January 15 – Empathy

Dear Friends,

When the Sunday Morning Insight Meditation Group listened to a recorded talk by Christina Feldman about compassion last year, I was interested to hear Christina bring in some nuances about compassion.

I was familiar with the Pāli word karuna for compassion, but Christina mentions another word – anukhampa – what she calls “a profound empathy, the trembling, quivering of the heart in the face of suffering or pain wherever its met, inwardly or outwardly.” Christina describes karuna as “the engaged dynamic of responsiveness; the translating of empathy and understanding into our thoughts, words, and acts.” (page 64)

I have heard other teachers talk about compassion as a quivering or trembling of the heart in response to suffering, but I hadn’t really broken it down into these two parts – empathy and responsiveness.

Christina emphasizes that empathy is a necessary part of this equation for compassion, because without allowing our hearts to quiver with the suffering, we might just jump straight into a fix-it mode, trying to make the suffering go away because we don’t like it.

Empathy restrains the compulsions that can be threaded with an underlying aversion. We cease seeking for reassurances and hoping for a better future. We learn with mindfulness what it means to be present in the presence of all things.

page 65

How can we cultivate empathy? In the Search Inside Yourself training course I took, there were two exercises that helped.

The first was called “Just Like Me”. You can listen a guided meditation from Meg Levie that was for a dyad practice, where we sat across from another. You can do this yourself by bringing to mind someone, or even just doing this when sitting in the airport, waiting in line, having a coffee in a cafe…
https://siyli.org/resources/just-like-me-with-meg-levie

The second exercise was intended to cultivate a broader view of a difficult situation. Again, we did this as a dyad practice, but one can also do this as a written or reflective exercise. First we described the situation as objectively as possible. Secondly, we would explain the situation from our point of view, as if we were right. Then we would try to describe the situation from the other person’s point of view, as if they were right. (One could even try sitting in a different chair when explaining the other view.) Then there was time to review what insights came up from this perspective taking.

Often, this practice helps bring some empathy and understanding – we might both be “right” but we value different priorities, or we have different information available to us. In the Search Inside Yourself book, this is described as “being open to understanding how other people can seem reasonable, at least from their own points of view, even when you disagree with them.” (chapter 7)

I invite you to try one or both exercises!

Warm wishes,
Andrea