Compassion

Dalai Lama said,

Genuine compassion should be unbiased. The closeness we feel towards our friends is usually more attachment than compassion. If we only feel close to our friends, and not to our enemies, or to the countless people who are unknown to us personally and toward whom we are indifferent, then our compassion is only partial or biased.

This is hard. I had to look up the meaning of compassion. Merriam-Webster's entry on "compassion" reads "sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it." Only one source at this time, and I already feel the toughness of this quest. To be compassionate to strangers and enemies alike.

We will, occasionally, meet with people whose personalities we find unfit with ours (to put this mildly). How many times do we stop and seek to understand these individuals? Some don't, they naturally drift away. Some would go further and try to 'correct' (read: change) the part of the other's personality that is considered unfit to their own. Some just accept them for whoever they are and do nothing about it. What is compassion, I ask of you?

It's easy to blame other people, much easier to think that what we did was the best at the time, and the right thing to do. Yet everything we do is not without flaw. We are afterall, human. But to be compassionate to others does not mean we have to accept things the way they are, especially when they are not right. Again, it's easier to shut up when we find people close to us doing something that wasn't right, just as it's easier to be mad when a stranger or an enemy violate your rights.

The world will undoubtedly be a better place if people seek to understand and be compassionate to each other. Such a cliché I know...But true nonetheless. I have yet to achieve this stage, to have an unbiased compassion. Will I? I don't know.