The king said, “Divide the living boy in two; then give half to the one, and half to the other.” But the woman whose son was alive said to the king – because compassion for her son burned within her – “Please, my lord, give her the living boy; certainly do not kill him!” The other said, “It shall be neither mine nor yours; divide it.” Then the king responded: “Give the first woman the living boy; do not kill him. She is his mother.”

Empathy and compassion are the humanly characteristics and whoever lacks them will be empty of moral norms. Moreover, compassion is highly significant in parent-children behaviors. An uncompassionate mother won’t be able to nourish her child properly and an unsympathetic person will not treat his/her mother with respect. Hence, to make life full of love and respect, compassion is the basic need.

The Dalai Lama has said, “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” He further states, “This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.”

Long ago in India, there lived a young boy by the name of Mohan. One winter’s night, Mohan’s mother developed a high fever. She could not sleep and was feeling very restless. In the middle of the night, she felt thirsty and asked her son to fetch a glass of water. Mohan got up immediately and went to the kitchen to fetch the glass of water for his beloved mother.

To his dismay, he found the water pot empty. In those days there was no running water in the homes. One could not just turn on the tap in the house to obtain drinking water; they had to carry water from the well or spring for drinking and other daily use.

Mohan was in a dilemma. Should he tell his mother that there was no water left in the pot and ask her to wait till morning when their cook would fetch water from the spring? It would mean that his mother would not be able to quench her thirst till the morning. Could Mohan bear seeing his mother suffer for so long? No, never!

So he left the house that cold night and went to the village spring to fetch water. He filled the pot with water and carried the heavy pot all the way back home. When he reached the house, he quickly poured the water into a glass and brought it to his mother. However, when he entered her room, he found his mother fast asleep.

Mohan was again in a dilemma. Should he wake his mother up to drink or should he just let her sleep through? Well, Mohan decided not to wake her up. He sat in a chair by her bedside holding the glass of water with both hands to make sure he did not spill it.    

When his mother woke up a while later, she found, to her great surprise, Mohan sitting by her bedside holding a glass of water in his hands. When Mohan saw that his mother was awake, he quickly handed the glass of water to her with much care. He said: “Sorry I was not able to give you the water earlier. I went to the well to get the water and was waiting for you to wake up so I could give it to you.”

Mohan’s mother drank the glass of water with gratitude and pride. She truly knew then how much her son loved her and was deeply moved by his compassionate act.

Compassion is an emotion that is a sense of shared suffering, most often combined with a desire to alleviate or reduce the suffering of another; to show special kindness to those who suffer. Compassion essentially arises through empathy, and is often characterized through actions, wherein a person acting with compassion will seek to aid those they feel compassionate for.

The first step in cultivating compassion is to develop empathy for your fellow human beings. Many of us believe that we have empathy, and on some level nearly all of us do. But many times we are centered on ourselves and we let our sense of empathy get rusty.

Imagine the suffering of a human being you’ve met recently. Now imagine that you are the one going through that suffering. Reflect on how much you would like that suffer to end. Reflect on how happy you would be if another human being desired your suffering to end, and acted upon it. Open your heart to that human being and if you feel even a little that you’d want their suffering to end, reflect on that feeling. That’s the feeling that you want to develop. With constant practice, that feeling can be grown and nurtured.

Albert Einstein has stated, “A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”