Blogocentric Formulations

Samsara & Compassion

PROMPT: “Just as a snake sheds its skin, we must shed our past over and over again.” - Gautama Buddha
What do you think? Is this true?

Way back in college when I took a comparative religion class, my favorite concept by far "samsara," which is the sanskrit word used to define the eternal cycle of birth, life, death, and reincarnation that's found in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, and Sikhism. The general idea is that life is a repeating cycle that you go through with the consequences of your actions determining how you're reborn.

This obviously has a parallel with today's quote from Gautama Buddha, with the snake's process of shedding its skin acting as a metaphor for the way we repeatedly shed our past. Just like the concept of samsara, our lives are a constant cycle of new beginnings. There are times in our lives when we have to dispense with the old to bring in the new. For some of us, these cycles don't change that much (hence George Santayana's famous aphorism, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."), but for others, the act of shedding our past can be a transformative experience that opens up a world of new future possibilities.

If you think about all the different stages we go through in life, it becomes impossible to not see the truth in Gautama Buddha's words. Whether we're talking about the general path from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, or the climb up the corporate ladder, or the journey through personal relationships until we find the right person... all of that involves discarding who we once were as the new phase of our life begins. Whether we take something away from the experiencing of shedding the old skin is another matter entirely, but the fact that it happens is irrefutable.

I think the real question is not, "Is the idea that we have to shed our past over and over again true?" Instead, I think it might be more worthwhile to ask ourselves, "When we are forced to shed our past, what can we learn from it?"

PROMPT: What do you think “compassion” is? Can one show compassion even for one’s worst enemy?

The dictionary defines compassion as "sympathetic pity and concern for the suffering or misfortunes of others," which is pretty much how I define it as well. Some people might consider it synonymous with empathy, but I think it's closer to sympathy as there usually needs to be an element of misfortune or suffering involved for the subject of another's compassion. Empathy, on the other hand, can be felt for any emotion or feeling, not necessarily those that are tied to someone else's adversity.

As far as showing compassion for one's worst enemy, I definitely think it's a possibility... but I suppose it would largely depend on the circumstances. And the enemy. In my own situation, for example, if I have a "worst enemy" it would probably be one of two former bosses I've had who treated me like crap. In the case of one, it was flat-out lying about opportunities for advancement and deliberately keeping me in a lesser role despite a verbal agreement that it would only be a temporary stepping stone. In the case of another, it was setting me up to fail and belittle, then actively attempting to prevent my employment elsewhere when I decided to quit. And while I certainly despise those bosses for how I was treated, I think I would still feel compassion for them if they were going through a personal tragedy, like a battle with cancer or the loss of a loved one. It's simply a matter of perspective; I'm capable of feeling compassion for someone else's misfortune if that misfortune is greater than the one they've caused me. Of course, if either of them were in a situation where they had a terrible boss who misled them or tried to make their work life miserable, I would have less compassion for that scenario.

But I can definitely understand that there are people out there who have been so scarred and so traumatized by others, that there is no sympathy or compassion for anything that may befall the perpetrators in their own lives. It's a little hard to categorize and this is by no means an exhaustive or comprehensive list, but I can't think of many scenarios - no matter how tragic - where I would feel compassion for rapists, pedophiles, human traffickers, genocidal tyrants/warlords, etc. And I can completely understand how their victims may not be as inclined to feel sympathy for these villains the way I'd be able to feel it for my former bosses. Again, it's a relative measure. If one can feel compassion for someone else's misfortune if that misfortune is greater than the one they've caused... I think those people are out of luck because there's not a lot someone can do to them that's worse than what they've done to others.

I really struggle not to hold grudges against people who have wronged me. It's sometimes easier said than done, but I think a large part of what makes us human is our empathy with one another. And while empathy certain encapsulates more than one emotion, sympathy happens to be one of them. So in order to be truly empathetic, we have to feel for others in a variety of ways. That includes compassion, and it includes feeling it for people who maybe don't deserve it.