The Door of Compassion

It's not an easy one to find — or to open. But it's worth trying.

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Photo by Miltiadis Fragkidis on Unsplash.

In the second of my three MDMA therapy sessions a couple years ago, a theme emerged that I’ve had a hard time integrating into my life.

Compassion.

I’ve been thinking about compassion lately because it feels so much more necessary than ever — and so much harder to access. This past week didn’t help.

It’s overwhelming enough to feel compassion for all the people (and animals and plants and Earth) being harmed by our current administration. I want to hold them all in my heart — but at the same time, that’s a lot to hold. It feels heavy, like I’ll be buried alive by all that compassion. A term used in caregiving, “compassion fatigue,” applies here; at a certain point, all that caring gets exhausting.

So that’s hard enough. But what about those who are causing so much harm, both the administration and their supporters? What do we do with them? Are they less deserving of compassion?

Thich Nhat Hanh didn’t think so. I’m no Buddhist monk like he was, or even a regular meditator, but while I don’t expect to achieve his level of enlightenment, we can all learn from him. Here’s one way: by reading his poem “Please Call Me by My True Names,” which I’m not copying in full because copyrights, but check it out here to feel the full force of his words and read the story behind it.

The poem opens asking us to look deeply and see the interconnectedness of all creatures, with examples from nature that start innocuously enough but end with one creature killing another.

“I am a frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.”

When we see acts like these in nature, we can accept them relatively easily, even if they sometimes make us sad. We don’t consider the grass-snake cruel; it’s just living out its grass-snake nature. It’s just trying to survive.

With humans, it’s tougher. Thich Nhat Hanh doesn’t spare us, though; he asks us to see the humanity in all people, even in a man doing one of the worst things we can imagine.

“I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am also the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.”

He asks us to let in both “warm joy” and “vast pain” (I wrote last week about how a meditation retreat taught me that these can coexist, though I don’t usually manage to feel them together) — to see all these animals, all these people, and to call them by their “true names,” as a way to open “the door of compassion.”

What does it mean to call them by their true names? It means seeing them for who and what they are, not for our idea of what they are. What they are is all connected, all the “I” in the poem. Who they are is us. What the raping pirate is is a product of his circumstances. Thich Nhat Hanh wrote about the experience and reflection that led him to write this poem: “In my meditation, I saw that if I had been born in the village of the pirate and raised in the same conditions as he was, I would now be the pirate.”

This doesn’t mean we’re okay with the pirate being how he is or that we shouldn’t hold him accountable. Not at all. It means we need to change the conditions that give rise to pirates. Yes, easier said than done, duh. But that’s the place to direct our attention and our efforts.

The same is true for the worst of the worst of the MAGAs. It’s hard for me to type the words “they’re deserving of our compassion.” But Thich Nhat Hanh would tell us they are. Read his full poem. You’ll see what I mean.

Then there are the maybe not “worst of the worst” but still maddening, ignorant, seemingly stupid MAGAs. How many stories have you seen of idiots who gleefully voted for this administration and its cruel promises, only to be dismayed when that same administration carries out those promises in ways that hurt them? I’ve seen quite a few. I’ve felt my share of scorn for these people, and schadenfreude, and I can’t help feeling some joy that they’re getting what they deserved. But are they? Do they? Does anyone deserve cruelty?

Again, I’m no Buddhist monk. On some level, I can summon compassion for cruel MAGAs. Though maybe it’s pity I feel, because I certainly wouldn’t want to be one of them, filled with hate and seemingly unable to be happy even when they “win.” On most levels, it’s a tall order.

But I keep coming back to a couple things. One, most of us are much more limited than we think in being anything other than who and what we are. Yes, we can grow and change, and yes, we can keep trying to improve. But we’re all products of our biology and environment. Second, our current iteration of late-stage capitalism has left a lot of people hurting and scared, and that’s the place they’re reacting from.

I can — and believe me, I do — feel like I’m better than the cruel, ignorant MAGAs. But I was born into a family with liberal political beliefs, a high degree of education, and comfortable financial circumstances. Who’s to say I wouldn’t be a MAGA myself if I’d landed in a different family? (I mean, I wouldn’t be me, but you know what I mean.) I hope not, but who knows. Some of my progressive friends have MAGA parents, so I know it wouldn’t have been a given, but who knows. And by the way, those MAGA parents aren’t horrible people, even though they voted for a horrible man.

Look, I’m not saying everyone must feel compassion for MAGAs. Most of us are too fed up to entertain that idea. If I were a person of color, a gay person, a disabled person, an undocumented person, or a trans person, it would be even harder than it is for me; if anyone’s off the hook it’s those people. As a cishet, naturalized, middle-class, still-abled white woman, I feel I have more responsibility to carry compassion than some others might have — yet I still haven’t come anywhere close to mastering it. To reiterate what I’ve said before, I’m not perfect. I hope you were sitting down for that revelation.

But just because I haven’t achieved perfection, or even enlightenment, doesn’t mean I can’t cultivate compassion in myself.

I’ve seen that things go better, and I feel better, when I lead with love and compassion. That’s true in my mundane daily life, and it’s bound to be true in the political sphere too.

Okay, so what do we do with that? Love and compassion by themselves are not enough, as

John Pavlovitz

reminds us; they must move us to action. And being compassionate doesn’t mean not being tough or never getting angry. We can be compassionate and loving while still “writing fire,” as poet Audre Lorde says.

“I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am going to write fire until it comes out of my ears, my eyes, my noseholes — everywhere. Until it’s every breath I breathe. I’m going to go out like a fucking meteor!”
― Audre Lorde

We still need to fight hard — much harder than we have been — to keep the MAGAs from destroying everything and everyone. We still need to rage against the dying of the light and work hard for as long as we can — if we’re lucky, going out “like a fucking meteor.” We definitely need to try to change the system that led to our current mess.

And while we’re doing all that, we can try to center ourselves in love and compassion. Even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard. A lack of compassion got us where we are now; I’m not sure what will get us out of this place, or if anything ever will, but I’m sure compassion needs to be part of the equation.

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Do you think I’m crazy for talking about compassion while our world is being destroyed all around us? Let me have it in the comments!