It is important to see the world as a whole, as a unity. The systems in the world are designed or formed in such a way that they make people and things connect to and depend on one another. No human being can live alone in the world. Those who think that they can isolate themselves as individuals from their societies and their fellow beings are basically living in a fool’s paradise. They need to wake up, and realize the true world and their true selves. As Albert Einstein had said, “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.”
Accepting others, supporting and assisting them are the only way to live in today’s world that is turning to be more and more mechanical with each passing day. Human beings require adopting compassion as their top priority behavioral trait, if they want to guarantee their existence in the world. So much hatred, bloodshed and differences have been promulgated just because human beings have forgotten the habit of compassion. Though globalization has shrunk the distances among human beings, it has not been able to bring their hearts together. More and more abhorrence and intolerance have spread only because people are not able to accept others, to love them and appreciate their differences.
Hating others just because they belong to different cultures, religions, sects and ideologies is, in fact, a weird behavioral trait. If others are different for a person, it is also true that he is different for them as well. If he thinks others as detestable; others may also think so. However, it is important to see others in perspective of their environment and their socio-political context. Looking at others from one’s own perspective is a silly mistake and may lead to abhorrence and hatred.
Mahatma Gandhi had said, “It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.”
Compassion, in fact, has that capacity. It can turn enemies into friends. The policy of hatred can only generate further hatred; it creates a never-ending chain. If you hate others; others will hate you as well and process will continue. In order to break the chain of hatred and enmity, it is important to adopt compassion from the very beginning.
An imperative point to understand is that every person must start compassion from his own self. He must understand himself and his true nature first and then he can understand the worth and reality of others. Loving himself and developing his own personality will really help him in being kind to others. And, it must be realized as well that being compassionate to others does not mean that a person is superior to others – that he is on the giving end and others are on receiving end. It is mutual – compassion for others is vital for one’s own self and personality as well.
As Pema Chödrön in The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times says, “Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”
Some may argue that it is only an ideal thinking that compassion alone can win hearts and turn enemies into friends. They base their observations and their thinking on the happenings and events that take place in our today’s world. They see the hatred in it; the wars and the discrepancies. There is uncontrolled bloodshed in different parts of the world. People seem thirsty for the blood of their fellow beings. Politics and religions have turned into monsters that further push human beings towards hatred and disdain. They hold a strong point in claiming that compassion may not be influential in such a world. However, they need to see the point from another perspective as well.
It is crucial to comprehend that the current policy of animosity and envy will lead human beings towards extinction. Is it wise to continue the same policy? Never! So human beings require changing themselves. Realizing this fact is of utmost importance. Having realized it, we can further debate the viability of the policy of compassion in today’s world.
We cannot reject compassion because we consider it to be impracticable. How can we consider it to be impracticable unless we have adopted it fully in our lives? Human beings have failed to practice it or to launch it comprehensively in their social and political lives; therefore, they cannot conclude it to be useless. It is both a matter of common sense observation and a scientific way of thinking to see the result of an experiment only after the experiment has been fully performed and it has generated a result. Before carrying out an experiment, it is absolutely weird and unreasonable to claim about its outcome.
Human beings, thus, first need to adopt it as a golden role in both their individual and collective lives and then wait for its results. If is not able to generate a positive result, I am sure it will not have side effects as well.