Compassion

So, on Monday, I was almost finished with Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums. In it, his character is frequently calling himself (or others) a bodhisattva. He seems to think the main point of being a reincarnated enlightened being is having compassion for one’s fellow creatures — even if they are part of the vast benighted middle class glued to their TV screens. However, as others have noted, this compassion does not seem to apply to women. As in On the Road, women seem to exist primarily as "real gone chick(s)" who serve men — either as Earth Mother home-makers or as sexual companions (or "conquests"). This seems more like a typical 1950s male attitude than that of an enlightened one.

Be that as it may, "Compassion" is a word Kerouac uses frequently.

I have made a pact with myself, in observance of Advent, to decrease my television viewing (perhaps inspired by the negative comments Ti Jean makes). One way to achieve this goal is to stay physically away from the tube; for example, by attending meetings.

Every fortnight, the Benedictine group meets at the Cathedral. This is a group of lay people who are interested in applying Benedict’s rule to their daily life. A few are Oblate Novices, people who have accepted the full discipline of the rule yet continue to live in the world, but most have no more official connection to a monastery than an ordinary layperson.

So as I drive to the Cathedral, Kerouac's "compassion" is echoing in my mind. I wonder if Ti Jean fully understood what the word means. I wonder if I even really understand it. Too often, I suspect, we see the word "compassion" and we think "pity".

Whenever I wonder about a word’s meaning, I consider its etymology. Just checked a dictionary, and the etymology is from Latin: "com, with + pati, to suffer". To "suffer with" is stronger than the common understanding of pity. It is possible to pity without taking action; but to suffer with another would almost certainly spur one into action.

After all, if one is suffering, the natural impulse is to take action to end that suffering. Likewise, if one experiences true compassion for another's suffering, one will take action to ease that other person’s suffering as if it were one's own.

Keep in mind, this meditation is taking place during my 20-minute drive from my warm middle-class home to the Cathedral. I have the non-commercial classical radio station playing, so my mind is not distracted. I walk in the door, with these thoughts still forming and rolling through my brain.

Turns out, the leader of the group has brought a video tape for us to watch. I had to laugh to myself; I had come to avoid watching TV, and now I was going to watch it after all!

The video tape was of an address given by Archbishop Rowan Williams at Trinity Church, New York, in April of this year. Congruent with the theme of our group, Archbishop Williams was talking about the tools Benedict recommends for life in monastic community. Those tools are transparency, being a peacemaker, and accountability.

None of these seems obviously connected with compassion, but I heard Archbishop Williams' address through that filter, as it were. Perhaps a few quotes from his address will be suggestive:

• I promise that your growth towards the good God wants for you will be a wholly natural and obvious priority for me; and I trust that you have made the same promise.
• What Benedict is interested in producing is people who have the skills to diagnose all inside them that prompts them to escape from themselves in the here and now.
• Benedict regards monastic life as a discipline for being where you are, rather than taking refuge in the infinite smallness of your own fantasies.
• [we are] standing together before Christ, becoming used to Christ’s scrutiny together. In this way, we both see ourselves under Christ's judgement and see others under Christ's mercy; and we are urged not to despair of that mercy even for ourselves.