Compassion and Moral Guidance

Chapter 2. What Is the Com- of Compassion?

chapter two WhatIstheCom-ofCompassion? Whoever longs to rescue quickly both himself and others should practise the supreme mystery: exchange of self and other. —Śāntideva, Bodhicaryāvātāra In searching for the com- or “with-ness” of compassion, a good place to start is with analyses of those philosophical traditions that question the discreteness of “self” and “other.” Numerous thinkers and texts reject this bifurcation either implicitly or explicitly, and among them I select those whose views may be synthesized into a model of compassion that meets the eight conditions listed in the previous chapter. Like the last chapter, this one will begin with a survey. I first take up Śāntideva, whose Bodhicaryāvātāra serves as “one of the principal sources of Mahāyāna philosophy,”1 and whose meditations there on the nature of the self—or better said, the insubstantiality of it—serve as an ideal starting point. From there I move on to Dōgen Kigen, whose ideas, though removed from Śāntideva by some five centuries and three thousand miles, expand upon Śāntideva’s thought and set forth a method by which one may realize the insubstantiality of the self and thereby become compassionate. Much as Buddhism links no-self with compassion, Confucianism can be seen to link its version of compassion with its conception of the human self. I therefore move on to an analysis of Confucius and Mencius to provide a different perspective on the self and on compassion. Lastly I take up the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi, both of which provide a critique of the Confucian account and therefore another perspective on the same issue. What Is the Com- of Compassion? 51 The Survey Buddhist Compassion, and a Case for It from Śāntideva “Buddhism may claim a unique position among all religions and ethical systems which teach benevolence as a virtue,” writes S. Tachibana, “for it lays special stress upon it. It regards it as comprising all virtues, the root and basis of all virtuous conduct.”2 The “benevolence” Tachibana refers to here is a family of Buddhist philosophical terms, including mettā, karunā, muditā, anukampā, anuddaya, ahimsā, and avera, which can be translated respectively as loving-kindness, compassion, delightfulness, sympathy, nonviolence , and nonhatred. The first two of these will be the main focus here, though two other terms on Tachibana’s list are worthy of note. Tachibana observes that anukampā is both etymologically similar to the word “sympathy ” and serves a nearly analogous role in Pāli as sympathy does in English.3 He defines anukampā as “the feeling which we experience at the moment when we see another in pain or distress and imagine ourselves in the same situation.”4 Understood in this way, anukampā bears similarities to Humean sympathy and to Schelerian commiseration (Mitleid).5 The second noteworthy point is Tachibana’s association of mettā and karunā with ahimsā, a concept made famous by Gandhi. Tachibana maintains that Buddhism can claim the singular status of being more dedicated to nonviolence than any of the world’s other dominant religious traditions (though he takes this claim too far when he says the history of Buddhism is “free from any bloodshed”;6 it seems he is overlooking the sōhei, or warriormonks , of his own country’s past). Given the bulk of Buddhism’s history, as well as its central precepts, it is certainly appropriate to associate the practice of nonviolence with the cultivation and exercise of compassion. Two classical Buddhist terms are commonly translated as “compassion”: the Pāli mettā and the Sanskrit karunā. Mettā is also translated as “lovingkindness ,” and the distinction between it and karunā is important. Mettā is participation in positive experiences, while karunā is participation in negative experiences; the two could be translated as “rejoicing with” and “commiserating with.” The Japanese brought the two together, for in Japanese Buddhism the term for “compassion” is jihi (慈悲). According to Nakamura Hajime, 52 compassion and moral guidance ji (慈) corresponds to mettā, while hi (悲) corresponds to karunā. That the two of them are expressed together in the Japanese word for “compassion” is significant: If one only commiserates with the other and does not rejoice when the other is joyful, one has not yet cultivated true compassion. And since for many people karunā comes much more easily than mettā, the cultivation of jihi is a more difficult ethical accomplishment.7 The self-abnegation implied by jihi is a reflection of...