What Is Compassion: Not Suffering Along, but Helping

A friend calls in tears: everything's fallen apart at work. Ten minutes into the call, two people feel awful. She's crying, you're crying, the evening is ruined for both. And somewhere inside, a quiet sense that this is how it should be: if she feels bad, I should too. Otherwise what kind of friend am I?

Or this. Someone avoids animal shelters and videos about abandoned pets: it's unbearable to watch. They can't help them all anyway. And then they beat themselves up: maybe I'm just hard-hearted?

Behind both stories is one question: what is compassion, really? Suffering along with someone? Or something else?

Empathy is the ability to pick up another being's state: physical pain, a heavy mood, but joy too. Noticing someone else's joy is also empathy — more on that in the article about mudita. Here we're only talking about empathy towards suffering.

You see someone suffering right now: screaming in pain, injured. And you feel bad yourself, physically — it can even be measured. It's a bodily reaction, wired into us: mirror neurons or something like that. It hardly depends on us.

It fires at what you see with your own eyes, not at what you imagine.

Some people are born with it strong, others weak. One person watches a footballer go down injured on the screen and grabs their own knee. Another sees a real wound and their pulse doesn't flicker. That doesn't make the second one heartless. Their brain is just built that way.

The main thing about biological empathy: it's only loosely tied to ethics. A person may not feel others' pain in their body and still be very kind and decent.

This is the empathy society taught us. Morality is the norms of behaviour accepted around us. Not ethics in the deep sense, but ethics as society understands it at the moment. And it sometimes understands it very oddly: not long ago, beating children was considered normal upbringing.

Moral empathy is a belief, usually unconscious, that in a certain situation you're obliged to feel pain in response to someone else's pain. But you can't feel pain on demand. So you have to work yourself up.

In winter, a cat lies on the warm hood of a car in the yard. Squinting, purring, looking roughly like someone relaxing on a yacht. No sign of suffering. But the mind instantly fills in: if I were lying outside in the frost, I'd be miserable, so it's miserable, so it needs pity. That pity is moral empathy.

Why are we taught this? Quite often moral empathy works as a way of controlling people.

A simple family example. A father wants his grown son to visit every weekend, and he starts to suffer: blood pressure, hurt feelings, “nobody needs me”. Perhaps quite sincerely — he believes in his own suffering. But through it he gets his way. And if the son doesn't come, he's “heartless”, and guilt winds up inside him.

«Guilt is a clear sign that someone once manipulated you.»

When society talks about compassion and mercy, it very often means exactly this moral empathy. It's raised to an absolute. A person goes around feeling for everyone, thinking all the time about how everyone suffers — and is considered almost a saint. In fact, it's simply a person who was heavily manipulated.

Fundraisers on social media for sick animals and children belong here too. Often you can't know whether those animals and children even exist. You're shown a picture that hooks moral empathy — and there you are, transferring money. Helping a family with a sick child that you know personally is a different matter. That's no longer a hook, it's a conscious choice.

This is a calm, reasoned understanding of another's suffering: this being is in pain right now, and here are the signs.

For a doctor whose biological empathy has dulled, this is the only way not to grow hard: to remember that the patient is in pain and to consciously try to ease it. That doesn't take emotions. It takes understanding.

There's a good illustration in the series “The Big Bang Theory”. Sheldon Cooper has almost no biological empathy, and no moral empathy either. But he's clever, and his cognitive empathy works at least somewhat.

One day his neighbour Penny comes home upset. Sheldon sits down beside her, awkwardly pats her shoulder, says “there, there” and brings her a cup of hot tea. Penny is so stunned she forgets her troubles: “What just happened?” And Sheldon explains: his mother told him that when someone is upset, you pat their shoulder, say “there, there” and bring a hot beverage.

Developing cognitive empathy isn't about programs society put into us. It's about watching yourself and others. Learning to tell real suffering from playing at suffering, even when the player sincerely believes in it. Learning not to fall for manipulation. In essence, it's developing wisdom.

Someone who understands that another is suffering doesn't have to suffer themselves. The question is what they do with that understanding — after all, it can be used for harm too.

So: biological empathy isn't a necessary basis for ethics. Moral empathy rather harms it. And cognitive empathy is the foundation.

Picture a small accident at a crossroads. A crowd gathers: someone gasps, someone films on their phone, someone keeps saying “how awful”. Everyone's caught up in emotion, so little gets done. Then someone walks up, calmly puts out the warning triangle, calls an ambulance and checks that everyone is conscious.

That's the whole difference.

None of the kinds of empathy is compassion yet. Not even the cognitive one. So what is compassion in Buddhism? It's called karuna, and it works differently.

Like metta, compassion isn't an emotion but an action. You don't feel it, you do it.

«Compassion isn't something you feel. It's something you do.»

Compassion is action aimed at lessening suffering. And actions, as the suttas say, come in three kinds: thoughts, words and deeds. Thoughts underlie the rest. So it all starts with the intention to lower the sum of suffering.

That means shifting your view of the world a little. Not “I don't care that everyone suffers”. Not “I don't think about it”. And not “I'll suffer along with everyone”. But a calm understanding: if there's a chance to lessen real, not imagined, suffering, it's worth doing.

Sheldon's “there, there” is compassion in words. The tea is compassion in deeds. Whether he intended to ease Penny's day or was just following instructions, nobody knows. If he did, there was compassion in thought too.

A scene appears often in the suttas: someone, for example Venerable Ananda, comes to the Buddha and says, “Venerable sir, out of compassion, tell us this.” It doesn't mean “feel the emotion”. It's a request for an action that will lessen suffering.

When the Buddha went out to meet Angulimala, a murderer, to turn him to the Dhamma, that was an act of compassion. Towards Angulimala himself and towards everyone he might still have killed.

This may be the main misconception. The words sound alike, and if you ask people what is compassion, many will say: suffering along with someone. But these are two opposite movements.

Compassion is action. While someone is busy with something that eases another's trouble, they simply have no time to drown in feelings. They call a lawyer, bring groceries, look after the kids so a friend going through a divorce can finally sleep. No time to cry and replay it: their hands are full.

Suffering is inaction plus immersion. We do nothing, but watch, replay, agonize. The mood sours, the energy drains. The longer it goes on, the closer apathy gets, and from there depression isn't far.

And if you can't help? Admit it honestly. Wishing people well in your mind is an action too, an action of the mind. Then go back to your own life: to the people you can help. Including yourself.

The question “what is compassion?” has one more side: wisdom. It's needed here again: telling real suffering from imagined. And simply not reacting to the staged, manipulative kind.

Otherwise we turn into a TV whose remote is in someone else's hand. They press “guilt” and guilt switches on. They press “pity” and pity switches on. That's what manipulation through moral empathy is.

Back to the cat on the hood. How can you tell an animal is suffering? For a street animal it's normal to live outside in any weather and go about its business.

If you can see the animal is suffering, the next question is: can I help right now? If you can, you help. If you can't, you don't, full stop. The cat is hungry and asking for food — give it some. If you can't, you can't; someone else will feed it.

And a cat warming itself on a car hood doesn't need rescuing. You can make it happy with a bit of chicken. But that's gladdening, not saving. If you like making animals happy — wonderful, that's mudita. If you can't right now, you can go on about your day.

Everything else is mostly fantasy. And it brings suffering mainly to the one fantasising. Strange arithmetic: there was a cat that was basically fine. There was a person who didn't know about it. The person saw the cat, decided it was suffering, and started suffering too. One more sufferer. The sum of suffering went up.

This is another manipulation through moral empathy. We're taught to play rescuer: “I'm suffering, so save me; if you don't, you're a monster.”

If you notice your inner rescuer switching on, it's worth knowing: it's a trace of manipulation once done to you. A button someone learned to press long ago. It's still there, and any touch sets it off.

The opposite of metta is dosa: anger, hatred, rejection. And what's the opposite of karuna?

In sutta 62 of the Majjhima Nikaya, the opposite of compassion is called vihesa — something like condemnation, arrogance, cold dislike.

This attitude is often raised in us from childhood. A prosecutor-parent always looking for something to blame you for. And later a person looks at themselves the same way: judging, sometimes cruelly. Blaming themselves for every failure.

The other extreme is justifying yourself in everything. But the Dhamma offers a third way: to look at the situation impartially.

1. 1

   How serious is it?

   Maybe the slip isn't so terrible. Many people have been through it.

2. 2

   What caused it?

   What were the circumstances? What exactly could have been done differently?

3. 3

   What's the lesson?

   Take the lesson and work out a new, better way to act.

That way you don't blame yourself or suffer for years at the memory of a slip. It's part of life: everyone makes mistakes.

And when you treat yourself like this, you start treating others the same way. Gently, leniently, with mercy. A person is always imperfect, and perhaps life would be easier for them and those around them if some of their traits changed. But changing them isn't our job.

Another person is something like the weather. You can't re-educate a downpour, but you can take an umbrella. We accept a person's traits and, taking them into account, change our own behaviour. And sometimes ordinary kindness, a simple “how can I help?”, suddenly changes a person. Perhaps they'd never met such an attitude and didn't know it could be like that.

«Our understanding of another person is right if mercy is born from it.»

At the same time, mercy doesn't mean you can't keep away from someone. If a person is dangerous — physically, or to your family's wellbeing — they too deserve understanding. But it's better to keep your distance. One doesn't contradict the other. When to keep your distance and when to help is also a matter of wisdom and life experience.

And underneath all this still lies metta. Judgement and rejection are kinds of dosa too. The chain is: metta leads to cognitive empathy, to understanding, and understanding to compassion. Then comes mudita, sympathetic joy, and after it upekkha, equanimity.

Compassion can well be a meditation theme — what the suttas call a nimitta. Just like metta.

1. 1

   Repeat

   Sit and silently say: “May all beings be free from suffering.” Or one word: “compassion”.

2. 2

   Observe

   Pause. See how it resonates in the mind and body.

3. 3

   Again

   “Compassion” again — and another pause. Gradually the mind clears of clouded states.

Biological

Innate. There's nothing to do with it except notice, accept and take it into account. If it's strong, better not to work in intensive care or a hospice: you can burn out very fast.

Moral

Worth learning to switch off. It's the one that most often wrecks people's peace of mind today: almost all manipulation by guilt runs through it.

Cognitive

Worth developing. It's the calm understanding of another's suffering from which compassion grows — an action, not a feeling.

Which answers the second story from the beginning. Avoiding situations where you see animals suffer is fine. And there's no need to feel guilty: guilt is part of the manipulation mechanism. It's compassion towards yourself: lowering the sum of suffering, your own. That's right.

Like on a plane: if the cabin loses pressure, put on your own mask first, then the child's. First take care of yourself — and then you'll see clearly when an animal can be gladdened and when there's nothing to worry about.

And the answer to the first one. The belief “if I stay calm, I'm a bad friend” is that very manipulation, from childhood, family, society. When a child is told they're heartless, it's almost impossible to brush off: it sounds like a crime on a cosmic scale. And in adult life, when someone calls us that again, the old button fires. A friend in tears needs a calm person beside her more than a second one crying.

Everyone words their new belief for themselves. For example:

I see guilt in myself.

Aha, the old button.

Seen it. Thanks, you can go.

Moving on.

Another frequent question: how do you earn salvation if not through suffering? After all, it's not only a Christian motif.

For Buddhism it isn't a topic at all. Earn it — before whom? Who's the judge? Salvation isn't earned. You walk towards it. And not through suffering, but by removing bad qualities where you can and cultivating good ones.

Compassion isn't measured by how hard your heart squeezes, but by what you do next.

A friend after a divorce

You could sit with her and cry until morning. Or you could bring food, help find a lawyer and take the kids for the weekend so she can sleep.

A coworker on the edge of burnout

Nodding sympathetically in the break room is easy. Compassion is taking some of their tasks or honestly telling the manager they can't cope.

An elderly person falls on the street

Gasping and walking on is emotion without action. Stopping, helping them up and asking whether to call an ambulance — that's compassion.

A friend loses income and has to choose between his calling and a steady job

You could send words of support and leave it there. Or you could do what his friend did — wire a real sum of money, enough to ease the worry about feeding the family and buy time to keep doing the work that actually matters to him.

And this isn't compassion

Reading about other people's grief in the news for hours, sleeping badly and doing nothing. Or rescuing an adult who never asked to be rescued. That's the «rescuer» program, not help.

So what is compassion? Not the ability to suffer along with everyone.

But the ability to calmly put out the warning triangle and dial for an ambulance.