So what is Compassion?

[Today, Feb 20, 2015 across the world #1000Speak for Compassion. This post is one of those voices. Please find other posts here: http://1000speak.wordpress.com/ or on twitter with hashtag #1000Speak . You can also learn more about his project on this youtube video]

Kindness is giving to another. For example, when you give your old clothes away to the needy or food to the hungry. There is a clear sense of the Other, someone who is not you to whom you are giving. At the end of it, you may feel good about yourself, happy, pleased at having spent a day responsibly.

Compassion is when your sense of the Other slips away, when you become deeply self-identified with the pain and needs of the Other, when their needs become yours. That is stage-I of compassion. Some examples:

My favorite Chicana writer and feminist Gloria E. Anzaldúa writes in one of her books that she once saw a blade of grass being burnt by a still-smouldering cigarette stub. Soon she could feel the pain of the grass in her, as if it is was her own skin being scorched.

My mother came panting towards me. I looked up to find her face flushed, breathing heavily and in tears: “Oh! They are cutting down the neem tree, they are cutting down the neem tree. Do something.” Saying thus she turned, stumbled back onto the terrace—to sob, to rant, to swear, to plead to her neighbours: “Understand how wonderful this tree is. She has asked nothing from you but look how much she gives. Shade, medicine, even her presence is good for all of you...don’t cut her, please don’t cut her.” I watch the Wild Mother flailing her arms, her skin loose, her voice trembling and wonder if that tree is her child who is to be executed. [No, the tree was not executed. She still lives gloriously next to my mom. The other day mom handed over some neem leaves to treat for swine flu.]

I entered the cowshed and found the farm hand on the floor, amidst cow urine and dung, sobbing loudly. The sick cow lay on the floor, her body stretched and face contorted in obvious pain. The farm hand is a middle-aged lady, so thin that it appears as if her skin drapes her bones. She earns Rs 1000/- month (about $16/month). She is not married. I do not know if she was ever married. But I know she has a brother who comes every now and then to get her to sign some government documents for money. She probably owns 3-4 saris. She works during the day- cleaning the institute and the cowshed, milking the many cows, taking them to graze and watching over visitor needs. Today one of the cows has fallen sick. The man appointed to take care of them at night was careless and something happened. She is sobbing on the floor as if she has been injured herself: “How could he be this careless? How could he? Where is the vet? Why has he not come in as yet? All these vets are useless.” Tears continuously well up her eyes and flow down like a deluge. Her thin body wracks in spasms. I look at the cow—in her pain, does she feel witnessed?

The couple tell me about the day they delivered their son. Of her excruciating pain and that moment when she was given epidural injection and asked to sit still for sometime and how pain came in one unbearable wave after another. That she held his hands, pressed her pain into his palms and that when she looked up, she saw her pain in his eyes. Now with a serene baby boy she tells me—we have been through much together but culmination of that journey was that day. I don’t remember my pain anymore, he remembers. But I remember how he looked, that he cried more than I did. What can be more validating than to see my pain in his eyes!

I tell myself—I will mute notifications to his facebook posts. Everyday I hear his wall asking, reminding, pushing, cajoling, pleading for those we don’t see or care for in our everyday lives. Everyday without fail a post bristles asking me to do something. No, he is not working with an NGO. He has a fulltime job and a family. And all the responsibilities that come with it. But every spare moment is given to the larger family of humanity. For some months now he has taken up the issue of farmer suicides to heart. He devices multiple ways to get people to pay more attention and give before one more farmer dies. He fasts on Tuesdays for them. He has invented an Indian Farmer’s League to get more people involved. Sometimes when I read his posts I wonder if they are his kith and kin, his own lost some generations back to the rural-urban divide. But he has no time to ruminate on these things. He is out there in whatever online space he can find, doing whatever he can—inform, awaken, plead, interest, cajole, push, demand—relentlessly, day after day after day. Here is his blogpost on farmer suicides "Why the need to play Indian Farmer's League" Here is his online fundraiser "Help Vidarbha Farmers". This amongst many.

Stage-I compassion is when you identify deeply with another’s pain till it becomes yours. Stage-II compassion is when you help that pain as you would help yourself—immediately, desperately, smartly, effectively, strategically, without feeling inconvenienced, and relentlessly.

There are further stages to compassion, stages that finally lead us to the state of the river—to flow effortlessly, give easily, inclusively and always.