Compassion and Enlightened Leadership

Warmth in Action

Both enlightened leadership and serving others have so much to do with wisdom and compassion. For anyone who is on the spiritual path, particularly those of us on the Bon and Buddhist paths, wisdom and compassion are the true core aspects of our spiritual practice. To achieve liberation – final liberation, absolute liberation – compassion and wisdom are the two most important means. For all of us, one way or another, the purpose of our life is service to help others, and many times we do that from some position of leadership. To be a good leader and lead a good life with family, groups, even with your country, you need to have these core qualities of wisdom and compassion.

We do formal practices in our life, but if the informal practices that we do every day in our work and activities have these two elements of compassion and wisdom, then whatever we are doing becomes our spiritual practice. So having more compassion toward your children, your husband, partner, wife, family, relatives, colleagues, employees, boss, strangers – anytime when we encounter them in our everyday life – your regular life becomes your compassion practice.

Summer at Serenity Ridge (photo by Salvador Espinosa)

Whenever challenging situations affect you, your identity, your ego, your pain-body, and you are able to be conscious of that, address that, and are able to let it be and let it go in that sacred space, then that is a wisdom. That means that the challenging situation is not just affecting you; rather, you are actually applying a great meditation of wisdom. So your life becomes a practice. I really want to emphasize that and want everyone to remember that.

In the last webcast, we spoke of wisdom. Briefly, wisdom is the experience of selflessness, the experience of oneself beyond the ego, beyond the pain-body. It is the experience of oneself totally and completely being open and resting in the nature of mind in that sacred space. That is what wisdom means. So basically, in every situation, in the moment when something in life affects you, if you are able to be conscious and host that and dissolve that in the sacred space and find a new direction, a new way of being – that is a wisdom.

The true, genuine sense of compassion really arises from that openness. In many religions or spiritual practices we learn that it's good to have compassion, we should have compassion to our family and so on. We are taught that, and we have heard that, and we probably figure that we have to try to do that. And in trying to do that we sometimes suffer. We suffer inside ourselves just trying to help someone. Or we suffer inside just trying to be nice to someone. Doing nice things, kind things, the right things, can be very stressful when that kindness is not coming from the right place.

Basically, when that kindness, when that compassion is not coming from the right place, it means that it is coming from blockages in yourself, a conditional space in yourself, a place in yourself of an old wounded history and fear. It's coming from a pain-identity. When it's coming from there, you can try to be nice and do kind things, and it might sometimes work, but deep inside you are suffering. So basically you are punishing yourself by doing that. I would not really think that is a genuine kind of practice, and for sure it is not a genuine kind of compassion practice.

Very often what happens when you do that is you are not only punishing yourself, but as an outcome you're also feeling so much expectation of other people. You're saying to yourself, “Oh, I'm giving up this; I am sacrificing myself, making special time, giving money. I'm trying to give this and that.” So you're putting in a lot of pain and suffering by trying to help someone. As a result, you are expecting a great outcome and fast outcome – that someone should listen to you, and give you recognition and acknowledgment. There are so many subtle and obvious forms of expectation that you have of people. With all those expectations, you are not really able to help someone that much, and for sure you are not helping yourself. Not only, but in a way, it's kind of like punishing yourself. We do that, but I think it's important we should be conscious and aware of that.

So what is compassion? In Buddhism, compassion is having a deep sense of sympathy and empathy toward others’ suffering and the clear intention that I want them to be free from that suffering, and how may I be part of liberating them from their suffering? It's a very unique state of mind, a state of awareness which has focus, which is aware of other people, aware of other people's pain, and which is, first of all, sympathetic toward it. You are in some sense identifying with it, you relate to how it feels. You know how the mother must feel when she loses her only child. Or you know how the child must feel when she loses the mother, or how it feels when someone falls down and gets hurt, or when someone is terminally ill. You know how it feels to be totally hopeless, or totally confused and lost. Because you are very aware and can relate to the experience of pain, there is a deep sense of sympathy and empathy there.

But compassion is more than that. It is the arising of this mind of May this person be free from that suffering. If you are feeling genuine empathy, then it’s very natural, without any effort, to feel this mind of compassion. However, more often, you might have a great sympathy toward someone, but not necessarily a clear compassion, a clear sense of May this person be free, or may I be able to do something so that this person can be free from this suffering.

So in your daily life, you can practice opening your heart, mind and feelings, see how your empathy supports the compassionate intention, and wish that this person may be free from the suffering. Just look at how empathy is literally like a fuel supporting compassion. If that mind of sympathy and empathy is strong, then the intention to have compassion is naturally very strong. And if the empathy and sympathy are not very strong, then it is a little more challenging. In your practice, in your daily life, simply witness that and see it, whatever it is. Not to judge whether it's good or bad, but just know what it is and how you're experiencing it, how you're seeing at that very moment.

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche teaching in France
Then imagine this beautiful mind of genuine compassion. First try to rest in yourself, open yourself. From that place, look at your life and those with whom you have a strong relationship – look at them and their pain, and feel empathy. Allow this compassionate wish: May they be free from that suffering. Then just imagine that beautiful mind, that heartwarming mind. Can you practice holding that for a moment? Can you prolong that from five minutes, say, to ten minutes? Can you go from doing it one time a day to three times a day? Can you go from doing that for one person to doing that with a few or more people, or to repeating it more frequently with a single person? Just think about how with this beautiful mind of compassion it will change your entire life, your relationship to yourself and your relationship to others.

(This is an edited excerpt from Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche's webcast on "Generating Compassion," April 16, 2016. View the entire webcast here.)