her suffering is in fact giving you one of the greatest gifts of all, as you are being helped 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 toward buddhahood.

~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Praise Others' Goodness and Forget Their Faults

How do we practice? Where do we start? We start with us. In our time of democracy, freedom, and openness, individual rights are very important. Therefore, we cannot interfere with or criticize others. We can only examine ourselves to see if we have these faults.

It is very important to start with examining ourselves. We should be modest and praise others, even when they praise themselves and disparage everyone else. If someone has ninety-nine faults and only one merit, we praise the merit and do not mention or keep thinking of the ninety-nine faults. This way our thoughts are positive and we reduce our afflictions.

So to practice, we praise the goodness of others and forget their faults. In so doing, we focus on cultivating our purity and goodness.

Precepts Transcend Time and Space

Question: Why do you say that precepts are unchanging and eternal? Don't they change as society changes?

Response: When we think of rules and laws we usually think of what are worldly laws. It is necessary to amend these laws periodically to suit the people and living conditions of the time.

But precepts are supramundane rules, not worldly rules. If you want to transcend this world, the Six Paths, and the Ten Realms, you have to adhere to precepts.

Precepts are rules that all Buddhas and bodhisattvas adhere to in their cultivation over countless lifetimes. They are rules for transcending the Six Paths and the Ten Realms, not worldly rules for daily life. That is why they are unchangeable, the Five Precepts in particular. Do you think the Five Precepts can be changed? Is no killing wrong? How about no stealing, no sexual misconduct, no lying, and no intoxicants? They are unchangeable. They are major precepts by principle and transcend time and space.

~ Based on Ven. Master Chin Kung's 2003 lecture series on the Amitabha Sutra

Compassion Can Cause No Pain

The first thing to remember is that compassion can cause no pain. The compassion that Buddha taught does not cause hurt and has no power to cause pain. If it hurts or causes painful feelings we would not call it compassion.

True compassion is the positive energy that flows from your heart. When you feel that positive energy you experience comfort, not discomfort. As you express and share that positive energy you bring comfort and healing to the others.

Say for example your friend or family member gets sick or is seriously wounded in an accident, what would be the normal first reaction? It would be to get sad, upset and angry because you don't want them to suffer. Because you now feel their pain, you might say, "I feel compassion for them and it hurts me a great deal."

What you are calling compassion in this situation is actually only the negative reaction to the suffering of another. Negative reaction is usually blind and mechanical and it radiates negative energy. You get sad, unhappy and disturbed by the pain of others and your mechanical emotional impulses discharge a negative energy. The pain you experience is the result of this. Not the result of compassion.

Many people mistakenly call such negative emotions compassion and then believe that compassion causes our pain.

Please be clear, I am not saying there is something wrong if you react negatively to someone's suffering [and] find it painful. But I am saying that in Buddhism we simply don't call such negative emotions compassion.

For example, the negative energy that you transmit from your pain is a result of the sadness, grief, and confusion. It can carry no healing potential. But compassion is about sharing healing. It is about sending harmonious energy to the person who is in distress. Sadness carries no healing power. Fear, grief and anger carry no healing power. But your true compassion does.

~ Bhante Wimala

Changes Come and Go by Themselves

If you pay attention for just five minutes, you know some very fundamental dharma: things change, nothing stays comfortable, sensations come and go quite impersonally, according to conditions, but not because of anything that you do or think you do. Changes come and go quite by themselves. In the first five minutes of paying attention, you learn that pleasant sensations lead to the desire that these sensations will stay and that unpleasant sensations lead to the hope that they will go away. And both the attraction and the aversion amount to tension in the mind. Both are uncomfortable. So in the first minutes, you get a big lesson about suffering: wanting things to be other than they are. Such a tremendous amount of truth to be learned just closing your eyes and paying attention to bodily sensations.

~ Sylvia Boorstein