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with the dalai lama in town, nearly everyone in seattle seems temporarily preoccupied with questions about compassion- what is it?  how can we cultivate it in children?  can compassion really change the world?  what i’ve found interesting about the local news coverage is that as much as i agree with with the dalai lama’s message of hope and change through non-violence and compassion, the media has spun this as yet another moralistic and vaguely spiritual movement of kindness and charity, something the enlightened progressive seattleites eat up every time.  and while i’m glad that he’s here and the “positive message” is gaining attention, i wonder if we’re actually missing out on the root of compassion by glossing over suffering with the ear candy of generic benevolence.

the latin roots of compassion mean “suffering together,” a significant step beyond just “being nice” to each other because it boosts our collective self-esteem about doing good in the world.  this is the radical nature of compassion because it goes against every dominant force of western society that seeks to insulate us from suffering.  our segregated cities that hide vast socioeconomic disparity,  an unregulated free market that lines the pockets of the rich while trampling those on the bottom, and even our media outlets that stream endless global suffering onto our computer screens- each of these factors and more are designed in part to not only numb us from true compassion, but to actually help us justify and rationalize the injustice that we perpetuate.

so in a sense, even a good event like seeds of compassion can be twisted into a self-congratulatory act of surface level charity, a bland “pay it forward” spirit of “positive energy” that is mostly self-serving because, as i’ve read in many of these articles, “compassion makes us happy.”  but what if compassion is actually designed to make us more human, and happiness is just an occasional by-product?

lastly, i wonder where all the christians are when it’s time to suffer together.  why should the dalai lama be the only voice crying out for compassion?  when we speak of the passion of jesus, we are upholding his life and death as much more than just a “model” of suffering- his passion is our vocation.  we are called to be a people of suffering because the symbol of the kingdom of God is a cross, and we must learn to carry our own as we also share in shouldering the heavy burden of the world’s great suffering.  anything less just becomes the same self-help therapeutic gospel of a distorted jesus who wants to make us happy and comfortable.

seeds of “compassion” may grow acts of kindness, but the seeds of suffering together make us more human in the way god intended from the beginning.