The value of compassion being the foremost qualification
for moksha
Pujya Swamiji, my Guru, Swami Dayananda, puts a great emphasis on the value for
compassion for every seeker. For the seeker it is a value to be deliberately
brought into one’s own life with reference towards oneself and others. For a
person with nishtha in self-knowledge it is spontaneous.
Why does Pujya Swamiji put such an emphasis on the value of
compassion?
When there is no compassion, one is judgemental and
non-accommodative, with little understanding or acceptance of people and
situations as they are. One holds on to one’s righteousness and ones anger, one
becomes bitter, cranky, frustrated – one becomes very constricted. All this
constitutes mala - impurity of
heart. With this constriction of heart, how is it is possible to understand that
what Vedanta is saying is that ‘I am THE whole’. ‘I am the whole’ means I am
everything. But with so much constriction of heart one cannot accept life as it
is and so one denies oneself one’s wholeness, and there is no fulfillment.
When there is a value for compassion one takes the effort
to understand that everybody and every
situation in life comes from a certain background and so everything really
speaking is as it should be – in Order – Ishvara’s Order. Thus there is a
readiness to understand, accept and accommodate people and situations even if
they are not exactly pleasant! Living with compassion makes for samatvam
– an eveness of mind, an expansion of the heart.
What I understood was that in Swamiji’s vision the person is
whole. He never dismisses anybody as a criminal. He sees them as a person who
has some areas of the psyche given to difficult and even offensive behaviour
patterns. He does not hesitate to tell his disciples if something is wrong and
it comes to his notice. At the same time, he takes the care to understand with
compassion and gives them any number of chances to grow. That is Swamiji. His
heart is so vast it is difficult to understand him if one’s heart is
constricted. I wanted to understand Swamiji and so I chose to grow. Choosing to
grow meant choosing to grow in compassion and giving freedom to people to be
what they are.
Not internalizing was another big
lesson I learned. Swamiji in one of his talks said “I am responsible for my
actions, my behavior, and my feelings but I am not responsible for the behavior
and feelings of others.” I have
found in my life that most people internalize the problems of other people –
and blame themselves when the problem is truly not theirs. I learned to be
confident about myself and refuse to pick up others judgmental projections
about me. Pujya Swamiji in his meditations also will take great care to make us
understand how important it is to keep people outside and not in our head! That
way we give people the freedom to be what they are and think whatever they want
about us!
Om Tat Sat