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“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”  - Dalai Lama                                                                                                                      

Society now is so focused on having knowledge and getting a good education, especially in the Western world. It is a necessity to be able to work and make money, and since education most often leads to a better career, it is seen as a necessity as well. Love I think is also a necessity for humans, but schools are always fixed on giving students more "knowledge" rather than how people should interact with others. Does this make compassion and affection less of a necessity? Why is it that having loads of factual knowledge is put higher up than caring for each other?

A lack of compassion is a large problem for children and adults. As a learning environment that kids spend half their time in, schools should also be a place of compassion. This especially includes teachers and staff who have more power over what can happen in school. In the bullying stories on tv, the schools did very little to help the bullied students. So, how can kids show compassion, if the adults are even showing compassion?

Our world is made up of not individuals, but communities. We were made to care for each other, and that means being there beside someone for not only the success and happy moments, but also for the times of suffering. Compassion means to be understanding of someone's misery and wanting to act in some way to fix it. However, many times, people are not only not caring of other's feelings, they are causing the suffering. It is easy to shut everyone else out and be cruel, but it takes strength to be compassionate and to be vulnerable and let others to be compassionate towards you.

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MC

Meta-state of Mind

While on Deviantart the other day, I came across a piece of fractal artwork. It had nothing significant in particular, just a piece of spiral fractal that could have been created from Apophysis. What did make me think though was its title--compassion. How random? I thought to myself, how does a fractal represent compassion in anyway? And so I stared at the ever repeating curls and in it saw our world. A place where most people are blind, where people only serve themselves. Then I looked at the fractal again. This time I saw Earth itself being selfish, and telling all of its inhabitants to be selfish. Through the magic of causality, somehow the selfish person in North America causes the person in Asia to be selfish too, and the cycle continues, until everyone in the world, until society, until Earth itself becomes selfish. What we see in our society is the state of "thought" of our world, and what makes up what we see in our society is what makes up the majority of the people. Society is the state of mind of the states of minds. Nature does not control people, neither do people control nature. Nature and people are one, we work hand in hand. Like a fractal, what we see in our world consists of smaller versions of itself that is us, people. So why is it that the artist represented compassion with a fractal? It is because the virtue of compassion transcends the self. Compassion is not just the emotional capability of empathy and sympathy towards individuals, nor is it just a part of love itself. Compassion reflects every little thing the compassionate person has experienced in his or her life that has given him or her that virtue, it reminds us what our world can be like. Compassion is also the hidden pattern within the fractal that is our world, that can be discovered if we just looked more carefully and ignored the more obvious pattern that is selfishness. All we need to do, is to look at our fractal, from a different perspective. Maybe then, we would see a completely different fractal.

-William Lee

Summer lovin', happened so fast.

Summer before last, I held a volunteer position at the National Gallery of Canada. There, I met tons of amazing people - including other volunteers and visitors.

One particularly memorable day was when I worked with a girl about the same age as me - let's call her Liz. After (somewhat awkward) introductions, we started talking about the strange encounters we'd had with the visitors. One of these events involved a man speaking to at me in Spanish, walking away in a huff without waiting for a reply, then returning and saying, "Miss, you gave me the wrong directions; the cafeteria is actually to my left."

Generally, people would hear this story and comment on how the man clearly did not know what he was doing. Liz, however, responded with "I love people".

That's what compassion is. Looking at people and appreciating their quirks, and choosing not to take things personally.

- F.

(source/credits)

Let it Flourish

I have a part-time job as a birthday party hostess at an indoor 'playgroud', and we have many arcade games for kids to play that give tickets that you can use to buy prizes.
One day, just shortly after I had been hired, a woman in a wheelchair with two kids (an infant girl and a boy, just a few years older) came in. They stayed for a while, the kids playing on the structure and the mother watching. After a while, the little girl kept on roaming towards the prizes counter where you can trade the tickets for the prizes. My colleague, knowing that they were regular customers carried the girl over the counter where she chose a tiny pink bouncy ball she had her eye on. The girl being very young just dropped the ball off the counter and watched it bounce away from her, rather disappointed. Her brother quickly said springing to his feet: " Don't worry, I'll get it". And I saw that no matter how many times that she dropped the bouncy ball, it rolled away or it got lost, her brother was right there by her side, helping her through everything. That was such a touching and sweet thing to witness.
That made me realise that not matter what age you are, you can show compassion, that its universal, almost like an unspoken law, or a key to society. I also noted that people tend to grow out of the compassion we have as a child, as life gets harder. We start to think more about ourselves and getting somewhere that we feel like we can't, or rather don't have the time to think about others.  As true as that may be, if just help others, without expecting anything in return, we might just make the world easier for that one person, and that might start a chain reaction, a that might just one day, change the world.
So folks, remember: you won't lose anything by helping someone else. You might not only help the world and the people in it, but you might gain something-- be it wisdom, knowledge, a new experience or a close friend, who knows. One thing is for certain though; good can do no wrong, and if it does, it will always, always work out in the end.
-s.m

Spare Change Compassion

What do I need to do to be compassionate? Who do I need to be to become compassionate? How do I change myself so I can be a more compassionate person? But most of all, what is compassion?

These thoughts pass through my mind on my way to the doctor's office. Was it the simple gestures that most people do automatically-holding a door for an elderly lady, saying "bless you" after someone sneezes- that make you compassionate? Or were these things just common courtesies that you were "trained" to do as grow up? I decided that compassion is more than that, I started my day at an early 10:30am (early by my standards, I suppose) by filling everyone's parking meters on the street to the maximum. I figured that everyone has rough days and the last thing anyone wants or needs is a parking ticket. This was greatly enjoyed by my mother, partially because I carry around large amounts of loose change that she hates to hear clinking around, but I like to think it was mostly because the people I was helping would actually appreciate this, and possibly remember and decide to pass this gesture on. If not cost someone a parking ticket, at least I put a smile on someone's face, as I turned the corner and started walking away, I saw a man running to his meter to fill it, frantically looking in his pockets for change, when he saw that he had more than enough time, he smiled to himself.

I guess that compassion is like giving someone a gift. Whether it be the gift of life, the gift of loving, caring, hope, or a few minutes of free parking, everyone will appreciate it in the end.

Something that made me smile:
http://www.thekingcenter.org/

-M

It's about everybody.

   To me, Compassion is about helping a community. Not necessarily the removal of the ego in favour of others, but the expansion of the self to include anyone and everyone alive now and who will be alive. Easy enough to say, but what does that mean to me? Allow me to illustrate.
  I currently go to a school which has the prestigious International Baccalaureate program. Besides housing some of the most intelligent students in the board, it also has some of the most stressed out students in the board. Students fighting to understand complex ideas, studying to remember concepts, staying up at night to finish documents... I would bet large sums of money that few of these students would be able to accomplish what they do without the aid of their classmates. We are all sympathetic to each other. More importantly, we are compassionate, and seek to help others as well as ourselves. This network of help is universally beneficial, as each and every student gets more out of it then they put in.
   Now, what about the rest of the world, those who are not members of our insular group? Well, they benefit too. The symbiotic growth produced by this system creates more intelligent, cooperative, and creative people, precisely the kind of person who can bring about real change in our world.
  Theoretically, this would produce a sort of feedback loop, where a global community is created which constantly improves with each others help; However, this is a very small scale community, one small pixel in the global panorama. To really revolutionize the world, compassionate systems must replace exploitative systems, which only enriches one side of the community. In my opinion, the easiest places to start are our educational institutions.

-Pat.

It's not about you!

Compassion. One word that affects people on so many different levels. Compassion, I find is a term we use to describe that special moment when we can genuinely place ourselves in another person's shoes, and for once not think about the words we think for the majority of a day (words such as: I, me, my...) . Its a way a way of creating a stronger community.
Think of how much more we would get done and how much more easier life would become if we all decided to take a moment and think of the motives of the other person, and realize that we're all humans, with thoughts and feelings, with ambitions and aspirations. If we understood each other to the best possible clarity, think of how smoothly we can combine our ideas and voices to make a difference, a change for the good.
Also ask of you to think for a moment about your biggest wants, the things you couldn't live without, the people you love and who are close to you and all the troubles in your life. Now think of a person you don't know that well and think of how they too have a life of their own, with people they love, things they couldn't live without and maybe even something going on that's giving them a hard time. 
It shouldn't be so difficult then, for us humans to offer compassion, and treat ever body with respect, because we are all human (I know, finally someting new). I've learned in the past, that before I make a judgement about someone, I stop and think and try to see, not them in my world, but the world to their eyes. 
sara.mina