Evolution of love

TRUE COMPASSION BEGINS AT HOME

I read an interview with a well-known Buddhist teacher in which he described how appalled and devastated he felt while watching the planes hit the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. While this reaction is very popular, it is not the reaction of an open mind and heart. It has nothing to do with compassion. It comes from believing unquestioned thoughts. He believed, for example, "This shouldn't be happening" or "This is a terrible thing."

It was thoughts like these that were making him suffer, not the event itself. He was devastating himself with his unquestioned
thoughts. His suffering had nothing to do with the terrorists or the people who died. Can you take this in? Here was a man dedicated to the Buddha's way—the end of suffering—who in that moment was terrorizing his own mind, causing his own grief. I felt compassion for people who projected fearful meanings onto that picture of a plane hitting a building, who killed themselves with their unquestioned thoughts and took away their own state of grace.

The end of suffering happens in this very moment, whether you’re watching a terrorist attack or doing the dishes. And compassion begins at home. Because I don’t believe my thoughts, sadness can’t exist. That’s how I can go to the depth of anyone’s suffering, if they invite me, and take them by the hand and walk them out of it into the sunshine of reality. I have taken the walk myself.