Quotes About Compassion

Understanding, too, can be a form of forgiveness.

The act of challenging schemas can take on the warrior spirit of wrathful compassion

In Buddhist psychology, compassion is seen as a direct antidote to aggression.

There are several forms of the loving-kindness meditation. Here's one. Just as I want to be free from suffering, may all beings be free from suffering.

The Dalai Lama advises practicing equanimity before loving-kindness as a way to take the sting out of attachment to wanting things to be a certain way.

A Buddhist principle holds that awareness leads to empathy.

When someone says to us, as Thich Nhat Hanh suggests, "Darling, I care about your suffering," a deep healing begins.

The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom.

Clearly recognizing what is happening inside us, and regarding what we see with an open, kind and loving heart, is what I call Radical Acceptance. If we are holding back from any part of our experience, if our heart shuts out any part of who we are and what we feel, we are fueling the fears and feelings of separation that sustain the trance of unworthiness. Radical Acceptance directly dismantles the very foundations of this trance.

Each time you meet an old emotional pattern with presence, your awakening to truth can deepen. There's less identification with the self in the story and more ability to rest in the awareness that is witnessing what's happening. You become more able to abide in compassion, to remember and trust your true home. Rather than cycling repetitively through old conditioning, you are actually spiraling toward freedom.

Awakening self-compassion is often the greatest challenge people face on the spiritual path.

Attention is the most basic form of love. By paying attention we let ourselves be touched by life , and our hearts naturally become more open and engaged.

Spiritual awakening is the process of recognizing our essential goodness, our natural wisdom and compassion.

The poet Longfellow writes, "If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

Overcome any bitterness that may have come because you were not up to the magnitude of the pain that was entrusted to you.

I take refuge in awareness; I take refuge in truth; I take refuge in love

Overcome any bitterness that may have come because you were not up to the magnitude of the pain that was entrusted to you. Like the mother of the world who carries the pain of the world in her heart, each of us is part of her heart and is, therefore, endowed with a certain measure of cosmic pain. You are sharing in the totality of that pain. You are called upon to meet it in joy instead of self-pity. -Sufi poetry

Once someone is an unreal other, we lose sight of how they hurt. Because we don't experience them as feeling beings, we not only ignore them, we can inflict pain on them without compunction. Not

Thoreau writes, "Is there a greater miracle than to see through another's eyes, even for an instant?

other people want to feel important and loved. Just that. [author's patient, Phil]

make love of your self perfect.

The instant we agree to feel fear or vulnerability, greed or agitation, we are holding our life with an unconditionally friendly heart.

This means accepting our human existence and all of life as it is. Imperfection is not our personal problem—it is a natural part of existing.

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change." Our