Paradigm on Compassion

Kindness & compassion to start from home. If we don't follow at home it will be a pseudo act with outsiders. Are we kind to our loved ones ? A honest introspection will reveal we are not.

Rajneesh once said 'if you have to be compassionate to your wife or husband, just imagine he or she is terminally ill and has only few days to live. In that state you will do everything for that person.'

In reality life is a frail stuff with fleeting experiences and each moment slips by without we recognise. By the time you wake up from slumber, it is gone!! During my younger days I felt there is enough time left; but when I look back it just vanished.

Osho Rajneesh also says when someone dies we cry for the "Un-lived life with that person" If we live life fully, we will send off that person with a smile. After all we have to go later and they have gone early. Living life fully means pouring our love & compassion when the person is alive. The difference of ideology, food preference, taste and all that non-sense makes us to displease our loved ones. In a real state of love all these does not matter; the happiness of that person only matters like the love of a mother towards its child.

In one of the discourse by Sadguru a person asked him whether he can talk to his father who has already died. Sadguru clarifies to him that he did not live his life fully when his father was alive or else why he wants to contact him? If you want to be free from guilt after some one dies, please live life 100% with them.

I practice this advise for very many years now and I find it is very effective. It appears as a pessimistic thinking that loved ones will vanish one day. But it reminds our responsibility to be compassionate to our loved ones. When you say 'Loved ones' and you really mean it, their happiness is of paramount importance. This is possible only when we love them 'UNCONDITIONALLY'. All other love upon condition is non-sense because it becomes a business.

Practice compassion imitating Lord Buddha and you will become one; if not at least your loved ones will be happy in your presence. Every day at least once give up your way and do things in their way and you will learn compassion.

Jai Gurudev

With whole of my heart

NC