The Heart of Compassion

Thursday, September 19, 2013:

Compassion is characterized as promoting the aspect of allaying suffering. Its function resides in not [enduring] other’s suffering. It is manifested in non-cruelty. Its proximate cause is to see helplessness in those overwhelmed by suffering. It succeeds when it makes cruelty subside, and it fails when it produces sorrow.

Buddhaghosa; Visuddhimagga 318

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I have been a sober member of the Fellowship of AA for fifteen years. I have been defining and refining what my Higher Power means to me in these years. AA’s insistence on the individual’s freedom to explore what God is to each of us is one of its most powerful precepts. I have the liberty to condense mine to a phrase; the Heart of Compassion. I prefer this to any concept that puts God “up there” or “out there”, as it brings God closer to my own heartbeat. It leeches the poison from the confusion of words when I speak of the connection with God so necessary to recovery. The term, the Heart of Compassion, puts before my consciousness what it is I am connecting with when I seek through prayer and meditation to improve that union. The distance between my heart (I don’t mean my blood pump) and the Heart of Compassion is the space I create between myself and others with ego-centric behavior. My experience tells me that it, how my heart connects with yours, is determined by how I perceive the divine. If I see God as a remote, and white-bearded grandfather in the sky, I am likely to define spirituality in terms of dogma. When I do so I risk isolating my core from any useful connection with God by stuffing it all between my ears. The power of the Heart of Compassion increases when I allow myself to be embraced by love in bringing God from my brain to my heart. This is the first step in achieving non-cruelty... heart to heart suffering is thus dissolved.

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