Thursday, September 30, 2010
Compassion
We talked a little about happiness on Wednesday and how one is able to experience this while still practicing renunciation, detachment, etc. On the same note, sutra I.33 also instructs us to act with "compassion toward those in distress." In order to understand and sympathize, expressing true compassion towards someone seems to require some sort of connection or attachment. How is one able to express compassion while still remaining detached? Or am I just mistaking compassion for something with deeper emotional roots?
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You are right to think that compassion requires a connection or attachment, in some loose sense, to the world of prakrti. I'm not sure that exercising compassion towards someone in distress necessarily means attachment to the fruits of actions, though it might happen. The point is, I think, to remove the "contamination of the desire to inflict harm on others" (129). One should remove such contaminations so that "the sattva natural to the mind can manifest." "By these practices of equanimity the mind can become lucid and fixed in the goal of yoga."
ReplyDeleteSo there is connection to the world of the gunas in that one's goal in exercising compassion is to cultivate sattva, one of the gunas and constituents of prakrti. But there is not necessarily attachment (in the sense of being attached to the fruits of action) here. Perhaps attachment to the fruits of actions could happen here though, since one is acting in such a way to receive something, namely a sattvic mind. What is interesting is that Bryant says, "Cultivating the higher qualities of sattva is a continuous and constant requirement of the yogic path and spills over into all aspects of life's affairs and social interactions," suggesting that attachment (in order to generate sattva) is essential to practicing yoga.
I am not convinced that being compassionate leads to ttachment although it absolutely can do so. I think a perfect parallel can be found in Christianity , and we are all familiar with that so I will explore that example. When Jesus says "love your neighbor," he says it to everyone, yet not everyone takes it to mean the same thing. For example, one person might think that loving their neighbor means sharing all of their alcohol with them. Another person might interpret it to mean that you should educate that person so that they can learn why alcohol is bad. Both people would claim that they are doing something good for their neighbor and loving them, but one has better conceptions of good and love.
ReplyDeleteNow, I may have compassion for a neighbor because she has a broken arm and she'll never be able to play the piano again. She is terribly upset about this. You are enlightened, however, and when you have compassion on her, you have compassion in the sense that you relize that she mis-identifies her atman and her body. Our comapssions are totally different, and you probably have a better conception of it.
I am not sure if this really answers your question, but it seems like a lot of this stuff requires one to tke a certain point of view on the world and specifically one's own body. I think that ultimately you can still love, feel compassion for, and be angry with people so long as you do not identify with those emotions. Compassion is natural, but really thinking that it is you having compassion and not your body, or human nature or something, then it becomes a problem. Phrasing it like that seems odd, and almost makes it seem like the goal of yoga is some sort of cognitive dissonance. I think its correct though, although sutra II.34 may disagree with me. But if that is true, I think that the Bhagavad Gita disagrees with sutra II.34. Anyways, I don't know. The way in which we are supposed to deal with intense and very human emotions seems difficult.