Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
This one works for me because I need the reminder it gives me not to fall into the false-dichotomy trap. When we identify too strongly with a role that is only, at most, one aspect of ourselves (healer or wounded; victim or perpetrator), and when we label others as embodiments of some particular role, then we have fallen into the distorted thinking that, in Buddhist psychology, is known as "delusion." It is simpler, easier, and often more palatable to think of ourselves as victims, for example, or as healers, forgetting that we are also perpetrators of pain, and we are also damaged by the many injuries we have received, and observed, and given to others.
In this month's issue of Shambala Sun, there is a very moving article by a Vietnam veteran named Tony Anthony. He describes some of his experiences of sound, and of silence, while standing watch during the nights in the war. After he came home, he asked a teacher whether he had made it all up, all his experiences, the war, and the killing, "this place where even Buddhists are Vietcong and you can't tell one from the other?" His teacher responded: "The war exists because you are there. And there is no difference between a Buddhist and a Vietcong--all of us are both those things!"
Once when I was on retreat, I saw that the person ahead of me in the breakfast line was using a spoon to dig through the bowl of granola, fishing out the almonds, and putting them on her oatmeal. I was outraged, in part because I love almonds, and wanted some of them for myself. In my mind, I labeled her "greedy." And then, as I brooded self-righteously over her bad behavior, I remembered that the day before, when we had been given bleu cheese dressing for our salads, I had done a bit of work with the serving spoon, as well, making sure that I had several large chunks of the cheese on my salad... that hurt, and it also made me laugh. That realization (that small burst of clarity in my own greedy mind) allowed me to make up an ad hoc mantra of re-minding: "We ALL fish out the almonds." Compassion, as Pema Chodron tells us, is about realizing this, and taking this realization into the path of becoming the presence of compassion for others, and for ourselves, with the full awareness that we are all inextricably intertwined with each other, and with all of the beauty, and all of the the pain, in this life we are given.
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