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Clarke Scott is a fully ordained Buddhist monk trained in the Tibetan tradition. A student of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Clarke has received personal instructions—direct one-to-one instructions—on Madhyamaka philosophy and meditation from His Holiness. Recently Clarke moved to Tasmania to pursue a Ph.D in Buddhist philosophy from the University of Tasmania.

Cant Buy Me Love, No Wait, Compassion

Last Saturday I received from Geshe Thubten Loden my last teaching as a resident of the Tibetan Buddhist Society. It was during the dinner combining a celerbration for His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s birthday and Vesak – the day of the Buddhas birth, Enlightenment and death.

As we do every year, we had a little puja and meditation session before the dinner. It was here that Geshe-la spoke of compassion. For me, it was a timely reminder that one can go to no place nor engage in any normal activity and assume that advancement along the path is guaranteed. He pointed out that compassion cannot be purchased at the local Myer department store, as if it were some kind of external phenomena. One has to cultivate it for oneself, by oneself. Turning up to meditation classes once a week and paying your $5 or $10.00 is not good enough. Getting a PhD is not good enough. This hit home.

While that may sound obvious, for most of us, most of the time, we tend to externalize our problems. I have spoken of this previously here. But similarly, we also tend to externalize the kind of environment we need in order to develop qualities spoken of in the Buddhist canon. Compassion, wisdom, equanimity all sound cool and easy to develop when reading about them but, as long as they remain on the page this compassion is empty compassion, mere words.

Compassion, as Geshe-la rightly pointed out, can only be developed to its fullest as part of a daily meditation practice. This is true because meditation is nothing more than the focusing of the mind to an object (in this case compassion) thereby over time becoming more and more familiar with its “taste”. In the end you become so familiar with compassion that it becomes apart of you, an instinctual response. You can’t buy that! However, if we do not take the time out to sit with the experience of compassion, it will never flower.

As I have said before, it is my claim that the foundation of philosophy in both the Western and Eastern traditions is compassion. Even if it is not fully articulated as such in the Western tradition, this is true as all beings possessing sentience have a basic instinctual wish to increase our level of happiness, and avoid as many painful experiences as we can.

I think, although I do not know this for certain, many misunderstand the meaning of compassion as articulated in Buddhist literature, thinking it is the wish that only others were free from existential suffering. Thereby excluding oneself and thus see compassion as some kind of “religious” exercise (by using the term religious here, I am invoking a sense of “doing” without “thinking”) not relevant to everyday life. This is not correct. Compassion entails compassion for oneself, as compassion for oneself is the basis for wishing others to be free from whatever physical or psychological problems they face. How can you wish others to be free from the problems we face naturally, if you yourself don’t know what this entails?

So whether it be it a head ache, loneliness, stress of deadlines or simply physical pain, all of us experience problems. Look this simple truth in the face and learn to deal with it not by learning to live with it, but rather by transforming suffering. How? Develop compassion, right here, right now.

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