Yin and Yang Compassion

A few weeks ago I was visiting with a friend who just completed her training as an LPN. She had spent the day giving immunizations to little kids. Little kids who screamed and who confronted my friend with tears streaming down their round little cheeks. But despite the pain she was inflicting, she kept stabbing needles into youthful flesh. Not only needles, but needles that contained a strain of virus that would produce pain and swelling where it had pierced precious skin.

And standing next to each child was another adult. A mother, father, grandparent, guardian who would hold this little child as they screamed and wipe their tears and kiss the owie. Someone to offer comfort, warmth and reassurance in this world that can suddenly be so unkind.

Which of the adults in this situation was being compassionate?

Tonight we will attempt to hold together love that knows pain is necessary and love that wishes it were not so. This is the yin and the yang, the feminine and masculine aspects of compassion.

According to Buddhist tradition, the savior-goddess Tara was born out of the tears of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, the first Buddha and the one reincarnated as the Dalai Lama. It is said that he wept as he looked upon the world of suffering beings, and his tears formed a lake in which a lotus sprung up. When the lotus opened, the goddess Tara was revealed. Tara is the goddess of universal compassion. Born of a tear, it is said that her compassion for living beings is stronger than a mother’s love for her children.

There are two major forms of Tara. One is the white Tara. This is the image that I brought back from Tibet. She has seven eyes because she sees all suffering and cries for help for all human beings. There is also a Green Tara. She is fiercer, more wrathful and always ready to spring to virtuous and enlightened action for the sake of compassion.

Together they are Tara and they symbolize the birth of compassion – a birth that takes place when the mind and the heart meet in wisdom.

I wonder if the story of Tara reminds you of anyone from our own Christian tradition? I think this description of Tara also wonderfully describes the one I’ve come to know as Jesus Christ. A man in whom the heart and the mind met in wisdom – a man whose very life was the embodiment of compassion.

Jesus Christ, as the legend of Tara before him, is a manifestation of divine compassion. And that compassion always holds two natures – feminine and masculine, yin and yang.

Yin compassion is probably the one you think of first – the one that feels warm and fuzzy. Feminine compassion feels the pain and seeks to nurture, hold, cradle and comfort. Yang or Masculine compassion on the other hand, knows that pain and death are sometimes necessary – and it is willing to kick butt when it needs to.

Yin compassion cries because the children of Jerusalem refuse to gather under the wings of a hen, a loving protective God who longs for their suffering to end and for their joy to be complete. Yang compassion cries out against the acts of vipers and hypocrites and dares to will their undoing.

Yin compassion is gentle, caring, soothing, and serene. It is compassion that flows and loves like a mother, holding the entire universe in its womb with uncritically embracing, unconditional love.

Yang compassion is action oriented. It is direct and aggressive. And in the face of ignorance, delusion and injustice, Yang compassion is capable of ruthlessness. It is tough love. The kind of compassion that knows boundaries are necessary for the self and for others. It is the compassion that seeks to wake us and shake us up when we are lazy and slothful, untrue to our calling and unfaithful to our spiritual path.

Masculine compassion requires the capacity for concern. It demands space inside for us to hold conflicting feelings of love and hate. The opposite of masculine compassion is not feminine compassion – it’s idiot compassion. That bothersome activity we talked about last week.

When we don’t allow people to experience their own life or the consequences of their actions because it causes us pain to see them suffer, then we are exercising idiot compassion. When we jump to rescue people by giving them what they want or what we think they need, we are exercising idiot compassion.

Allowing loved ones to experience their own pain and suffering is yang compassionate. Being with them while they suffer is yin compassion.

Integrated Compassion, the kind of compassion we see in the myth of Tara and the life of Jesus offers tough love and kindheartedness at the same time.

Masculine compassion doesn’t accept excuses or half-hearted attempts. It’s the kind of compassion you get when a teacher scolds you, a police officer arrests you, a minister preaches to you, or a friend reprimands you because they know you are capable of more. It is the compassion you give when you allow your child to grow up. It is the side of love that won’t tolerate destructive behavior in our own lives or in the life of our community.

Feminine compassion is the side of love that seeks to protect and to nurture. It’s the immediate impulse to run to a fallen child to see if they are hurt, it is the fervent prayer we raise when we hear of a person in need, it is the hope we send to the universe for healing and restoration and peace. It is the compassion that accepts and encourages and welcomes indiscriminately. And it very often cries.

When our heart and our mind meet in wisdom, we no longer have the option of doing nothing. We can’t ignore, excuse or belittle the reality of the suffering before us and around the world. When our heart and our mind meet in wisdom we no longer have the option of responding with idiot compassion. We can no longer make ourselves the focus so that we act out of our own inability to be with other people’s pain.

When our heart and our mind meet in wisdom, compassion is born – and we give vaccines even though we know they make little kids cry. When our heart and our mind meet in wisdom, we find ourselves holding a tissue in one hand and a sword in the other so that we might respond with whatever tool is called for in the situation at hand.

When our heart and mind meet.

Namaste.

Comments

[Paul K. Branch, M.D.]

This is a REALLY good column. Thank you Barbara.