“Love and compassion are
necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot
survive” - Dalai Lama.
“Love behaves like a separate being in the psyche, acting from within
and enabling us to look beyond ourselves at our fellow human beings – people
who can be valued and cherished, rather than used” - Robert Johnson,
Psychologist
“Fundamentally
being compassionate or caring for others is actually our default mode and that
often times especially in modern society, we get distracted from who we really
are” – Dr James Doty, Professor of Neurosurgery
“What are we if we don’t try to help others?
We’re nothing. Nothing at all” – Henry Marsh, Brain surgeon
We have come a long way in the last 600
million years!
Humanity 1.01 in
a nutshell:
“It is possible that the first creatures with
a nervous system were entirely unconscious. Still, over 600 million years, the
simple network linking sensory and motor systems grew more complex, and
developed a headquarters – a rudimentary brain – at the top of the spinal cord.
This brain evolved further from the bottom up, first thickening the brainstem,
next acquiring subcortical structures such as the amygdala and basal ganglia,
and then growing a cortex that now includes the prefrontal, parietal, temporal,
and occipital lobes. Somewhere along the way, the survival of animals was
increased by evolving capacities to become aware of their internal states and
external environment. Perhaps the ancient jellyfish had no awareness, but the
goldfish in a pond are clearly aware of the gardener’s shadow as they rise to
be fed, and a cat shows heightened awareness of a nearby dog. In humans and
other animals, awareness, attention, sleep, and waking all depend upon
underlying neural structures and activities; consciousness is largely if not
entirely a natural process. (Panksepp 2005).
Rick Hansen continues the story: “Love is woven into your day because it's woven into your DNA: as our
ancestors evolved over the last several million years, many scientists believe
that love, broadly defined, has been the primary driving force behind the
evolution of the brain. Bands of early humans that were particularly good at
understanding and caring for each other out-competed less cooperative and
loving bands, and thereby passed on the genes of empathy, bonding, friendship,
altruism, romance, compassion, and kindness - the genes, in a word, of love”.
(Hansen, Rick. 2013)
Aborigine elder Bob Randall explains that, “Kanyini is the principle of connectedness through caring and responsibility that underpins Aboriginal life … Only we can be responsible for our kurunpa, our soul. It is affected by our thoughts and actions. If it is weakened for example because we have ignored our responsibility towards a family member in need, then that will affect us physically. We feel a sickness of spirit. All this comes from tjukurrpa, which is the bigger consciousness of something that was and is the way to live, the way to live in harmony with all things”. (Hogan, M & Randall, R. 2006)
Aborigine elder Bob Randall explains that, “Kanyini is the principle of connectedness through caring and responsibility that underpins Aboriginal life … Only we can be responsible for our kurunpa, our soul. It is affected by our thoughts and actions. If it is weakened for example because we have ignored our responsibility towards a family member in need, then that will affect us physically. We feel a sickness of spirit. All this comes from tjukurrpa, which is the bigger consciousness of something that was and is the way to live, the way to live in harmony with all things”. (Hogan, M & Randall, R. 2006)
But have we started going backwards in the last few years?
Mahatma Gandhi is reported to
have said, “You
must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the
ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty”.
Does that still hold? What are the things that threaten our feeling and
demonstration of compassion?
My ‘market research of one’ tells me that more and
more people are being caught up in the ‘me first, look after number one’
mind-set. They are joining the stampede
to build their personal brand, make money, often in abrasive, bitter, angry,
sometimes outrageous ways – and this drive is fuelled by populist politicians
and on social media. We are bombarded with fake news, by denials, naming and
blaming, fear mongering, stereotyping, ‘us and them’ thinking. This amounts to
an assault on our basic impulse to be empathic. (In South Africa, when farmers and foreign nationals are murdered, looted and attacked and when femicide
assumes epidemic proportions, when leadership remains corrupt, fuels aggressive
and violent behaviour or remains silent on critical issues, we may well ask,
‘Where has compassion and respect for the dignity of the other gone?’)
It may be that the demands of the Fourth
Industrial Revolution, the super-fast, complex, high-tech and uncertain
transformation of society that is upon us, will exacerbate the trend towards
reduced compassion. It may also be that diminishing resources (water, food, clean
air) will put more focus on survival and ‘us versus them’ conflict, and void
engagement with emotions and virtues like compassion. Will we see a greater
emergence of the bystander effect, a crossing to the other side of the street
when confronted by someone else in distress?
Will the new meaning of ‘friend’ shift from social media to ‘real life’?
(Has compassion become
for many an emoji with a sad face or tears?) Is more disconnection occurring? Are
potential macro events likely to even further erode human compassion (Is a
break-up of the United Nations such a far-fetched thought? Will trade and other
wars escalate and effectively separate peoples?
Is compassion being watered down by corporates
claiming moral high ground for selfish motive - under the guise of an espoused
virtue. A response to a LinkedIn post caught my eye recently: “The other
function of this virtue signalling sinecure is the cynical use of conspicuous
compassion”. (The Guardian. 2019)
Sara Konrath
is Assistant
Research Professor at the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the University
of Michigan. With a primary focus on the costs and benefits of empathy and
related traits (e.g. emotional intelligence, narcissism) and behaviors (e.g.
helping, caregiving). Her studies
indicate that we may be becoming less considerate, less inclined to be
empathic, and less likely to relate to other’s feelings and viewpoints. “While this rate of decline appeared to be
relatively stable between 1979 and 1999, it nearly tripled after the year 2000”.
(Weikle, B)
What about the (distant?) possibilities (helpful or harmful) of communicating
telepathically,
“ … thanks to brain-computer interfaces …. that’s the gist of a new report about neural implant
technology by the Royal Society, a UK scientific organization … ‘Not only
thoughts, but sensory experiences, could be communicated from brain to brain,’
the report reads. ‘Someone on holiday could beam a ‘neural postcard’ of what
they are seeing, hearing or tasting into the mind of a friend back home’. (Robitski, D. 2019)
A vehicle for scientific
telepathic compassion! (Certainly, the case for an influential body to work effectively
and urgently in the ethics-in-artificial-intelligence arena is becoming
stronger by the day)
Can
we reclaim our essential humanity and compassion?
It is not a question of
whether we can reclaim, rather that we must
reclaim compassion.
Instigated by author Karen
Armstrong, an expert on comparative religion, and unveiled in 2009, the Charter for Compassion exhorts all peoples and religions to embrace the
core virtue of compassion. It recognises that “We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force
in our polarized world … Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential
to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity”. (Charter of Compassion. 2009).
We are whole persons (physical, intellectual, emotional, social and
spiritual) and being fully human means not denying any part of ourselves. Compassion is a ‘spiritual’
(not religious) virtue. It is most often accompanied by empathy, unconditional love
and a desire to come alongside, support, sooth and comfort another being who is
experiencing pain or suffering (or self for that matter). It is not something
that can be taught intellectually. Rather it is a matter of the heart, learned
as we are exposed to parenting, conditioning and experiences; and it results or
issues from what Leonard Cohen termed “a
revelation of the heart”. Maria Popova relates a wonderful example of this
from Mark Twain’s life. (Popova, M. 2014)
In ‘slow motion’ we
can trace a progression from indifference to sympathy/pity to empathy to compassion
to an ethical action of love. See it happening in this story:
“In 1944 the
mother of the poet Yevtushenko travelled from Siberia to Moscow, where she
witnessed a procession of 20, 000 German prisoners of war marching through the
streets. The generals strutted at their head, oozing contempt, determined to
show that they still considered themselves superior. “The bastards smell of
perfume’, someone shouted. The crowd yelled its hatred. The women waved their
clenched fists in anger, and the police had great difficulty in holding them
back. But when the Russians saw how pitifully thin and ragged the ordinary
German soldiers were, dirty, battered and completely miserable, many of them
hobbling on crutches, the street became silent. Suddenly, an elderly woman
broke through the cordon and held out a crust of bread to one of the soldiers.
Then from every side, other woman copied her, giving food, cigarettes, whatever
they had with them. ‘The soldiers were no longer enemies. They were people”’.
So, how do we
nurture soft hearts?
RAISE YOUR AWARENESS
The essence of Prayer is attention, and the essence
of Compassion is attention – thus compassion is a form of prayer. This fits
with an overall awareness that we are all a part of the web of life, totally
and deeply interconnected. Naturally
mindful Zorba the Greek said it well:
“It’s beyond me. Everything seems to have a soul
– wood, stones, the wine we drink and the earth we tread on. Everything, boss,
absolutely everything!” (Kazantzakis, N. 1961)
We can be thus aware during even the busiest
of days. And mindfulness does have power to foster self and other compassion,
entrench beliefs and thought processes, help the embodiment and ‘hard-wiring’
of a compassionate mind-set; which reinforces ‘just doing it’.
Emotional intelligence and the ability to understand
and relate to self and others rests on developing awareness.
DO INNER WORK
Jung’s idea
of individuation (becoming whole) is not individualisation, which begets
loneliness and depression through disconnection. It is about brave adherence to
inner work to discover and work with those parts of ourselves we subdue, hide
(‘good’ and ‘bad’). So that we can overcome negative power in the form of fears,
biases; and release a latent, inherent acceptance, love and compassion – for self
and for others – letting go of existing protective mechanisms, limiting
beliefs, biases, anything that holds us back or weighs us down - in order to
adapt and develop - without fear of backlash or adverse consequence. And become
integrated, authentic, real – present rather than egoic.
“I want to emphasize that the
shadow is not inherently evil or wrong; it varies from culture to culture. In
the United States today, white dominant culture prizes competition, urgency,
individualism, niceness (or avoidance of conflict), and logic. Other values and
ways of being, such as cooperation, appropriate self-care, community, and
vulnerability, are often seen as inferior. We cause so much harm and lose so
much possibility by fearing our differences. By reclaiming our shadow we can tap
into greater compassion and creativity”.
(Rohr, R. 2019)
Without inner work, and owning our shadow
side, we are nothing.
Meditation, reflection, journaling are
practices that we might employ. Specifically, with respect to compassion,
Japanese naikan reflection is
helpful.
When mulling over relationship difficulties,
events that have caused distance and friction, the Jewish practice of midrash can
be effectively utilised to encourage reframing, active imagination, and plumbing of the depths of each story
and uncover new truth and possibility, explore numerous facets of the same
story from different angles and viewpoints. (McKenna, M and Cowan, T. 1997)
McKenna, Megan and Cowan,
Tony (1997) Keepers of the Story Orbis
Books, pg 66.
RECOGNISE THAT COMPASSION HAS A GROUP AND SHARED
DYNAMIC
Of course,
developing compassion for self (leading to compassion for other) has undeniable
value. (Germer, C & Neff, K. 2019). We should also recognise that separation,
non-connection can foster distrust, verbal and even physical violence. In the
same way that crowds, organisations, groups can lead to a fragmentation of
conscience, breakdown of ethical behaviour – so they can influence and
facilitate positive, virtuous behaviour and thinking. Revisit the Yevtushenko story above.
“Compassion doesn't belong to the individual,
it is an emergent property of the whole". Compassion is not an individual, superior, ‘helping’,
self-serving attribute or property, but equalises us. It can be seen as a
non-dualistic dynamic shared between ‘giver’ and ‘receiver’. Cynthia Bourgeault
refers to this as “effortless compassion”. (Bourgeault, C. 2017)
Watch this wonderful, wise, and humble
explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=dl8qaVRiK5U
And
if we can learn to be open to receiving compassion from others when in pain, we
are simultaneously equipping ourselves to extend compassion towards ourselves
and others.
JUST DO IT
Practice precedes competence. Behaviour can
beget attitude. Doing assists being. Rachel Naomi Remen, a medical doctor with
a chronic illness who understands patients, can put herself in their shoes:
"Before every session I take a moment to remember my
humanity. There is no experience that this man has that I cannot share with
him, no fear I cannot understand, no suffering that I cannot care about,
because I too am human. No matter how deep his wound, he does not need to be
ashamed in front of me. I too am vulnerable. And because of this, I am enough.
Whatever his story, he no longer needs to be alone with it. This is what will
allow his healing to begin". (Remen,
R. 1996)
Spiritual Care
teacher Kirsten DeLeo on coming alongside another:
“Accompaniment is a beautiful word and not
much used these days. It speaks directly to what we do when we care for someone
nearing the end of life. The Greek word for comforter is paraclete, which means
“the one who walks alongside”. Caring for another means we accompany them, we
walk by their side. Walking alongside the dying on their journey, we are fully
present for them and also fully present to ourselves”. Her wisdom applies in any context, not only
the dying process. (DeLeo, K. 2015)
In our day-to-day interactions, mindful
listening is a powerful combination of unfiltered, focused, unconditional-acceptance
based on valuing the other. A compassionate practice.
Just-do- it presupposes that continual
learning and growth allow one over time to just-do-it-better!
So for example, when anger is triggered, we
can more naturally bring into play:
·
Emotional
intelligence to identify and accept it
·
Realise as a
fruit of inner work that strong emotional reactions are often prompted by our
own shadow
·
Put oneself in
the other person’s shoes
·
Shift our
emotional focus away from any person
involved (and putting the focus of our moral outrage/ righteous anger on the issue)
·
Apply nonviolent
communication when we engage (focusing on both parties needs and requests) and
not lapsing into naming and blaming or intellectual debating of the issue. This
is in recognition that we are all part of the web of life, connected at a deep
level and that we simply do not know the other’s soul intentions and needs
·
Uncover through naikan reflection that we all invoke
anger in others
… and thus bring about a transformation of the
anger (or despair, pain, frustration …..) into compassion
A CAUTIONARY WORD OR THREE
Neuroscience and positive
psychology offer much. Practitioners sometimes have a tendency to reduce
‘heart’ matters to formulae and use these to promote individual ‘growth’ based
on dubious motives. ‘Science’ is sometimes highly specialised and ‘narrow’, and
not always holistic and unbiased.
Take kissing, reduced to chemical
and ‘scientific’ analysis:
“Evolutionary biologists suggest that erotic kissing is a so-called
relic gesture, passed down through cultures from these early practices of the
mother’s deep kissing and the infant’s searching tongue movements. What happens
to our hormones when we kiss?
Anthropologist, Helen
Fisher says
that when we partake in mouth-to-mouth kissing, we share saliva which has
testosterone in it which enhances our sex-drive. Kissing also stimulates the
brain hormones, dopamine and oxytocin– both of which promote bonding and
attachment in human beings”. (Thompson, S. 2018)
In
similar fashion, compassion may be reduced to the formulaic:
Empathy
+ Benevolence + Urge to Act = Compassion
Of
course it is interesting (and maybe impressive) to note that when compassion is being
demonstrated our vagus nerve comes into play, the heart rate increases, certain
regions of the brain are activated, and oxytocin is released …. But none of
that adds to or reduces our capacity for compassion.
And Eastern and Ancient practices are
sometimes hijacked and commoditised (deliberately or unwittingly) to serve
Western outcomes and lucrative markets. Think
about Purpose (Williams, G. 2016), Meaningful engagement, Mindfulness, …
Prof of Management Ronald: “As mindfulness has increasingly pervaded every aspect of contemporary
society, so have misunderstandings about what it is, whom it helps, and how it
affects the mind and brain. At a practical level, the misinformation and
propagation of poor research methodology can potentially lead to people being
harmed, cheated disappointed, and/or disaffected”. (Purser, R.E. 2019) Fr John Maine: “Learning
to meditate is not just a matter of mastering a technique. It is much more
learning to appreciate and respond directly to the depths of your own nature,
not human nature in general, but your own in particular”. (Main, J.)
Meditation is more about subduing the ego in stillness and silence, than about
developing achievement skills!
Perhaps we can recover our humanity and innate
compassion best by relying more on nurturing our heart-minds? (Tafler, A. 2019)
Contemplate Vincent Willem van Gogh’s The Good
Samaritan (In the Public Domain)
References
Bourgeault,
Cynthia (2017) The Heart of Compassion 2017 Festival of Faiths https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=dl8qaVRiK5U
Buscaglia Leo (1972)
Love: what life is all about Fawcett Columbine
Charter for Compassion (2009)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_for_Compassion
DeLeo, Kirsten (2015)
The Bone at the Heart: Care for the Dying
- the Contemplative Approach Wise Brain Bulletin Issue 9.2 April 2015
Germer,
Christopher & Neff, Kristin (2019) Teaching the Mindful Self-Compassion Program:
A Guide for Professionals 1st Edition, The Guilford
Press
Hansen, Rick (2013) Trust in Love Just One Thing Newsletter, 17 July
Hogan, Melanie and Randall, Bob (Producers)
(2006) Kanyini (Film)
Kazantzakis, Nikos (1995) Zorba the Greek Faber & Faber
Main, John, Fr John
Main and the Practice of Christian Meditation
McKenna, Megan and Cowan,
Tony (1997) Keepers of the Story Orbis
Books, pg 66.
Panksepp,
Jaak (2005) Affective Consciousness: Core
Emotional Feelings in Animals and Humans Consciousness & Cognition 14,
no. 1 (2005): 30–80. Cited in Neurodharma: Practicing with the
Brain in
Mind © 2013 Rick Hanson, Ph.D.
Popova, Maria (2014) Brain Pickings: Mark
Twain on Racism, how Religion is Used to Justify Injustics, and What His Mother
Taught Him About Compassion 24th October, 2014; citing The Biography
of Mark twain
Purser, Ronald
(2019) McMindfulness:
How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality Repeater Books,
UK
Remen, Rachel Naomi MD (1996) Kitchen Table Wisdom The Berkley Publishing Group
(Penguin)
Robitski, Dan (2019) Scientists: Brain Implants Could Essentially
Make Us Telepathic Futurism 10th
September, 2019
Rohr, Richard (2019) The Universal Christ: how a forgotten reality can change everything we
see, hope for and believe SPCK & Convergent Books
Rohr, Richard (2019) Meditation: Nodding to the Shadow Center for Action
and Contemplation 11th September, 20129
Tafler, Afshan (2019) How Your Heart May Be Your Wisest Brain Unyte Health Inc. Blog
The Guardian (2019) Australians reject
Coalition attacks on businesses promoting social issues: New survey finds
almost 80% support CEOs having a say, but more than half believe when they do,
it is out of self-interest 16th September, 2019
(Owen
E. comment on LinkedIn post by Graham Allsopp on 16th September,
2019)
See also: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/sep/16/most-australians-believe-business-leaders-should-speak-out-on-social-issues
Thompson, Sylvia (2018) Science of kissing: why a kiss is not just a kiss. The evolutionary
origins and physiology behind mouth to mouth kissing Irish Times Tue, Feb 13, 2018, 07:01
Tyson, Neil DeGrasse (2014) Explains Why The Cosmos Shouldn't Make You Feel Small (interview
with WBUR News/NPR) February 27, 2014 https://www.wbur.org/npr/283443670/neil-degrasse-tyson-explains-why-the-cosmos-shouldnt-make-you-feel-small
Weikle, Brandie How to cultivate
compassion Reader’s Digest
Williams, Graham (2016) Corporate Stampede to Purpose
Zeldin, Theodore
(1998) An
Intimate History of Humanity Vintage
