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So “compassion” means “to endure [something] with another person,” to put ourselves in somebody else’s shoes, to feel her pain as though it were our own, and to enter generously into his point of view. That is why compassion is aptly summed up in the Golden Rule, which asks us to look into our own hearts, discover what gives us pain, and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else. Compassion can be defined, therefore, as an attitude of principled, consistent altruism.
One of its central disciplines was a meditation on four elements of the “immeasurable” love that exists within everyone and everything: maitri (“loving kindness”), the desire to bring happiness to all sentient beings; karuna (“compassion”), the resolve to liberate all creatures from their pain; mudita (“sympathetic joy”), which takes delight in the happiness of others; and finally upeksha (“even-mindedness”), an equanimity that enables us to love all beings equally and impartially.
Gandhi memorably said that we must ourselves become the change that we wish to see in the world. We cannot reasonably expect
As an initial step, it might be helpful as a symbolic act of commitment to visit www.charterforcompassion.org and register with the Charter for Compassion. The charter is essentially a summons to compassionate action, and the website will enable you to keep up, week by week, with the charter’s progress in various parts of the world.
Loving our enemies means that we have to accept “the necessity, over and over again, of forgiving those who inflict evil and injury on us.” King was convinced that this was “an absolute necessity for our survival … the key to the solution of the problems of our world.”
always remained convinced that only love could cure this “disease”: “Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illumines it.”
But even if we achieve only a fraction of this enlightenment and leave the world marginally better because we have lived in it, our lives will have been worthwhile. There is no more to be said. We know what we have to do. This is the end of the book, but our work is just beginning.
