The mother of all compassion

However, our personal insecurities and inadequacies (our lack of ‘val-you’ as I call it in my book ‘Close to Om’) can fuel our prejudices, making it difficult to let compassion unfold in our lives.

It’s very hard to arrive at compassion for others if we cannot arrive at it in ourselves. This sounds a lot fluffier than it actually is. I know it from my own experience, but I see it in the yoga classroom all the time. The yoga mat is a microcosm for more universal behaviour.

We get frustrated that someone a few mats down is doing something that we can’t. Defeated by our limitations and somehow threatened by their abilities, our ego bursts. With our self-esteem  boat sinking, we look desperately for chinks in their armour. Putting them down gives us a false sense of elevating ourselves.

But like forcing an injured shoulder too far into a stretch, our aggressive and hurtful attitude only creates more suffering and pain. We make ourselves crazy trying to direct everyone and everything towards something we hope makes us seem better than they are.

Compassion keeps us on course. Ahimsa is a word both Hindus and Buddhists use as the basis for compassion. Patanjali cites it in his Yoga Sutras as part of a path to a more peaceful existence. It connotes unconditional acceptance and friendship with oneself and an active interest in others.

“Compassion makes us dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world, and put another there,” says esteemed author and theologian Karen Armstrong. Not only is that something we can all practice, it is something that we must do for the survival of our global dysfunctional family.

We have to find our way to a place where we feel less threatened and more thoughtful. We don’t have to agree, but we must accept that there are a lot of different ways of doing things and that they can co-exist. Warren Buffet loves his philanthropy along with his steak and his Cherry Coke.

Ron Terwilliger, head of Tramell Crow Residential, one of the largest developers of multi-family housing in the US, is also the recipient of the Hearthstone Builder Humanity Award and has donated $100 million to Habitat for Humanity. There are plenty of parents in the world who cannot seem to muster compassion for someone else’s child, sometimes even their own.

And some of our icons for compassion like Mother Theresa and the Dalai Lama had no children of their own. The bottom line is: it’s not our title, appearance, or wealth that defines whether we are compassionate or not, it is our actions.

I often tell people that I do, in fact, have kids — some of them in their 60’s and 70’s. Working with the wonderful students I am blessed with dethrones me on a daily basis. As Rebecca Solnit says in her Harper’s article entitled The Mother of All Questions: “There are so many things to love besides one’s own offspring, so many things that need love, so much other work love has to do in the world.”

Judith Hanson Lasater is one of yoga’s pioneering women. She asked me when I interviewed her: “Why are we doing all these handstands, backbends and arm balances?” She doesn’t understand why we’re doing them unless they shape and change our lives. “I believe that yoga should lead us to a place where kindness and compassion are instantaneous. Compassion is fierce and strong, and it holds people accountable.

But it doesn’t do it with anger or judgement. I don’t think we find compassion. I think we become the space that compassion wants to live in. You can’t make yourself be compassionate, you can only keep stepping back and becoming a larger container in which compassion wants to live.”