Why We Lack Compassion?

The essence of mind is beautiful and, in actuality, conceptual mind is also beautiful as long as we – empty awareness – don’t cling to it. Conceptual mind is beautiful because, when scanned, it can come up with concepts and words that describe ultimate reality. I’d like to try and illustrate this: a few days ago, Rob (Crested Duck) put a video of the song Aquarius on this blog. Although, for my personal taste, this song is a bit ‘new agey’ the words “harmony and understanding” have been ringing in my mind all weekend. Yesterday, there was an article on the blog called ‘Why the mind is dull or agitated’ and the answer was an imbalance between emptiness and awareness. It said there are two aspects of mind essence: empty and aware, but of course there is a third – compassion. Compassion can only arise when the other two aspects are in balance. We may aspire to be compassionate, but we are aspiring to something we already are, which is detrimental because we are searching for something more and denying our inner wisdom. Compassion is the direct result of the unity of emptiness and awareness. Now here’s the thing. The words “harmony and understanding” were going round in my mind, telling me something. Then I realised that the “harmony” is the balance of emptiness and awareness, and the “understanding” is compassion. It’s an inner harmony and understanding that manifests as outer compassion. We therefore lack compassion because we lack inner harmony. Thanks, Rob! Teachings come from everywhere. The mind is truly beautiful: the trick is to just let go, as there is the next beautiful concept to manifest. If we lose this inner balance, this inner harmony, we have doubt, an inner conflict which gives rise to fear and suspicion. We become so worried about out own fears that we lack compassion for others because we just don’t have the time and space for them.

Knowledge is joy. Joy is confidence. Confidence is love. Love is wisdom.

A problem can arise when we endow the Buddhas with compassionate qualities that we think we lack. We don’t lack them! We have Buddha nature, we are Buddha nature, which merely has to be recognised. When we endow others with qualities we think we don’t have, and to which we aspire, we deny our own inner wisdom qualities, and perpetuate self doubt.