Mother Teresa
One of the highest emotional states we can achieve, according to Buddhist and Christian teachings, is compassion. As we get beyond the frantic need to defend and attack for the protection of this "little me" we identify as, we begin to experience compassion. When we actually feel the suffering of others...feel their pain, their worry, their unease or dis-ease...without pity but with perfected empathy, we are experiencing compassion.
When we are able to break away from our "me-me" focus during this pandemic or at any time of community or global crisis to see how others are hurting, needing, suffering...it may really suck! We may have a tendency to want to avoid that experience too as we avoid our own feelings that add to our burden of suffering. We might want to close our eyes to it, to turn our backs to it, pretend it isn't going on. But it is.
Truth is the world suffers...all humans suffer, beings suffer, the planet suffers. It might be easier to squeeze our eyes shut or put our hands over our ears than it is to "accept" that suffering and to reach out in thought or deed to attempt, in some small way, to relieve it.
Yet that is what we are here to do , isn't it? Are we not here to experience fully the magnificence of Life which includes the joy as well as dukkha? Are we not here to evolve beyond this idea we have a separate little selves and to grow into the realization of the One Self? Are we not here to open so completely we have compassion for the whole world?
Mother Teresa knew that and she spent her life offering and teaching compassion. She was not lost in little self but guided by God to open her heart fully and completely to all experiences. I am sure it wasn't easy for her to look upon the dying and the lonely day in and day out. But I don't think I have ever seen a picture of her when she wasn't smiling or at least very peaceful looking. She knew what we were here to do, knowing that we cannot "stop" Life from being Life, that there will always be suffering, challenges, change but she set out to diminish suffering somehow, to relieve it a tiny bit at least. She staid open!
We could learn from Mother Teresa. Though it is uncomfortable, doesn't mean that we should close up to suffering.
All is well!
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