Compassion
by Rabbi Rami Shapiro

I know that compassion comes from the Latin meaning shared/com suffering/passion. But, honestly, why do I want to share someone’s suffering? I have enough of my own. I mean I care about people and do what I can to be of help, but do I really have to suffer along with them?

There is a Hasidic proverb that says, “If you find yourself confronted by a person trapped in and struggling unsuccessfully to get out of a pool of mud, do not imagine you can stand on the edge of the pool and pull him out. No, you must enter the mud pool alongside him and together make your way out.”

But that begs the question; it doesn’t answer it.

I’m coming to that. The key phrase in the story is “do not imagine.” That is you if you want to free the person don’t get caught up in worrying about getting muddy; getting muddy is just part of the game. You have no real choice but to enter the mud pool. Salvation doesn’t come from without or within, but from between. So to live is to get muddy, and to help others is to get even muddier.

So to help the hungry, I have to go hungry? To clothe the naked I have to be naked? That makes no sense.

I would put it this way: to help the hungry you have to realize you are already hungry; to help the naked you have to realize you are already naked. You are hungry because they are hungry. You are naked because they are naked. This is what Jesus taught when he spoke of doing for the “least of these” in Matthew 25. True compassion isn’t a feeling you cultivate, but an awareness of how things really are.

But what’s the difference between that and just doing something to help someone else?

On the outside there may be no difference, but on the inside the difference is huge. Someone who does good without compassion is driven by an ulterior motive: to save others, to earn their love and respect, to convert them to this or that way of thinking or belief. But one who acts from compassion has no other motivation that to alleviate suffering.

Compassion does as compassion is?

Excellent. Compassion does as compassion is; the more you realize the connection of all life, the more you share the suffering of all the living, and the more you act to ease that suffering. Compassion for its own sake.