Training day 13

What is Compassion?


From a practical point of view, the meaning of compassion goes beyond the compassion definition:
"1: Sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it. 2: Sympathetic consciousness of your own distress together with a desire to alleviate it."

The essential meaning of compassion is Love. Compassion involves action and smart decisions.
Compassion is the only key to true happiness. Compassion is love in action - the doing of happiness, which, when done consistently, becomes what you think and say. Compassion is the antidote to stress. Long term stress and negative emotions may lead to depression or suicide but compassion does the exact opposite. It leads to true happiness because it involves you doing the decision making and and the leading. Compassion is the peace and love of happiness.

Quotes on Compassion:

"Ultimately, the reason why love and compassion bring us the greatest happiness is simply that our nature cherishes them above all else." ... "If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion." - H.H. the Dalai Lama

"Compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another." - Thomas Merton

"A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile world. Everyone you meet is your mirror." - Ken Keyes, Jr.

"When you forgive, you in no way change the past – but you sure do change the future."- Bernard Meltzer

"The philosophy of the classroom today will be the philosophy of government tomorrow."– Abraham Lincoln

"If you judge people, you wont have time to love them" - Mother Teresa

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony." - Ghandi


Compassion and Aikido

Aikido can be described as "compassion in action" or "the art of harmony". Aikido by its very nature incorporates compassion as a basic part of the teaching. The very essence of Aikido techniques is to control the attacker without force and without causing harm. O-Sensei removed from other martial arts those elements that required the use of force and which resulted in injury to the attacker. We don’t know if compassion was actually O-Sensei’s goal or whether it was a wonderful by-product of his creative process, but in any case what we are left with is a martial art which is the very embodiment of compassion. Instead of employing the use of punches, kicks and blocks we simply redirect the attack, dissipating its energy harmlessly. We act as facilitators, guiding the attacker to a place he wasn’t expecting, using forces of nature rather than our own strength to accomplish our goal.
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I have been hearing this word compassion ringing in my ears the past few days. I was recently at work at my resort job and realized that a big seminar was taking place on property. I had never really heard of the names that were flying through the air but after a few days I noticed a book in the back of the house with a note on it. The book was called "The compassionate Samurai". It was new to me but sounded very interesting. I picked it up when I had some free time and flipped through the pages. It was a book about compassion. Compassion in life, in business, in relationships and inevitably in your success. The things that I was reading were all things that I had thought before but was always unable to translate into words. The thought of giving without expectations of receiving. The thought of lending a helping hand without expecting anything in return. The thought of compassion. A word that is so simple in meaning but so complex in reality. With compassion its not about "me" and its not about what I have or don't have but rather about the simple task of giving. So in the end, be compassionate and reach out to those in your universe for one day you may be the one needing a hand. Thank you.

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