The Buddha’s teaching lists 4 boundless practices of loving kindness: love, compassion, mudita, and upekkha. One of these is stronger than the others. One is more powerful than the others. Let me prove this to you; I can do it with one word: ‘Help!’
Imagine that you are walking down a country road and you hear a voice in the field off to your right, it shouts, ‘Help!’ What happens to you? What do you do? What happens to your physiology? Adrenalin kicks in, you turn your head, you seek out the source of the voice, the evaluative mental function kicks in: where are they, what went wrong, what do they need, how can I help?
Fast fast fast, all these questions zoom through the mind. And. You. Act. This is important. Action, swift action to alleviate suffering is our work.
We are not arrogant enough to think that we need to do the universe’s work—Nibbana—is the universe as it is, nibbana is permanent. Yes, it may take a zillion kalpas for us to realize this, but awakening is inevitable. So suffering is not permanent; suffering has a best before date—it will expire (eventually).
The job of the takers of the Boddhisattva Vow is to speed this process up. ‘I aspire to awaken speedily for the sake of all sentient beings.’ The key word is speedily. Awakening is not in doubt. What we are therefore on about is speedily helping beings get free from suffering. Don’t waste another lifetime Awaken Speedily. What is the key to speedily? Compassion. The Sanskrit root of ‘karuna’ is ‘karoti’—to do. Think about it. You hear a cry for help: you don’t go into reflection, you don’t act according to the English etymology of compassion, you don’t ‘be with’ or merely sympathize—you dooo something. In this case (as is often the case) the Sanskrit/Pali is more helpful than English. Do. Act.
You hear a cry for help—adrenalin kicks in—why? So that you can meditate? So that you can sympathize? No, so that your body, your physical form can do something to alleviate that person’s pain or suffering. So that you can get on with it. Dharma teacher Cecilie Kwiat used to tell us that if you’re an activist you’ve gotta be in good shape, connected to your body, fit—because compassion is rooted in the body. Ya gotta be able to DO stuff.
The Venerable Namgyal Rinpoche used to open every Dharma class with these three words: ‘Compassion, Awareness, Wisdom.’ Near the end of his life he changed it slightly to ‘Compassion, Non-Clinging Awareness, Wisdom’. I notice now that some teachers in his lineage have decided to change it up a bit, put their own spin on things maybe; they say: ‘Wisdom, Compassion Awareness.’ Okay. But can they explain why Venerable Namgyal Rinpoche chose his formulation?
Why did the Venerable Namgyal Rinpoche put the word compassion first? Because compassion is the crowbar of the teaching. It is the strongest Brahma Vihara. Contrast compassion with the other three boundless states. Imagine you are back on that country road walking and you hear laughter and you feel mudita, What happens to you? How do you react? what do you do?, how do you feel? Or if you see a friend and feel metta, What then?
These are beautiful feelings all—but none have that catalytic spring into action of compassion. (Perhaps this is why the ‘news’ focuses so much on ‘bad’ news and suffering, these things have the capacity to move us more, they get our attention, and we seem to be hard-wired this way.) Compassion is the ‘heavy-lifter’ in Dharma, the bulldozer. It gets things moving.
Want to talk about precious human birth? How many other species respond to a cry for help of one of their own, if it isn’t their direct offspring? Can you name any? Monkeys? Birds? Elephants? If there are any, it’s not many. Humans are the only species that consistently moves to help other non-blood related members of their own kind.
What about helping other species? How many animals will consistently help other species? None. Humans are the only species that will move to help suffering members of another species (of many other species!).
There’s your precious human birth right there. It’s better (oh, i know: it bugs some of us to think this way, but it’s true), it’s better to be born in human form. You can empathize more, be curious more, and help more. When someone shouts out ‘Who knows how to help?’ You can answer ‘I do.’
The Boddhisattva vow is the true wedding vow, the vow that weds you to all humanity, animality, plantity—totality. Everythingity. ‘I do.’ In sickness, health, forever, I do.
Why’s it better to be born as a human? Because you can help. Because you can ACT compassionately—you are spurred to do—it is built in. ‘Help!’ One word. That’s all it takes. I rest my case.
Derek Rasmussen is a Dharma teacher and peace activist. Derek has been practising meditation for 25 years in the Burmese and Tibetan traditions of his root teacher, the Venerable Namgyal Rinpoche. Derek mixes meditation with activism, ecology, art, and humour. He teaches in Canada and New Zealand.