 The Idea: An exploration of what these three concepts mean, and what may and may not be capable of feeling for others.
Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata. - Give, Sympathize, Control.
That is the message of the Three Thunders from the Upanishads, related
in TS Eliot's The Wasteland. I've written recently about the first
thunder -- Datta -- in my article on the Gift Economy, explaining the meaning of giving as generosity, not charity. And the third thunder -- Damyata -- refers to self-control, a part of my seven steps to dealing with any situation: Sense, Self-control, Understand, Question, Imagine, Offer, Collaborate.
It's probably about time I wrote about the second thunder -- Dayadhvam -- sympathize.
In the modern Western world we make it hard for those of us who live in
relative comfort and ease to sympathize with those who don't. Our media
self-censor, declining to expose us to those whose lives are destitute,
full of suffering, and empty of hope, except on those rare occasions
(like the recent tsunami) when that misery is visually spectacular.
Most of the time, we don't hear the stories of those who most deserve
our sympathy because we don't want to, because we cannot bear their
reality.
We watch Hollywood productions with misery and suffering, but they are
unreal, manufactured, always caused by clearly-identifiable individuals
of pure evil who are inevitably vanquished, or redeemed, by the story's
end. The idea of suffering and misery that is endless, intractable,
ubiquitous, meaningless, and caused largely by the very cultures,
systems and technologies in which we believe so fiercely, is too much
to ask us to examine, or even imagine. We really don't want to witness
what is happening now in Darfur.
Sympathy, compassion, humility: These are words in the credo of those
who give their lives over to the care of others, saints who are driven
by secular or religious idealism to sacrifice their own goals --
security, happiness, comfort -- to fight the endless fight against an
invincible enemy. That enemy is not injustice or greed or corruption,
but the ancient amoral adversaries disease, malnutrition, helplessness.
Often these saints find this burden foisted upon them by circumstance
-- a loved one falls victim to a debilitating and terminal physical or
mental illness, or they themselves become victims of atrocities,
natural or manmade, against which they then struggle, often to the
death. Even those who seek out this burden often claim it was a calling
-- it chose them rather than the other way around.
But what about the rest of us? How are we supposed to learn sympathy,
compassion, humility, when we are taught, and teach ourselves, to avoid
exposure to, and not to see the misfortune that gives rise to these
sentiments? Is Robinson Jeffers right in saying that only when
the mind
Tortured of some interior tension has despaired of
happiness:
then it hates
its life-cage and seeks further?
Is the search to learn sympathy, compassion and humility simply a form
of self-punishment for those who have partaken so much of the Tree of
Knowledge that they can no longer return to the comfort of ignorance
and carelessness?
Sympathy is from the Latin meaning sharing feelings. Compassion is from the Latin meaning suffering with.
But can we really 'share feelings' or 'suffer with' someone whose grief
or suffering or misfortune we can only observe from a distance? Or at
best, if we've been there ourselves before, can we simply remember,
ruefully, a little of what it felt like, and if we have not, can we
only feel grateful, and perhaps a little guilty, that such misfortune
has eluded us, so far? Can we actually feel sympathy or compassion for
the woman in Darfur whose husband has been tortured and slaughtered,
whose male children have been burned alive, whose female children have
been raped and kidnapped as spoils of war, whose village and farms have
been burned to the ground? Can we actually feel sympathy or compassion
for the man in Russia or China or Saudi Arabia who, simply for his
beliefs or ethnic extraction has been imprisoned, tortured and starved
every day of his adult life with no end or hope in sight, and for no
conceivable purpose?
Having first-hand experience of excruciating pain in the past few days
I cannot pretend that I 'share the feelings' or 'suffer with' others
who I saw in the hospital in obvious pain and discomfort, or those that
face such anguish, physical or mental, every day of their lives. I give
money to charities (more than most) and to the homeless on the street,
but it is not out of charity or guilt, nor is it out of sympathy or
compassion, if I am honest with myself. What then do I feel for others in their varying times of misfortune?
Humility comes from the Latin word meaning ground, and hence literally means grounded.
In this sense it means connected to, rather than detached from, the
rest of life on Earth. I think we all feel, to some extent, this biophilia,
this love and connection to all others -- it is coded in our DNA, it is
instinctive, it is our instruction from Gaia, the collective force that
seeks forever to enhance the richness and diversity of the biota of the
planet and to make us all responsive to and responsible for that and
for each other. This I feel, and the more I learn and study and
reconnect with my senses and my instincts the stronger I feel it. We
humans have lost our groundedness, our love of all other life for its
own sake, as we have retreated into our abstract and disconnected
worlds, hiding from the terror of all we could once, and can no longer,
imagine. It is this disconnection, not lack of sympathy or compassion,
that allows man to subject others to, and to ignore the plight of
others who fall victim to, suffering. It is a lost respect for life
because, closeted away in our own minds, our artificial world, we no
longer know what life is. That knowledge is instinctive, it is not learned.
I believe that for the most part women are more grounded, and hence
more humble, in the true sense of the word, than men. Part of this is
nurtured, I suspect, but part of it is inherent in the connection of
their bodies to Earth and to the real world. They are, fortunately for
our world, less able to escape completely into the abstract world of
men.
So I think you can have your pretense of sympathy and compassion --
these seem to me to be learned behaviours not much connected to
reality. I will instead aspire to humility, not in its self-effacing
sense but in its sense of groundedness and connection to and love for
all the life on our planet. In your time of discomfort and misfortune I
may not be able to say that I 'share your feelings' or that I 'suffer
with you', but rather simply that I accept the reality of the moment in
connection and in communion with you. That is the best that I can offer.
And perhaps this is what the second thunder meant. Not sympathy in
shared feeling, but acceptance in communion and in love. We could do
much worse than achieve this level of connection. It might stop us from
inflicting so much horror and suffering on this world, if only we could.
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10:45:17 AM 
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
