The Scam of Compassion

What’s the definition of compassion? Let’s check a few dictionaries and with a Lama.            

Webster’s Dictionary says: Feeling of wanting to help someone who is sick, hungry, in trouble, etc. Sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it.

Dictionary.com says: a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.

The Dalai Lama says a lot of things,

“I believe that the purpose of life is to be happy.  From the moment of birth, every human being wants happiness and does not want suffering.  Neither social conditioning nor education nor ideology affect this.  From the very core of our being, we simply desire contentment.”…..“ From my own limited experience I have found that the greatest degree of inner tranquility comes from the development of love and compassion.”

He says SO MUCH STUFF, but if you keep reading you’ll see that he has put the definition of compassion and empathy together mixed in with social responsibility. He calls it Interdependence and defines it as this:

“Inter-dependence, of course, is a fundamental law of nature. Not only higher forms of life but also many of the smallest insects are social beings who, without any religion, law or education, survive by mutual cooperation based on an innate recognition of their interconnectedness.” (If this is innate knowledge, why do people have to learn this???)

Now this compassion business, it’s complicated and is a very deep issue today. The problems lie within the word compassion (if you look you’ll even find the letters s-c-a-m, fun fact!) and its definition. Look at the definition of compassion, you surprised? Probably no one ever looks it up, but you’ll see the ‘strong desire to….’ Is common in both. Most people today, Dalai Lama included, combine a few words to make compassion.

Social responsibility

Giving love and kindness

Empathy

Sympathy

+          Good deeds

=          Compassion

What is social responsibility? They teach it to us in business schools, church, you see famous people doing it and think “I should do that, because it seems like it’s the right thing to do.” Then when all is said and done, “no I don’t want to go and help other people,” they show you Mother Teresa and lay the biggest guilt trip of all time on you. “Look at Mother Teresa, see what she did? She spent her WHOLE life helping other people! How selfish are you? You should be more like her!” Some people even bring Jesus into it, yeah Jesus showed compassion to the blind man, we should be more like him. I say this “Oh, Hell no!” First off Jesus never showed compassion, the blind dude on the road? The disciples asked, why was he born blind? Jesus replies, “…this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” This is not compassion, he’s showing off his mojo!

Let’s actually look at Mother Teresa’s face for a moment, she’s in her 70-80s here. This is not the face of a happy person. Here’s the face of Annette Larkins. She’s 70, vegan, and seems to actually look happy!

If I remember correctly, Annette farms her own vegetables as well and seems to actually enjoy life (Sex for sure that’s easy to tell, but not M. Teresa and I guarantee she didn’t get any!). Age is not about numbers, that’s garbage from school, and how would that apply to Annette? Those rules wouldn’t apply to her. Age is about memories, the painful ones, the sad ones, the ones with negative energy. When you let them go and only hold on to the good and happy memories, you start looking better, younger, and even become healthier.

If you have studied body language for a few years, you would know that your face muscles stretch, in the directions you pull them most. If you frown most of your life, you develop frown lines. If you smile you develop crow’s feet by your eyes and your lips are stretched upwards not downwards. Annette looks like she’s been happy throughout her life, Mother Teresa on the other hand no. Look at Teresa’s face, she’s been sad, angry, resentful, regretful, and has cried many rivers! That second picture of Mother Teresa up there, she even looks like she’s about to cry, and it’s not because she’s full of tranquil inner peace and love. Mother Teresa felt no love or faith, she lost faith in her own religion towards the end! Talk about the side effects of a bad drug, she said “Jesus has a very special love for you, As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear."

Love keeps you young and beautiful, does not turn you into old grumpy hunchback slow motion people! I’ve seen a female yoga instructor who was 60 but looked 30, a 50-year old woman who looked 30. I’ve even met a 78-year old man who had just gotten his 20-year old Vietnamese wife pregnant and who went jogging every morning. He also looked freakishly young. I could also mention that 77-old vegan dude who’s got a body that most men have no discipline to acquire. That’s just the power of REAL love.

Now, what does the power of sadness, regret, resentment, anger, guilt and shame have on your looks? Well it makes you age VERY quickly! Don’t go bringing drug users like Keith Richards into this conversation, the drug was just a symptom of a bigger existing issue and he would probably look like that anyways from whatever was in his head. Look at people, how many 30-year olds have you seen that look almost 50? You can bring in obesity, it’s also a reflection of how you look inside.

Interesting, how does this have anything to do with compassion? Mother Teresa is the face of compassion, look what a life of that did to her. Let’s be honest, in India she was a vegetarian most likely (you eat the meat, death comes sooner than later…). She felt no love. Love gives you wings and looks. So we’ve established what compassion does to you, but ‘how’ is the question. I’ve learnt that compassion is what happens when you come across someone unfortunate and your energy is stolen, that’s why you feel the desire to help that person. Some might say, “What’s wrong with that? I’m helping someone, I’m doing a good deed, and I’m doing the right thing.”

So let’s get rid of a few illusions, there is no “right” thing to do that is something that society has decided, long before you were born. There’s only “what” you do, and whatever you do is the “right” thing because it can’t happen any other way. It’s just GOT to be that way! Get it? No, alright, let’s keep going. What is “help” exactly? Alright let’s just examine India for a second, Mother Teresa was there for a long time doing “good” no? How’s that country holding up now? It’s still a complete hole. I mean, you can’t open your mouth when you shower or hello parasites, if you wear sandals you might get worms in your toenails, hygiene is so bad that stomach problems usually befall travelers going there. Look at the people, it’s a huge population living in poverty.

Where is the result of all the compassion? And before anyone starts speaking about how India is just one example, I beg you to look at Southeast Asia, China, Africa, and South America before saying anything. What about the all the NGOs? How about the hospitals? How are the schools and orphanages? Have countries actually changed with compassion? Not just in India, look at the other countries, it’s a tragedy! Compassion further separates the rich from the poor and creates a larger poverty gap. Compassion comes with the compassionate, and if you took one of those away, would you have the other? In fact, which one came first?

Then the religious people, I love arguing with these guys, I can hear it already.

“Hey, we HAVE to do God’s work.”…."we need to show them compassion and love…”

Alright, where do I begin? Why would you want to worship a god that created the conditions for compassion to begin with? What if everyone was equal, money wasn’t a concern, and we all took care of the planet and ate from it plentifully? Why doesn’t anyone’s god tell them to destroy the system that created the problems for compassion to begin with? What about the devil? Surely he’s to blame for problems. Then you have to admit that god either made a mistake, or is being mean on purpose. Either way, it’s not love and it’s definitely not right. We are taught how compassion makes us Better People, how it will Do Us Good, and secure us a place Somewhere Nice when we die. Maybe religious people like the self-righteous feeling they get from it, their drug of choice.

Compassion doesn’t fix anything, it’s giving a man fish versus teaching him how to fish. You can’t actually help people who can’t help themselves, if the environment and system is the problem then that’s another issue. But giving somebody money, or putting an orphanage anywhere isn’t going to help. I haven’t heard the Dalai Lama talk about dismantling our socioeconomic system in order to truly fix this world. Helping someone live another day, week, or year is useless because their survival will depend on you sometimes, and then what next? What if you donate money to someone, then you find out they decided to go out to an expensive restaurant and get wasted on good alcohol? Would you be angry that they didn’t use common sense or would you think that maybe the person thought, I’ll never get another chance to enjoy life so take it now?

You are here to find love, and you can only love YOURSELF. That’s the real definition of happiness, this is how you get it. Compassion derails it entirely though. Can you love yourself when you’re feeling resentful for not doing what YOU actually WANT to do? What if compassion requires you to give up something you want? Give it up and you will be full of resentment. How is that loving? You will end up giving bad energy to those you help, so what’s the point? If you actually WANT to help someone because it’s 100% your decision (not because your energy was stolen and you felt the desire to help that person out of pity) then go ahead and do it! I insist, that sounds loving. If I came across a sad friend, I would only try to cheer him up if that was something I WANTED to do. If I didn’t WANT to cheer him up, and I faked it or forced it, how would that be loving? It’s not honest because that’s not being honest to yourself for being there and it would be dishonest to him. So how is that compassion loving? At least being dishonest to your true feelings and emotions is not loving.

There is no such thing as loving other people, that doesn’t exist. If you have love in your heart you are able to share it. When you are in a great relationship (most of you will never experience this, sorry it’s society’s fault not mine.) you give love to the other person and you should get it back right? How do you get it back with compassion? What you’re supposed to get something just because you did something for someone else? I don’t remember slaves getting that, and yes you may say the argument is contextual, but it’s about getting energy back after giving it away. I do not see how you get any energy back, because in most cases the people you help you never see again. And how is a smile on their face supposed to give you anything?

Compassion requires you to be dishonest to yourself a lot, and for you to go out of your way to help other people. And without people like you, they wouldn’t be able to survive on their own. Which brings me to the social responsibility part of it. Why are you responsible for other people? The Dalai Lama uses the example from nature, how insects work in harmony to survive. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not a damned bug, I’m a fierce creature, I’m a fighter and a prophet! I’m at least a Black Panther, I ain’t no bug. Do you see panthers working together? What happened to dog-eat-dog world? Compassion is ignoring the cycle of life, it’s almost like we’re playing god now. People scream all around the world, animals are going extinct! Yeah, that’s true, but most of them are not man’s fault, in fact many of them just die out. Compassion would have saved those weak links and kept them going, even if it was a total waste of time and their survival was dependent on you. How would that be loving or right in any way? 

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I want you to fight for me – A Broken Record

I’ve heard this said before, when you want to know how much a person loves you observe the things they do for you. When you want to know how badly they want to be with you, threaten to leave or and see how hard they fight for you. Why would you insert drama, chaos, and hurt to try and find out how badly a person doesn’t want to see you leave? I promise you, if you do this, that drama and chaos will turn into resentment, and the relationship will definitely end, the only difference is the time and the increased pain.

Now look at this picture on the right, why do you need to make her believe this? What’s the point in starting a negative argument? What good will come of it? It’s like saying that murdering someone is the start of a wonderful time. This picture is trying to convey that a negative thing is actually something positive. If you believe that you might as well also believe that killing millions of people is a good thing. If you think my example is exaggerated, you’ll notice I’m still following the negative-> positive argument.

I’m not being sexist here, you will find some men that do this as well, but from observed statistics you’ll hear this from women more. Now sometimes women start these arguments just to try and force the man into further commitment so that they can stay. But why? Why doesn’t the woman value herself and improve herself so that men beg her to marry them? How you ask? What if the woman was a dream to be with? What if she gave her man space to be himself, wasn’t clingy, wasn’t possessive, wasn’t jealous, helped him love himself more, didn’t have expectations, didn’t start arguments, or take out her emotional mood swings on the man? What if she tried to understand the man instead of trying to get him to conform to her ideals of the “perfect man” from Cosmo’s magazine? Then imagine if the man did the same as well. Now wouldn’t that be a perfect relationship?

Here’s some examples of common sentences which leads to the “fighting for me” romanticism:

“I’m going to leave,”

“Give me a reason why I should stay.”

“You’ll have to fight to keep me,”???

One person will start an argument that leads to almost ending a relationship all for the purpose of making the other “fight” for them. Their goal is to see how bad the other person wants to be with them, so they’ll “fight”. But why? So imagine this scenario between two fictitious characters if you will:

Mary: “I’m sick of all this, I’m getting so tired of this, why should I stay with you? Maybe I should leave you?”

Poor Schmuck: “Mary, no please, don’t leave! I can’t live without you, I’ll do anything.”

Well, this example was just showing Mary’s goal and what she wanted to hear. It seems that people need to know how much the other person wants to be with them. But I ask why? If you have to fight to keep something, it’s not worth it. If it’s meant to be you shouldn’t have to fight for it. It’s simple, if someone starts an argument with me just to see “how badly I wanted them to stay,” why on earth would I want to remain in that relationship?

I don’t know why, but if I wanted to leave and then the other person started begging me to stay I would lose so much respect for them. If someone wants to leave you why would you beg them to stay? Where is your sense of self-pride? Why would you want someone that keeps wanting to leave you? When this happens you get resentful that you’re just focusing on keeping that person but not really being honest with yourself and doing what you want. If you’re not being honest with yourself you can’t be honest with anyone else, it all starts with the self and is shared outwards.

Let’s talk about a famous song by Tracy Chapman, Give Me One Reason. In it she sings, give me one reason to stay and I’ll turn back around. Wait, why does she need to hear one reason from the man? Why can’t she come up with her own reason to stay? Do you base your life decisions on something that someone else has said or do you base it on your own conclusions? If you want to stay in a relationship then you should have a few good reasons, it doesn’t make sense that someone else provides the reasons, for if it’s provided by someone else how can it truly apply to you? Another man’s reasons are not my reasons. 

Why do we fight the current? Why don’t we just flow with it? You can fight a river current all you want, but eventually you will get tired and be dragged with the flow. You can’t ever change the inevitable, only delay it. The things that are meant to be in life need no pain or grief. If you say happiness requires a prerequisite of pain, suffering, and unhappiness I would tell you to shove that deal up where the sun don’t shine. Pain precedes more pain, happiness should precede being happier!

For my final conclusion, if people out there still ask questions like; “but aren’t the best things worth fighting for?” or “I think she/he and I have a good thing going but they can’t see it, so how is it wrong to try to convince them?” Well first thing to know is that we are programmed to think that we should never give up on thing/someone/relationships no matter what the other person wants. But if you don’t allow the other person individuality how is that love? That’s not love or respect, it’s devaluing the other person from making their own choice because you have already decided what it should be.

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Living in the Now without Baggage

Why is it that so many people can’t appreciate the now? Someone’s at a birthday party yet they can’t seem to snap out of their depressing mood and be happy, why not? Probably because he can’t stop thinking about what’s bothering him; he could have anxiety issues, disappointment from expectations, maybe he’s bitter, or even just sad because he keeps thinking how unhappy he is with his life. But what if I told you that this is a problem having to do with illusion, it’s easy to dispel illusion only once you are able to see it for what it is.

Why do I talk about the now and psychological issues people have? I don’t believe in the word psychological, it doesn’t sound right. I believe everything is spiritual, from your colds to your emotional well-being, it’s all connected. But about the now, what does that mean? If you are at a party, and you are living in the now, you’ll appreciate the lights, the people, the conversations, the environment, or at least you’ll be able to take everything all in without anything pulling you into negativity. But the problem is no one lives in the now.

People living in the past keep holding on to their pain, but why? If you hold negative emotions it will turn into depression, rage, confidence issues, resentment, and bitterness. It’s because of the illusion of time that we do this. Time is not linear, we unfortunately do not go through time, and time instead flows through us linearly. What actually exists? Does the past or future exist at all? Once a moment has passed, it becomes the past right? Well if the moment has passed then that moment becomes illusory, for does that moment exist anymore but in our minds? What about the future? Can you know everything that will happen down to the very atomic detail and all the infinite number of variables that will occur?

When a moment has passed it becomes the past, and holding on to an illusory past is futile for it takes you away from the now thinking all about what could have been or what should have been. Bitterness is like drinking a cup of poison and hoping the other person dies. Bitterness affects the person holding it, not the person blamed for it, so why would a person put themselves through misery affecting their chances of a happy life?

Now if you hold expectations, you have to ask how can you predict the unknown future? It’s at best a bad guess of the future, and the moment you create an expectation you create the disappointment to be had later. How can you expect things? If you expect things, you’re too busy living in an illusory future. It’s like planning, when your plan goes sour, you get angry because things didn’t go according to your expectations. But isn’t that how it usually ends up? It doesn’t matter what expectations you have because no matter how close you get to fulfilling it, it doesn’t come close to what you expected because expectations and reality never go hand in hand. The economic housing crisis that started in 2009 was because of bad expectations from economists who thought that people would be rational and pay back their debts.

If you have expectations how will you ever be happy? If you get your expectation fulfilled completely, you won’t be happy you’ll just think “yes that’s right, it went according to my plan.” Would you be happy? If you go on holiday and have certain expectations of the trip, for sure you will be disappointed some just because not everything went according to plan, or because you did what you planned and it didn’t turn out to be as fun as you had thought? What if you went out on a date and had expectations, would the date turn out well? What if you decided to forgo all your expectations? What if you went on holiday with the intent of just being in another country? How disappointed would you be? How happy would you be? I guarantee you wouldn’t be unhappy thinking about an illusory future and how it hasn’t been fulfilled.

Anxiety is the same exact thing, it’s perceived fears of the future and it’s an illusory future at best, but with this issue you have the mind feeding you negative views of the future. You’re afraid of snake bites, yet most snake bites don’t kill you because unless the snake wishes you dead it’s not going to invest most of its venom on you. If you have stepped on one, then it’s go time and you should probably run, but you get what I’m saying right? If you’re going to get bit, then why worry about it? Worry about it when it happens, not long before. Sure take precautions so it doesn’t happen, but what else can you do about it? Life is about experience, if you have anxiety issues because you’re worried things won’t turn out how you want them (expectations), then tough! Take risks, and if things don’t pan out, who cares? You tried to do something! That’s all that matters! People worry about their egos or pride getting wounded, but why? How does that help you? Just do! Live in the now without handcuffs or bad glasses!

You only have the NOW to exist in, there is no past or future, only the now. The future is illusory until it happens, and when it happens it’s definitely different from your expectations, no matter how accurate or close it is. The past is illusory because once the now has past it’s forever gone, and you should take the lessons that you have learnt, don’t hold on to negative memories for they only weigh you down. What you don’t take with you on your deathbed doesn’t matter.  Just say NO and say NOW!

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