Theology Department
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What other words belong in this web of vocabulary?
em'pa·thy (em'pa·thi), n. [Gr. empatheia, fr. en- in + pathos suffering]. Imaginative projection of one's own consciousness into another being. com · pas'sion (kom pash un), n. [OF., fr. LL. compassio, fr compati to have compassion, fr. com + pati to bear, suffer.] Sorrow or pity excited by the distress or misfortunes of another; sympathy. pas'sion (pash'un), n.,
[OF., fr. LL. passio, fr. pati, passus, to suffer.] 1. The
enduring of inflicted pain, tortures, or the like; 4. Feeling;
emotion, specifically, one of the feelings natural to all men, as fear,
hate, love, joy; pl., these emotions collectively. jus'tice (jus'tis) n. [OF. justice, justise, fr. L. justitia, fr. justus just.] 1. The maintenance or administration of that which is just; also, merited reward or punishment. 4. The principle of rectitude and just dealing of men with each other; also, conformity to it; integrity; rectitude; -- one of the cardinal virtues. 5. Rightfulness; as the justice of a cause. Definitions from Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary.
In the world, deluded by ignorance, the supreme all-knowing
one, How does that son or daughter of good family at first aspire to that merit? He becomes endowed with that kind of wise insight which allows him to see all beings as on the way to their slaughter. Great compassion thereby takes hold of him. With his heavenly eye he surveys countless beings, and what he sees fills him with great agitation: so many carry the burden of a karma which will soon be punished in the hells, others have acquired unfortunate rebirths, which keep them away from the Buddha and his teachings, others are doomed soon to be killed, or they are enveloped in the net of false views, or fail to find the path.....And he radiates great friendliness and compassion over all those beings, and gives his attention to them, thinking: "I shall become a savior to all those beings, I shall release them from all their sufferings!" Therefore a Bodhisattva....wants to point out the path to all beings, to shed light over a wide range, to set from birth-and-death all the beings who are subject to it, and to cleanse the organs of vision of all beings. For the well-being of all beings arise the Tathagathas, When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. As he went ashore he saw a great throng; and he had compassion on them, and healed their sick. And a leper came to him beseeching him, and kneeling said to him, "If you will, you can make me clean." Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, "I will; be clean." Yet he, being compassionate, forgave their iniquity, and did not destroy them; he restrained his anger often, and did not stir up all his wrath. He remember that they were but flesh, a wind that passes not again. Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, "I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days, and have nothing to eat; and I am unwilling to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way." And as they went out of Jericho, a great crowd followed him. And behold, two blind men sitting by the roadside, when they heard that Jesus was passing by, cried out, "Have mercy on us, Son of David!" The crowd rebuked them, telling them to be silent, but they cried out the more, "Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!" And Jesus stopped and called them, saying, "What do you want me to do for you?" They said to him, "Lord, let our eyes be opened." And Jesus in pity touched their eyes, and immediately they received their sight and followed him. A [Jewish] man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite [the designated lay-associate of the priest], when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan [a foreigner not expected to show sympathy to Jews], as he journeyed, came to where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion, and he went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; then he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, "Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back." Compassion participates in the sufferings....of others. Compassion makes the heart tremble and quiver at the sight and thought of the sufferings of other beings. It consists in that, unable to bear the sufferings of others, one strives to lead them away from ill, and is based on seeing the helplessness of those overcome by suffering, and results in abstention from harming others. We suffer with other people, and unable to endure their suffering, make efforts to make them more happy. Compassion is a virtue which uproots the wish to harm others. It makes people so sensitive to the sufferings of others and causes them to make these sufferings so much their own that they do not wish to further increase them. The compassionate feels that the harm done to others is harm done to himself. And that is naturally avoided. Left to itself, however, the virtue of compassion may easily degenerate into the vice of gloom. To contemplate so much pain and affliction as this world actually and manifestly contains is bound to depress the mind. It seems quite a hopeless task to remove this vast mass of suffering, and helpless despair threatens to paralyze the will to help. Once we start identifying ourselves with all the pain in the world.....we are indeed threatened with irremediable melancholia.......Psychologically speaking, compassion is closely allied with cruelty--which can be defined as the pleasure derived from contemplating the suffering of others. The two are the reverse and obverse of the same medal. Both the compassionate and the cruel are sensitive to the suffering of others, and keen on watching it. The compassionate derive pain, the cruel pleasure from what they see.....It is possible for a man to be secretly drawn to the calamities of the world, and to derive, largely unknown to himself, a hidden satisfaction from gloating over them, which he genuinely believes to be actuated by pity. That is one of the reasons why Buddhism insists that the practice of friendliness should precede the development of compassion. For it is the function of friendliness to purify the heart of hatred and ill-will, both manifest and latent. Sympathetic joy sees the prosperous condition of others, is glad about it, and shares their happiness.....To rejoice with the children of the world in what they value as successes requires a rare spiritual perfection. It demands a complete and total indifference to material things, because nothing else can deaden the spirit of rivalry. Only then can we ungrudgingly approve of the joy over them, just as a grown-up person rejoices with a baby who has just learnt to walk, or with the athletic prowess of a young boy.....All that lies quite outside the field in which he competes and in which his self-esteem is at stake. The Bodhisattva....need not train himself in too many virtues (dharma). To one virtue...(however) the Bodhisattva has to devote himself, he has to hold it in honor (for) through it all Buddha virtues become evident. Which is this one virtue? It is Great Compassion. I have always possessed three treasures 'Love your enemies!' Mark you, not simply those who happen not to be your friends, but your enemies, your positive and active enemies. Either this is a mere Oriental hyperbole, a bit of verbal extravagance, meaning only that we should, as far as we can, abate our animosities, or else it is sincere and literal. Outside of certain cases of intimate individual relation, it seldom has been taken literally. Yet it makes one ask the question: Can there in general be a level of emotion so unifying, so obliterative of differences between man and man, that even enmity may come to be an irrelevant circumstance and fail to inhibit the friendlier interests aroused? If positive well-wishing could attain so supreme a degree of excitement, those who were swayed by it might well seem superhuman beings. Their life would be morally discrete from the life of other men, and there is no saying, in the absence of positive experience of an authentic kind, -- for there are few active examples in our scriptures, and the Buddhistic examples are legendary* -- what the effects might be: they might conceivably transform the world.
How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to
the wicked? * In one Buddhist legend, a rabbit who would later be incarnated as the Buddha, jumps into the fire to cook himself for a meal for a beggar -- having previously shaken himself three times, so that none of the insects in his fur should perish with him. |