The War Within - Between Good and Evil by Bheemeswara Challa (e book reader online .txt) 📕

with compassion, and compassionate
with our passions. ‘Compassion’ in fact symbolizes the highest virtue. Through
the sharing of suffering, we can help each other to become better beings. In the
Bhagavad Gita, it is said that ‘When [a man] sees all beings as equals in suffering
or in joy because they are like himself, that man has grown perfect in yoga’. The
principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, and ethical and spiritual
traditions, calling us to always treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves,
to strive ceaselessly to lighten the lives of others, to refrain from inflicting any
sort of pain on all creatures. And yet even those who are reputed to be ‘good’
and ‘decent’ and even ‘generous’ among us have always found it difficult to make
compassion a passion, that which gives us irresistible pleasure. It has always been
a struggle and now more so than ever. As Jack Finley, the science fiction writer
reminds us: “This is a time when it becomes harder and harder to continue telling
yourself that we are still good people. We hate each other. And we’re used to it”.
That ‘hate’ shows up in multiple ways, irritation, intolerance, anger, aggression,
suicide, murder. Not being able to ‘hate’ anyone anytime is a quality human
beings have yet to imbibe. It is said that, when asked for a summary of the Jewish
religion in the most concise terms, the 1st-century Jewish leader Rabbi Hillel
stated, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole
Torah. The rest is the explanation; go and learn”. The Ishavasya Upanishad says,
“He who sees the entire world of animate and inanimate objects in himself, and
also sees himself in all animate and inanimate objects, because of this does not
hate anyone”.
That is a lofty ideal, but even without reaching such heights we can find
no utility for hate. Hate is so wasteful, so utterly useless, that it is hard even to
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rationalize it. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “I have decided to stick with love; hate
is too great a burden to bear”. But that is a ‘burden’ in different degrees, shapes,
and avatars that we all carry. But personal, religious, ethnic, and racial ‘hatred’ is
in the very air we breathe in and out today. ‘Hate’ has become so acceptable in
our language that we use this word without always intending it to be that. Even
in ordinary conversation, we involuntarily say, ‘I hate this’ or ‘I hate him’; even if
it is really not in the sense of hatred, which is the intense desire to destroy another
person, even if not necessary, it is malice in action. Even love, if unreciprocated or
obstructed, can turn into murderous hatred. The way to counter it is to cultivate
compassion, learn it like any other skill. Engaging with another individual
without expecting anything frees one from the confines of ‘separateness’ and
of one’s ego. It is not only a spiritual sadhana but also a social imperative at
this juncture in our troubled world. Einstein said, “Our task must be to free
ourselves by widening our arc of compassion to embrace all living creatures and
the whole of nature and its beauty”. ‘Compassion’ is more than helping out
people in distress or disability; more than generosity or mercy. As Mackie Ruka
of New Zealand’s Waitaha Maori tribe says, compassion is an act of power, of
transformative power. It is our inability to harness that power that impoverishes
us mentally and spiritually. We seem more capable of passion than compassion,
zealotry more than moderation. We need both passion and compassion, but we
should try to be passionately compassionate, and compassionately passionate.
When we are passionate or obsessed about something, like being in love, we
become single-minded and driven, and everything else becomes secondary or
non-existent. All related actions become involuntary and automatic. We must
bring that ‘state of mind’ to compassion.
For the theologian Matthew Fox, ‘compassion, in its broadest sweep’,
is more than moral commandment, it is ‘but a flow and overflow of the fullest
human and divine energies’. It has been described as the ‘keen awareness of
the interdependence of all things (Thomas Merton); as ‘the ultimate and most
meaningful embodiment of emotional maturity’. It is through compassion
that a person achieves the ‘peak experiences’ and deepest reach in his search
for self-fulfillment. Eckhart Tolle says, “Compassion is the awareness of a deep
bond between yourself and all other creatures”. All religions extol compassion
as the highest value and virtue, both as a way to alleviate suffering and as a
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tool of salvation, nirvana, or moksha. It is called daya in Hinduism, and karuna
in Buddhism, although both terms are interchangeable. Compassion has been
called the transcendental and experiential heart of the Buddha’s teachings. It is
one of the four tenets of Buddhist doctrine of Brahmavihara: loving-kindness;
compassion; empathetic joy; and equanimity. Compassion for all life, human
and animal, is the very soul of Jainism. In fact, so identified is Buddhism with
compassion, that the Buddha himself came to be known as the ‘Compassionate
One’. In Christianity too, compassion is given great importance. Jesus tells his
listeners in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall
obtain mercy”. In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, he holds up to his followers
the ideal of compassionate conduct. True Christian compassion, say the Gospels,
should extend to all, even to the extent of loving one’s enemies. As far as Islam
is concerned, each of the 114 chapters of the Quran, with one exception, begins
with the verse, “In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful”. The
Arabic word for compassion is rahmah. A good Muslim has to commence each
day, each prayer and each significant action by reciting Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-
Rahim—invoking “God the Merciful and the Compassionate”. In practical terms,
compassion is two-pronged behavioral manifestation, one affirmative, the other
avoidance: to help everyone who asks for or needs help; and not to hurt anyone
by word or deed, if not in thought. That is the distilled wisdom, the backbone
of all religions. Sin, it has been said, is hurting others unnecessarily; every other
‘sin’ is invented nonsense. The Dalai Lama said, “Our primary purpose in life is
to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least do not hurt them”. It does
not make a difference if one is a theist or atheist. If we ‘believe’ in God, we are
doing His work, as his proxy. And if we do not, if there is no God to help or
protect the suffering, then there is all the more reason for another man to step up
and help a fellow-man. Plato said, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a
harder battle”. We think that our ‘battle’ is the hardest because we cannot feel,
or experience, the nature or the ferocity of the battles of others. We ‘hurt’ others
and are wary of helping because of the ‘mine-thine’ mental divide, but which,
Einstein told us, is ‘an optical delusion of man’s consciousness’. We forget that, as
Herman Melville wrote, “our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as
effects”. It is not that most of us are incapable of being viscerally or compulsively
‘compassionate’; we are compassionate selectively and inconsistently. Many
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sensitive souls have long doubted whether true compassion exists at all in the
human essence—or whether it is inherently rooted in self-interest. Our terrible,
bloodstained, savage history gives no comfort. Indeed, the merciless message
of human history is that, although man is capable of great good, he can be
more easily seduced by unspeakable evil. Carl Jung wrote, “When [our shadow]
appears… it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the
relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze
into the face of absolute evil”.
We are all a blend of good and evil, malevolence and magnanimity, virtue
and vice, and a host of other pairs of opposites. It is pointless to endlessly debate
which is ‘natural’ and embedded, and which is not. If they are not natural or
innate they wouldn’t be there in the first place. We are home to the noblest and
vilest, sacred, and sordid, of emotions, feelings, and thoughts. Which of these, or
a combination of which, comes out and affects behavior depends on the course
of the war within. Compassion is not empathy or altruism, though the concepts
are related. While empathy relates more generically to our ability to take the
perspective of and feel the emotions of another human person, compassion is
when those feelings and thoughts extend to a desire to help. Altruism, in turn, is
the kind, benevolent behavior often prompted by feelings of compassion, though
one can feel compassion without acting on it, and altruism is not always motivated
by compassion. Although we tend to think that compassion or empathy or
altruism are about ‘giving’ and being ‘selfless’ that is not always true. We gain far
more than we give, both physically and spiritually. As the Dalai Lama puts it, ‘the
first beneficiary of compassion is always oneself ’. He goes on, “If you want others
to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion”.
But we cannot be compassionate outside if there is no ‘contentment’ inside. If we
are discontented within, then we will try to find ‘contentment’ outside, which
means fulfilling desires. The focus will then be on that effort, not on helping or
being compassionate towards others. In the modern world, most persons are
trapped in a state disquietedness, disaffection, alienation, and existential angst,
and that is the reason why they find it so herculean to be compassionate in their
behavior. It is because they are discontented with so many unfulfilled desires that
they are so avaricious in their behavior; they want to find ‘contentment within’
by filling it up with material things. It is like trying to put out a fire by pouring
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fuel into it. In compassion, one wholly gives, and is thankful for being given the
opportunity to give.
Compassion is not only good for one’s soul, but also one’s body. Recent
studies of compassion reject the inevitability of self-interest. These studies support
a view of the emotions as rational, functional, and adaptive. Compassion and
benevolence and altruism, which are the hallmarks of all religions, this research
suggests, are an evolved part of human nature, bedded in our brain and biology,
and ready to be cultivated for the greater good. The study suggests that “the brain,
then, seems wired up to respond to others’ suffering—indeed, it makes us feel
good when we can alleviate that suffering”.2 New research has shown that “when
we feel compassion, our heart rate slows down, we secrete the ‘bonding hormone’
oxytocin, and regions of the brain linked to empathy, caregiving, and feelings of
pleasure light up, which often results in our wanting to approach and care for other
people”. They also indicate there is a biological basis for compassion, and there
are physical benefits to practicing compassion—people who practice it produce
100% more DHEA, which is a hormone that counteracts the ageing process,
and 23% less cortisol—the ‘stress hormone’. They are in accordance with the
view held by Charles Darwin that ‘compassion and benevolence are an evolved
part of human nature, an intrinsic part of our brain in particular, and biological
system on the whole’. Studies indicate that “compassion is not simply a fickle or
irrational emotion but rather an innate human response embedded into the folds
of our brains”. This “suggests that being compassionate causes a chemical reaction
in the body that motivates us to be even more compassionate”. Another research
tells us that “Our findings support the possibility that compassion and altruism
can be viewed as trainable skills rather than stable traits”. Specifically, they report
that taking a course in compassion leads to increased engagement of certain
neural systems, which prompts higher levels of altruistic behavior… Brain scans
revealed “a pattern of neural changes” in those who had received compassion
training, including “neural systems implicated in understanding the suffering of
other people, executive and emotional control, and reward processing”.
‘Cast Out the Beam Out of Thine Own Eye’
Under what circumstances and conditions should an individual be refrained
from what he chooses to do? Philosophers have long debated and differed on this
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question. Some have argued that it should only be when his intended action is
a potential threat to others. By extension, it means that an individual is the best
judge of what is ‘good’ for him and that no one else can be a surrogate. Others
have expanded to