Sipping blueberry lemonade tea on a sunny afternoon has me reflecting on the colour of compassion. The tea is not the purple hue of blueberries, nor is it the bright sunshine of lemons. It is somewhere in between. That in between is where compassion might lie.
Timber Hawkeye in Buddhist Boot Camp likes gray. We don’t live in a black and white world:
“When you’re not standing at either end, but hanging out in the middle instead, nothing can offend you.
Compassion and deep understanding towards others are significantly easier to access when nobody is far away from where you are.” (pg. 81)
Timber stands firmly in the middle ground. That does not mean that we need to be accepting of what is harmful. Having a moral code can help us define what is harmful and…
“you don’t have to agree with, only learn to live peacefully with, other people’s freedom of choice…No matter how certain we are of our version of the truth, we must humbly accept the possibility that someone who believes the exact opposite could also be right (according to their time, place and circumstance). This is the key to forgiveness, patience, and understanding.
That said, tolerance does NOT mean accepting what is harmful. Often times the lesson we are to learn is when to say “no,” the right time to walk away, and when to remove ourselves from the very cause of anguish. After all, we are the ones who create the environment we live in. (pg 65)”
Imagine if we create an environment of patience, compassion and understanding in our little corner of the world. And your neighbour creates their little plot of altruism. Our community would become little plots of peace that would leak on to one another. Is that too much to ask? Just fix up your little plot of peace and I will worry about mine.
Then we would…
“Never judge anyone for the choices that they make, and always remember that the opposite of what you know is also true. Every other person’s perspective on reality is as valid as your own, no matter how certain you are that what you are doing is the “right thing,” you must humbly accept the possibility that even someone doing the exact opposite might be doing the “right thing” as well.
Everything is subject to time, place, and circumstance. There are not “shoulds” in compassionate thinking.” (pg 136)
What is the colour of your compassion?