She Who Hears the Cries of the
World
By Christina
Feldman
The Buddhist path isn’t just about
the accumulation of wisdom. It equally requires the development of
compassion—an intelligent sympathy for the suffering of all beings
and the heartfelt wish to liberate them. In Buddhist iconography,
this compassion is embodied in the bodhisattva Kuan Yin, who is
said to manifest wherever beings need help. Engendering such
compassion is not only good for others, says Christina Feldman, it
is also good for us. By putting others first, we loosen the bonds
of our self-fixation, and in doing so, inch closer to our own
liberation.
Compassion is no stranger to any of us: we know what it feels like
to be deeply moved by the pain and suffering of others. All people
receive their own measure of sorrow and struggle in this life.
Bodies age, health becomes fragile, minds can be beset by confusion
and obsession, hearts are broken. We see many people asked to
bear the unbearable—starvation, tragedy, and hardship beyond our
imagining. Our loved ones experience illness, pain, and heartache,
and we long to ease their burden.
The human story is a story of love, redemption, kindness, and
generosity. It is also a story of violence, division, neglect, and
cruelty. Faced with all of this, we can soften, reach out, and do
all we can to ease suffering. Or we can choose to live with fear
and denial—doing all we can to guard our hearts from being touched,
afraid of drowning in this ocean of sorrow.
Again and again we are asked to learn one of life’s clearest
lessons: that to run from suffering—to harden our hearts, to turn
away from pain—is to deny life and to live in fear. So, as
difficult as it is to open our hearts toward suffering, doing so is
the most direct path to transformation and liberation.
Compassion and wisdom are at the heart of the path of the Buddha.
In the early Buddhist stories we find young men and women asking
the same questions we ask today: How can we respond to the
suffering that is woven into the very fabric of life? How can we
discover a heart that is truly liberated from fear, anger, and
alienation? Is there a way to discover a depth of wisdom and
compassion that can genuinely make a difference in this confused
and destructive world?
We may be tempted to see com–passion as a feeling, an emotional
response we occasionally experience when we are touched by an
encounter with acute pain. In these moments of openness, the layers
of our defenses crumble; intuitively we feel an immediacy of
response and we glimpse the power of nonseparation. Milarepa, a
great Tibetan sage, expressed this when he said, “Just as I
instinctively reach out to touch and heal a wound in my leg as part
of my own body, so too I reach out to touch and heal the pain in
another as part of this body.” Too often these moments of profound
compassion fade, and once more we find ourselves protecting,
defending, and distancing ourselves from pain. Yet they are
powerful glimpses that encourage us to question whether compassion
can be something more than an accident we stumble across.
No matter how hard we try, we can’t make ourselves feel
com–passionate. But we can incline our hearts toward compassion. In
one of the stories in the early Buddhist literature, the ascetic
Sumedha reflects on the vast inner journey required to discover
unshakeable wisdom and compassion. He describes compassion as a
tapestry woven of many threads: generosity, virtue, renunciation,
wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, determination,
loving-kindness, and equanimity. When we embody all of these in our
lives, we develop the kind of compassion that has the power to heal
suffering.
A few years ago, an elderly monk arrived in India after fleeing
from prison in Tibet. Meeting with the Dalai Lama, he recounted the
years he had been imprisoned, the hardship and beatings he had
endured, the hunger and loneliness he had lived with, and the
torture he had faced.
At one point the Dalai Lama asked him, “Was there ever a time you
felt your life was truly in danger?”
The old monk answered, “In truth, the only time I truly felt at
risk was when I felt in danger of losing compassion for my
jailers.”
Hearing stories like this, we are often left feeling skeptical and
bewildered. We may be tempted to idealize both those who are
compassionate and the quality of compassion itself. We imagine
these people as saints, possessed of powers inaccessible to us. Yet
stories of great suffering are often stories of ordinary people who
have found greatness of heart. To discover an awakened heart within
ourselves, it is crucial not to idealize or romanticize compassion.
Our compassion simply grows out of our willingness to meet pain
rather than to flee from it.
We may never find ourselves in situations of such peril that our
lives are endangered; yet anguish and pain are undeniable aspects
of our lives. None of us can build walls around our hearts that are
invulnerable to being breached by life. Facing the sorrow we meet
in this life, we have a choice: Our hearts can close, our minds
recoil, our bodies contract, and we can experience the heart that
lives in a state of painful refusal. We can also dive deeply within
ourselves to nurture the courage, balance, patience, and wisdom
that enable us to care.
If we do so, we will find that compassion is not a state. It is a
way of engaging with the fragile and unpredictable world. Its
domain is not only the world of those you love and care for, but
equally the world of those who threaten us, disturb us, and cause
us harm. It is the world of the countless beings we never meet who
are facing an unendurable life. The ultimate journey of a human
being is to discover how much our hearts can encompass. Our
capacity to cause suffering as well as to heal suffering live side
by side within us. If we choose to develop the capacity to heal,
which is the challenge of every human life, we will find our hearts
can encompass a great deal, and we can learn to heal—rather than
increase—the schisms that divide us from one another.
In the first century in northern India, probably in what is now
part of Afghanistan, the Lotus Sutra was composed. One of
the most powerful texts in the Buddhist tradition, it is a
celebration of the liberated heart expressing itself in a powerful
and boundless compassion, pervading all corners of the universe,
relieving suffering wherever it finds it.
When the Lotus Sutra was translated into Chinese, Kuan
Yin, the “one who hears the cries of the world,” emerged as an
embodiment of compassion that has occupied a central place in
Buddhist teaching and practice ever since. Over the centuries Kuan
Yin has been portrayed in a variety of forms. At times she is
depicted as a feminine presence, face serene, arms outstretched,
and eyes open. At times she holds a willow branch, symbolizing her
resilience—able to bend in the face of the most fierce storms
without being broken. At other times she is portrayed with a
thousand arms and hands, each with an open eye in its center,
depicting her constant awareness of anguish and her all-embracing
responsiveness. Sometimes she takes the form of a warrior armed
with a multitude of weapons, embodying the fierce aspect of
compassion committed to uprooting the causes of suffering. A
protector and guardian, she is fully engaged with life.
To cultivate the willingness to listen deeply to sorrow wherever we
meet it is to take the first step on the journey of compassion. Our
capacity to listen follows on the heels of this willingness. We may
make heroic efforts in our lives to shield ourselves from the
anguish that can surround us and live within us, but in truth a
life of avoidance and defense is one of anxiety and painful
separation.
True compassion is not forged at a distance from pain but in its
fires. We do not always have a solution for suffering. We cannot
always fix pain. However, we can find the commitment to stay
connected and to listen deeply. Compassion does not always demand
heroic acts or great words. In the times of darkest distress, what
is most deeply needed is the fearless presence of a person who can
be wholeheartedly receptive.
It can seem to us that being aware and opening our hearts to sorrow
makes us suffer more. It is true that awareness brings with it an
increased sensitivity to our inner and outer worlds. Awareness
opens our hearts and minds to a world of pain and distress that
previously only glanced off the surface of consciousness, like a
stone skipping across water. But awareness also teaches us to read
between the lines and to see beneath the world of appearances. We
begin to sense the loneliness, need, and fear in others that was
previously invisible. Beneath words of anger, blame, and agitation
we hear the fragility of another person’s heart. Awareness deepens
because we hear more acutely the cries of the world. Each of those
cries has written within it the plea to be received.
Awareness is born of intimacy. We can only fear and hate what we do
not understand and what we perceive from a distance. We can only
find compassion and freedom in intimacy. We can be afraid of
intimacy with pain because we are afraid of helplessness; we fear
that we don’t have the inner balance to embrace suffering without
being overwhelmed. Yet each time we find the willingness to meet
affliction, we discover we are not powerless. Awareness rescues us
from helplessness, teaching us to be helpful through our kindness,
patience, resilience, and courage. Awareness is the forerunner of
understanding, and understanding is the prerequisite to bringing
suffering to an end.
Shantideva, a deeply compassionate master who taught in India in
the eighth century, said, “Whatever you are doing, be aware of the
state of your mind. Accomplish good; this is the path of
compassion.” How would our life be if we carried this commitment
into all of our encounters? What if we asked ourselves what it is
we are dedicated to when we meet a homeless person on the street, a
child in tears, a person we have long struggled with, or someone
who disappoints us? We cannot always change the heart or the life
of another person, but we can always take care of the state of our
own mind. Can we let go of our resistance, judgments, and fear? Can
we listen wholeheartedly to understand another person’s world? Can
we find the courage to remain present when we want to flee? Can we
equally find the compassion to forgive our wish to disconnect?
Compassion is a journey. Every step, every moment of cultivation,
is a gesture of deep wisdom.
Living in Asia for several years, I encountered an endless stream
of people begging in the streets. Faced with a forlorn, gaunt child
I would find myself judging a society that couldn’t care for its
deprived children. Sometimes I would feel irritated, perhaps
dropping a few coins into the child’s hand while ensuring I kept my
distance from him. I would debate with myself whether I was just
perpetuating the culture of begging by responding to the child’s
pleas. It took me a long time to understand that, as much as the
coins may have been appreciated, they were secondary to the fact
that I rarely connected to the child.
As the etymology of the word indicates, “compassion” is the ability
to “feel with,” and that involves a leap of empathy and a
willingness to go beyond the borders of our own experience and
judgments. What would it mean to place myself in the heart of that
begging child? What would it be like to never know if I will eat
today, depending entirely on the handouts of strangers? Journeying
beyond our familiar borders, our hearts can tremble; then, we have
the possibility of accomplishing good.
Milarepa once said, “Long accustomed to contemplating compassion, I
have forgotten all difference between self and other.” Genuine
compassion is without boundaries or hierarchies. The smallest
sorrow is as worthy of compassion as the greatest anguish. The
heartache we experience in the face of betrayal asks as much for
compassion as a person caught in the midst of tragedy. Those we
love and those we disdain ask for compassion; those who are
blameless and those who cause suffering are all enfolded in the
tapestry of compassion. An old Zen monk once proclaimed, “O, that
my monk’s robes were wide enough to gather up all of the suffering
in this floating world.” Compassion is the liberated heart’s
response to pain wherever it is met.
When we see those we love in pain, our compassion is instinctive.
Our heart can be broken. It can also be broken open. We are most
sorely tested when we are faced with a loved one’s pain that we
cannot fix. We reach out to shield those we love from harm, but
life continues to teach us that our power has limits. Wisdom tells
us that to insist that impermanence and frailty should not touch
those we love is to fall into the near enemy of compassion, which
is attachment to result and the insistence that life must be other
than it actually is.
Compassion means offering a refuge to those who have no refuge. The
refuge is born of our willingness to bear what at times feels
unbearable—to see a loved one suffer. The letting go of our
insistence that those we love should not suffer is not a
relinquishment of love but a release of illusion—the illusion that
love can protect anyone from life’s natural rhythms. In the face of
a loved one’s pain, we are asked to understand what it means to be
steadfast and patient in the midst of our own fear. In our most
intimate relationships, love and fear grow simultaneously. A
compassionate heart knows this to be true and does not demand that
fear disappear. It knows that only in the midst of fear can we
begin to discover the fearlessness of compassion.
Some people, carrying long histories of a lack of self-worth or
denial, find it most difficult to extend compassion toward
themselves. Aware of the vastness of suffering in the world, they
may feel it is self-indulgent to care for their aching body, their
broken heart, or their confused mind. Yet this too is suffering,
and genuine compassion makes no distinction between self and other.
If we do not know how to embrace our own frailties and
imperfections, how do we imagine we could find room in our heart
for anyone else?
The Buddha once said that you could search the whole world and not
find anyone more deserving of your love and compassion than
yourself. Instead, too many people find themselves directing levels
of harshness, demand, and judgment inward that they would never
dream of directing toward another person, knowing the harm that
would be incurred. They are willing to do to themselves what they
would not do to others.
In the pursuit of an idealized compassion, many people can neglect
themselves. Compassion “listens to the cries of the world,” and we
are part of that world. The path of compassion does not ask us to
abandon ourselves on the altar of an idealized state of perfection.
A path of healing makes no distinctions: within the sorrow of our
own frustrations, disappointments, fears, and bitterness, we learn
the lessons of patience, acceptance, generosity, and ultimately,
compassion.
The deepest compassion is nurtured in the midst of the deepest
suffering. Faced with the struggle of those we love or those who
are blameless in this world, compassion arises instinctively. Faced
with people who inflict pain upon others, we must dive deep within
ourselves to find the steadfastness and understanding that enables
us to remain open. Connecting with those who perpetrate harm is
hard practice, yet compassion is somewhat shallow if it turns away
those who—lost in ignorance, rage, and fear—harm others. The
mountain of suffering in the world can never be lessened by adding
yet more bitterness, resentment, rage, and blame to it.
Thich Nhat Hanh, the beloved Vietnamese teacher, said, “Anger and
hatred are the materials from which hell is made.” It is not that
the compassionate heart will never feel anger. Faced with the
terrible injustice, oppression, and violence in our world, our
hearts tremble not only with compassion but also with anger. A
person without anger may be a person who has not been deeply
touched by harmful acts that scar the lives of too many people.
Anger can be the beginning of abandonment or the beginning of
commitment to helping others.
We can be startled into wakefulness by exposure to suffering, and
this wakefulness can become part of the fabric of our own rage, or
part of the fabric of wise and compassionate action. If we align
ourselves with hatred, we equally align ourselves with the
perpetrators of harm. We can also align ourselves with a commitment
to bringing to an end the causes of suffering. It is easy to forget
the portrayal of Kuan Yin as an armed warrior, profoundly dedicated
to protecting all beings, fearless and resolved to bring suffering
to an end.
Rarely are words and acts of healing and reconciliation born of an
agitated heart. One of the great arts in the cultivation of
compassion is to ask if we can embrace anger without blame. Blame
agitates our hearts, keeps them contracted, and ultimately leads to
despair. To surrender blame is to maintain the discriminating
wisdom that knows clearly what suffering is and what causes it. To
surrender blame is to surrender the separation that makes
compassion impossible.
Compassion is not a magical device that can instantly dispel all
suffering. The path of compassion is altruistic but not idealistic.
Walking this path we are not asked to lay down our life, find a
solution for all of the struggles in this world, or immediately
rescue all beings. We are asked to explore how we may transform our
own hearts and minds in the moment. Can we understand the
transparency of division and separation? Can we liberate our hearts
from ill will, fear, and cruelty? Can we find the steadfastness,
patience, generosity, and commitment not to abandon anyone or
anything in this world? Can we learn how to listen deeply and
discover the heart that trembles in the face of suffering?
The path of compassion is cultivated one step and one moment at a
time. Each of those steps lessens the mountain of sorrow in the
world.
Christina Feldman is the author of Compassion: Listening to the
Cries of the World (Rodmell Press). She is cofounder and a
guiding teacher at Gaia House, a Buddhist meditation center in
Devon, England, and a senior teacher at the Insight Meditation
Society in Barre, Massachusetts.
She Who Hears the Cries of the World, by
Christina Feldman, Shambhala Sun, May
2006.