Love at Its Highest Is Compassion
Recently, Pope Francis of the Catholic Church passed away, and many people are mourning him. Although I have no religious faith and have never studied Catholic doctrine, I have great admiration for the spirit of tolerance, mercy, and reform that Francis advocated throughout his life. Throughout his life, Francis continually called for tolerance and urged people to show more mercy to the poor; as a religious figure, his compassionate heart left a deep impression.
I have been deeply influenced by Buddhism. Although I have my own shortcomings and am not qualified to discuss the great goals of religion, I deeply admire the spirit of compassion that Buddhism teaches. Compassion is a noble quality and aspiration that transcends the divisions between denominations and between religion and science; it is humanity's true ultimate shared value.
My mother was by nature a compassionate person; her whole life was one of loving kindness and strength. So was my grandmother—she was an extremely devout Buddhist who ate vegetarian meals her entire life. For as long as I can remember, I have never seen my grandmother stop chanting scriptures; she hardly missed a single day. I sometimes wonder whether my own remarkable perseverance in carrying things through was inherited from my grandmother.
From the age of seven, I used pinyin characters to teach my illiterate grandmother to chant, and I recited many sutras along with her. The scriptures popular in rural areas are actually mostly simple and easy to understand; their main message is to teach people to be compassionate and forbearing, to be kind to others, and not to be too calculating.
Although Buddhist doctrine appears very complex, its essentials boil down to a few core ideas: the four immeasurable minds of loving-kindness (maitri), compassion (karuna), sympathetic joy (mudita), and equanimity (upeksha); "avoid all evil, practice all good"; and "constantly cultivate precepts, concentration, and wisdom, and extinguish greed, anger, and delusion." The Buddhist view of good and evil can be further condensed into the "ten good karmas": (1) not killing, (2) not stealing, (3) not committing sexual misconduct, (4) not using harsh speech, (5) not divisive speech, (6) not lying, (7) not frivolous speech, (8) not being greedy or stingy, (9) not being angry, and (10) not holding wrong views. Or, as the Sutra of Forty-two Sections puts it: "Three of body, four of speech, three of mind. The three of body are killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct; the four of speech are divisive speech, harsh speech, lying, and frivolous speech; the three of mind are envy, anger, and delusion. These ten acts, being not in accord with the sacred way, are called the ten evil acts. When these evils are stopped, they are called the ten good acts." As an ordinary person, understanding the above essentially gives one a basic grasp of Buddhism.
And these ideas also exist in Chinese Confucian and Taoist culture. The Confucian way of loyalty and reciprocity—"do not do to others what you would not have them do to you"—and Laozi's ideas of wu-wei (non-coercive action), non-striving, and "the way of heaven is to reduce what is surplus and supplement what is insufficient," all contain this spirit of tolerance and compassion. These are all, in essence, various expressions of humanity's highest love.
In my view, for us human beings, the highest form of love is compassion. The word compassion is a specifically Buddhist term; it should actually be understood as an abbreviation of four characters: loving-kindness (ci), compassion (bei), sympathetic joy (xi), and equanimity (she). Loving-kindness can be understood as affection and gentleness, but a better understanding is an acceptance built on tolerance, an immeasurable spirit of universal love. Compassion is the great compassionate heart—the sympathy and pity for all beings who suffer various pains, and the aspiration to remove their suffering and lead them from pain to joy. Sympathetic joy is a feeling of delight and appreciation toward all beings. Equanimity is generosity, giving to and relieving others. In sum, to be compassionate is a gentle altruistic spirit: to harm no one in word or deed, and to help others to the utmost.
The Buddhist sutras explain "loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity" as follows: removing what is of no benefit for all beings is called great loving-kindness; wishing to bring immeasurable benefit and joy to all beings is called great compassion; feeling joy in one's heart toward all beings is called great sympathetic joy; giving up one's own joy to bestow it on others is called great equanimity. The "four immeasurable minds" are: may all beings forever have well-being and the causes of well-being; may all beings forever be separated from all suffering and the causes of suffering; may all beings forever have joy free from suffering, and may my heart be at ease; may all beings be free from greed and anger, and abide in impartial equanimity.
These ultimate, ideal, beautiful, and deeply humane aspirations of religious figures are the best way to extinguish conflict and build a harmonious world. But regrettably, in reality, many people are far from this ideal. As set out in The Selfish Gene, human nature is selfish from a genetic perspective. The wish of every cell is its own reproduction and survival; competition naturally exists among living things, as all struggle over survival resources favorable to themselves and their offspring. So religious figures can look like masters drawing pancakes in the air, preaching only impractical, flashy things.
But in fact, as the economist Alfred Marshall said, religion and economics are two of the core concerns of humankind. Marshall further noted that, if one had to rank the two, economics is ultimately less important than religion. The religion Marshall referred to does not denote a specific religious denomination; we can understand it as a broad religious spirit. This religious spirit is highly similar across the faiths of the world; its essence is a spirit of tolerance and universal love, which can be summed up in the two familiar Chinese characters for compassion (cibei).
Because compassion is the root of love, love at its highest necessarily gives birth to a compassionate heart. Any love that does not ultimately spring from a compassionate motive cannot be called true love. Like selfishness, compassion is written into the human genome; it is something innate. That is why Buddhism says all sentient beings possess Buddha-nature. This is not hard to understand: if one does not put oneself in another's place, what kind of love is that? When two people show compassion toward each other, that is true love. Without an altruistic spirit, love is impossible to speak of. Humankind is a bundle of contradictions: selfishness and altruism, two seemingly conflicting things, can coexist in one person. Love for oneself and love for another arise together before true love occurs.
The greatest function of religion is to continually help people awaken the compassion deep within their own hearts. This awakening requires perseverance like my grandmother's to be effective. Those devout, illiterate elderly women who chant sutras day and night—over time, the principles of conduct in the sutras gradually solidify into instinctive behavior, which can be effectively transmitted across generations. This power far outshines the expedient, result-driven modern education. Occasionally going to a temple to burn incense, press one's palms together, and take a photograph absolutely cannot achieve such results.
In recent years I have studied psychiatry somewhat. Mental illness is a condition influenced both by innate genetic factors and by postnatal environment. The vast majority of mental illnesses are closely related to the loss of love. Humanity's greatest suffering is clearly not poverty—Alfred Marshall was well aware of this; humanity's greatest suffering is the loss of love.
A considerable number of mental illnesses are directly related to the loss of love. Some psychiatric patients suffer severe trauma to the brain during the process of losing love. After long-term humiliation, bullying, and oppression, their entire lives become shrouded in oppressive emotion; they become hyper-sensitive to their surroundings, seeing threats everywhere, and filled with hostility and wariness toward others. Thus they appear more emotional than other people; their brains are busy processing various mentally overwhelming external stimuli, and over time a rigid pattern forms. This also causes most of them to be unable to fully develop their talents, and some are even mentally disabled by it, losing the ability to live independently.
Over a hundred years ago, when so-called civilized modern anthropologists went to poor, remote primitive tribes to conduct anthropological research, they found that although many tribal people lived in material deprivation, they were very happy. One of the most classic questions primitive people put to modern people was: "Poor? What is poor? Do you have no friends? No family? If you have those, what poverty is there? When you are hungry, they will share their food with you; what is there to worry about?"
This is the power of love—the enormous cohesion produced by a society or family built on "loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, the four immeasurable minds." This power is enough to let a person overcome endless fear of survival. A person whose heart is broken by trauma, who finds it hard to trust others and form loving bonds with them, always feels utterly alone. Even if someone loves them, they dare not believe they are truly worthy of love; they constantly doubt whether others' care is genuine and lasting, and their fear of survival far exceeds that of ordinary people. Only love can heal them; persistent understanding, sympathy, and care are the medicine that can ultimately save them. Aaron T. Beck, founder of cognitive behavioral therapy, pointed out sharply that the entire foundation of psychiatry can only be the spirit of compassion. I would go further: not only psychiatry, but the foundation of all human medicine can only be the spirit of compassion.
Some truly compassionate religious leaders are always surrounded by countless supporters and followers. I personally believe this is because the art of love they teach is indeed profoundly beneficial. Likewise, a compassionate person is more likely to receive the care of others, perhaps because their behavior and demeanor awaken compassion deep within others. There is a very interesting phenomenon between people: when we treat others with compassion, they usually respond with the same compassionate heart and treat us accordingly—even psychiatric patients widely misunderstood by the public can do so.
Compassion is the best emotional bridge between people. Compassion can not only dissolve hatred and heal trauma but also build powerful synergy between people. Therefore, learning compassion is the most important lesson in our lives. Human education today is still too superficial; we think the power of language and natural science is sufficient, which is arrogance built on ignorance. If we cannot learn compassion, cannot learn to love, then developed technology—apart from creating wealth gaps and wars—really cannot produce much that benefits the human body and mind.