I've been thinking about compassion lately. People keep asking me about it because Buddhist teachers are supposed to talk about compassion all the time. But I hate talking about things I'm supposed to talk about. Whenever some idea starts wending its way through a culture it very quickly turns into a cliche and dies. Compassion died a long while ago. Which isn't to say that compassion itself is dead or cliche. It's just that once a word gets sent through the ringer of approved pop culture opinion a couple of times all the life is wrung out of it and we're stuck trying to find new ways of expressing the same notion.
In my search for a better way to talk about Buddhist compassion, especially as Dogen describes it, I've come up with the cumbersome and pretentious phrase, "conscientious selfishness." It sucks. I hate it.
But I think it might be a better way to look at that something we've been calling compassion. It seems to me that the way most people approach this idea of compassion is to create an image in their minds of the ideal compassionate person, who usually looks an awful lot like themselves. Then they ask, "What would a compassionate person do?" and make their efforts to mold themselves into the image they've created.
A lot of the time this activity manifests in an attitude of, "I hate doing this, but I'm doing it for your sake!" Anyone who has ever been the recipient of action taken with that kind of an attitude knows how miserable it feels.
But I don't think that's what Dogen was on about when he wrote about compassion. He said that compassionate action was "like a hand reaching back to adjust a pillow during the night." It's a very interesting image that I've written about probably 243,572 times.
A hand reaching back to adjust a pillow sounds kind of like selfish action. It's not what we usually imagine our idealized compassionate spiritual superbeing doing. He's supposed to save the whales, and feed the children, and shelter the homeless. What would he be doing adjusting his pillow just to make sure he slept OK?
But taking care of yourself is where compassion begins. The seemingly "selfish" action of doing zazen every morning and night doesn't seem very heroic. But the effects of regular zazen practice help everyone that practitioner comes in contact with.
In a way it's like sex. I don't know if you've noticed this, but pay attention the next time you're getting hot and heavy with your special someone. The very hottest things your lover can do while you're getting it on are usually the things he or she does to get him/herself off without any specific regard for you.
When you're getting intimate with someone you love, you care deeply about that person. So your selfish actions in that context are always taken with a caring attitude toward the one you're with. And yet it's far more erotic when your lover forgets about you and focuses on him or herself. This is a kind of compassion.
I'm gonna save the rest of this particular tangent for my forthcoming book about Zen and sex (available from New World Library in 2010). But I think this is very valid.
All truly compassionate action comes from this kind of attitude, when you care deeply for others and yet do what feels best for you.Anyhow, what felt best for me last weekend was a trip out to Vasquez Rocks where the famous battle between Captain Kirk and the Gorn took place. Here are the photos to prove it!
