Compassion and Solidarity

Someone once gave me a great prescription for cultivating solidarity, empathy, identification. That prescription is this: look for similarities, not differences. What would happen if we looked first for what we have in common with another human, another living being? I start this way: "We're both alive, we both want to stay alive, we both want to avoid injury and pain." I have those things in common with every living being - even the insects. Akong Tulku Rinpoche develops this idea further in the chapter on compassion in Taming the Tiger.

In the beginning, it is helpful to realize how we all share the awakened state of mind as potential. However, it has become obscured by ignorance and the accumulation of negativity. Misunderstanding and unskillful actions similarly prevent us from seeing and realizing that potential. Removing these obscurations and defilements, however, will enable us to go beyond the illusion of separate existence and realize the interdependence of all things. It will become evident that when we harm others we are harming ourselves; and when we take care of others, we are taking care of ourselves. When we are able to see the awakened state of mind as potential in friend and enemy alike, we will have equal compassion for everyone.

Essentially everyone wants happiness and the causes of happiness, just as we do. Even those who create suffering for themselves do so out of ignorance for no-one sincerely wants to be unhappy. They just do not realize that it is virtue that creates happiness and a happy state of mind which inspires us to practice virtue.