Empathy Is Not A Weakness

Empathy is not sympathy.

Empathy is the ability to recognise and understand the thoughts and feelings of others, because we’ve experienced the same feelings and situations. This is unlike sympathy that involves a feeling of pity, which is imaginary.

Compassionate empathy can be superficial, or it can go deeper through realising the wisdom of reality. When we mistake empathy for sympathy, we may see it as a weakness that becomes weaponised by bad actors to manipulate ‘good’ intent with the aim of changing events.

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”
is something that we admire, but rarely enact.

This is a fundamental ethical concept emphasising reciprocity and empathy, and can be applied by considering how our actions would feel if they were done to us.

True empathy is the path to enlightenment. When the Buddha came out of his father’s luxurious palace and saw suffering everywhere, this was the start of his journey (although it probably began lifetimes earlier. :-)).

The more we experience the truth of pure consciousness which was obscured,
the more we can empathise with others’ confusion.