A Spacious Heart:
Preparing for Compassionate Action

Joseph Goldstein

“How do we find compassion in the midst of storms of anger, hatred, ill will, or fear?” This is one of the most challenging questions as we seek peace in the world, says IMS co-founder and guiding teacher Joseph Goldstein. In the following excerpt from his latest book, A Heart Full of Peace, he describes the connection between contemplative practice and compassionate action.

The willingness to come close to suffering opens us to compassionate action. We don't have to look far to find suffering. The nightly news programs are catalogs of the world's distress. Are we open to it? Do we actually relate to what we see and hear, or has it all become too de-personalized?

Are we open to the suffering in our own bodies and minds? It is the nature of the body to become sick, to fall ill, and to feel pain as well as pleasure. Such things don't always wait for old age; they can happen at any time. Sometimes we feel this painful aspect of experience is a mistake, forgetting that it's part of the natural order of things. It is simply the way things are.

Certain emotions and mind-states also create suffering in our lives: anger, hatred, fear, loneliness, anxiety, boredom, greed, and many others. Even if we have a fair degree of material comfort, a sense of unease or dissatisfaction often colors our inner world.

Opening to suffering is the doorway to compassion; but many times we find we're not open. We've been strongly conditioned to avoid or defend ourselves against pain: "Let me not see any suffering. Let me not feel it."

Avoidance becomes obvious in meditation when we experience some physical discomfort. People coming to meditation for the first time often think, "I'll go on a wonderful retreat and spend a few days in bliss." But meditation is not about just feeling good; it is about coming in touch with whatever is actually present.

Our relationship to unpleasant physical sensations in meditation reveals a lot about our relationship to pain in other life circumstances. In similar ways, we close off to emotions that make us uncomfortable, feelings of anger, sadness, fear, unworthiness, and so on. Think of all the ways we try not to feel bored: all the busyness and distractions we create. Or reflect on the great lengths to which we go out of our fear of feeling lonely. Unwilling to be with this unpleasant feeling or explore it within us, we often build whole structures in our lives to avoid feeling it.

It's not always easy to be compassionate, much as we want to or even feel that we are. We don't like opening to our own pain, and we don't necessarily want to open to the pain of others. It takes practice—and perhaps several different practices—to be able to open to the difficult emotions that we're aware of and to illuminate those that are hidden. But with mindfulness, our hearts become spacious enough to hold painful emotions, to feel them, and to let them go. And the more mindful and aware we become of our own physical or emotional difficulties, the more strength, courage, and insight we have in being with the suffering of others.

With the aspiration of bodhichitta—the wish for our lives to benefit all—something powerful begins to happen. At first, we feel a genuine empathy for others in pain or difficulty. This happens when we take a moment to stop and feel what's really going on, before rushing on with our lives. We then move from empathy, which is a sympathetic feeling for others, to compassion—which is more than simply a warm feeling.

Compassion contains a strong motivation to act. The Vietnamese monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, expressed this so well in saying, "Compassion is a verb."

True compassion means actively engaging with the suffering in the world, and responding to the various needs of beings in whatever ways are possible, whatever ways are appropriate.

At times, compassion might take the form of small, perhaps unregarded, acts of being just a little kinder, more generous, or more forgiving of the people around us. At other times, it might require acts of tremendous courage and determination in the face of hardship and difficulty. There is no particular prescription for what to do. The field of compassionate response is limitless: it is the field of suffering beings. The important thing is to water and nurture the seed of bodhichitta within us and cultivate the intention to benefit all.

Six weeks after 9/11, I was teaching lovingkindness meditation at a retreat for lawyers. We began by sending loving wishes to ourselves, and then to the various categories of beings. At the retreat, I suggested the possibility of including in our metta even those involved in acts of violence and aggression. One of the participants from New York commented that he couldn't possibly send lovingkindness to al-Qaeda, nor would he ever want to.

For me, that simple and honest statement raised a lot of interesting questions. What is our response to violence and injustice? How do we understand the practices of lovingkindness and compassion in the face of fear or anger? What are our bedrock aspirations for the world and ourselves?

In doing the meditation on lovingkindness, we repeat the phrases, "May you be happy, may you be peaceful, may you be free of suffering." However, when we get to people who have done us harm, either individually or collectively, often we don't want to include them in our loving wishes. We don't want to wish them happiness. We may well want to see them suffer for the great harm they have done. These are not unusual feelings to have. But right there, in that situation, is the critical juncture of contemplative practice and action in the world.

If we want to enhance the possibilities for more compassion and peace in the world—and in ourselves—we need to look beneath our usual emotional responses. In situations of suffering, whether small interpersonal conflicts or huge disasters of violence and destruction, one question holds the key to a compassionate response: In this situation of suffering, whatever it may be, what is our most fundamental wish?

In the current Middle East situation, with so much violence on all sides, I find my metta practice including all in this wish: "May you be free of hatred, may you be free of enmity."

If our aspiration is peace in the world, who would we exclude from this wish? Terrorists, suicide bombers, soldiers lost in violence, government policy-makers? "May everyone be free of hatred, free of enmity." If our own response to the mind states that drive harmful acts is more enmity, hatred, or ill will, we are part of the problem—whether we acknowledge it or not.

This message is not new, but the challenging question remains: What to do with these feelings when they arise because, for almost all of us, they will. And how do we find compassion in the midst of storms of anger, hatred, ill will, or fear?

Most importantly, we need to acknowledge the feelings that arise. In this regard, it's mindfulness that brings the gift of compassion—for others and ourselves. Mindfulness sees the whole parade of feelings, however intense, without getting lost in them, and without judging ourselves for feeling them.

Much of the time, we live in denial. It's not easy to open to our shadow side. Our habitual reaction to most unpleasant or painful experiences is to avoid them. And even when we are aware of our feelings of hatred and enmity, we may get caught in justifying them to ourselves: "I should hate these people, look at what they did."

Justifying feelings is quite different than being mindful of them. From justifying comes a strong feeling of self-righteousness. We forget that our feelings and emotions are all conditioned responses, arising from our own perspective, from the particular conditions of our lives; someone else in the same situation might feel very differently. We often forget that our feelings don't necessarily reflect some ultimate truth. Self-righteousness about our feelings and views is the shadow side of commitment. We may confuse self-justification with feelings of passionate dedication. But great exemplars of compassion and social justice—people like Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Aung San Suu Kyi, and others—illuminate the difference.

It is not a question of whether but when unwholesome mind states will arise in us or the world around us. Feelings of hatred, enmity, fear, self-righteousness, greed, envy, and jealousy will all arise. The challenge is to see them all with mindfulness. See that they cause suffering and that no action based on them will lead to our desired result: peace within and peace in the world.

© Joseph Goldstein, 2007. Reprinted from A Heart Full of Peace with permission from Wisdom Publications, 199 Elm Street, Somerville MA 02144, USA. wisdompubs.org