A Quote by Karen Armstrong
Compassion is not feeling sorry for others. It's not soft. It requires an intellectual effort.
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Loving others always costs us something and requires effort. And you have to decide to do it on purpose. You can't wait for a feeling to motivate you.
Apology may start as a feeling, a desire to make matters right, but it requires a commitment to move that desire into practice, to actually take on the great courageous task of showing compassion to others.
As progressives, we care about the well-being of others. We are soft-hearted and have aloha, respect, compassion for others, and we don't like to see anyone suffering.
Many Buddhist teachers have described compassion as the ability to react freely and accurately in any situation. Being nice or feeling sorry for someone may be called for, but so may being fierce and unyielding. When sweetness is applied indiscriminately, it is seen as 'idiot compassion.'
Compassion and pity are not the same: pity is looking down on someone, feeling sorry for them and offering nothing; compassion is seeing their pain and offering them understanding.
Compassion and empathy are not the same as feeling sorry for oneself. They are emotions that extend our perceptual ranges.
To live and work successfully with others requires more than faithfulness to one's concrete aims. It requires an intellectual commitment to a type of order in which, even on issues which to one are fundamental, others are allowed to pursue different ends. It is for this reason that to the liberal neither moral nor religious ideals are proper objects of coercion, while both conservatives and socialists recognize no such limits.
Compassion doesn't, of course, mean feeling sorry for people, or pity, which is how the word has become emasculated in a way.
People may excite in themselves a glow of compassion, not by toasting their feet at the fire, and saying: "Lord, teach me compassion," but by going and seeking an object that requires compassion.
Karen wasn't hard, she was soft, too soft. A soft touch. Her hair was soft, her smile was soft, her voice was soft. She was so soft there was no resistance. Hard things sank into her, they went right through her, and if she made a real effort, out the other side. Then she didn't have to see them or hear them, or even touch them.
Most of the songs I sing have that blues feeling in it. They have that sorry feeling. And I don't know what I'm sorry about. I don't.
Most of the songs I sing, they have that blue feeling to it. They have that sorry feeling. And I don't know what I'm sorry about.
All good things require effort. That which is worth having will cost part of your physical being, your intellectual power, and your soul power—‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.’ (Matt. 7:7.) But you have to seek, you have to knock. On the other hand, sin thrusts itself upon you. It walks beside you, it tempts you, it entices, it allures. You do not have to put forth effort. … Evil seeks you, and it requires effort and fortitude to combat it. But truth and wisdom are gained only by seeking, by prayer, and by effort.
Intellectual life requires for its expansion and manifestation the influences and assimilation of the interests and affections of others.
There are two types of compassion. One - is faint-hearted and sentimental. Actually, it is nothing more than impatience of the heart, that is hurrying to get rid of that hard feeling when you see other peoples' sufferings; this is not a compassion, but just an instinct will to defence yourself from misfortunes of others. But there is another compassion - real one, that demands for actions, not sentiments, it knows what it wants, and it is full of determination to do everything, what is in human power and even beyond it.
Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Love is not a spontaneous feeling, a thing that you fall into, but is something that requires thought, knowledge, care, giving, and respect. And it is something that is rare and difficult to find in capitalism, which commodifies human activity.
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