Throughout
this Jubilee Year of Mercy, I have been meditating on what mercy means to me,
and the people with whom and for whom I minister as a Multi-faith Chaplain at
Valley Medical Center. To me mercy and compassion are fundamentally about
self-knowledge born from suffering that teaches me to notice and respond to the
suffering of others. Buddha is reported to have said, “When watching
after yourself, you watch after others. When watching after others, you watch
after yourself.”
The Gospel of John tells us that Jesus Christ “Knew all men, had no need that
anyone should testify of man, for he knew what was in man.”
Dr. Paul Yves Wery, a Belgian medical doctor who worked to slow the spread of
AIDS in Thailand, observed a difference between the way Christians and
Buddhists practice compassion. Neither tradition suggests that the
feeling that stirs in a person who encounters another who is suffering is
adequate to describe what compassion is because it is more than an
emotion.
“For
years the only thing I saw behind the word ‘compassion’ was a charitable act
done on behalf of those who suffer. Later, when I became more adept at
introspection, I saw compassion as something more complex because I found that
it referred to both a feeling I can sense (the discomfort that is passively
experienced when pain is observed) and also my reaction to that discomfort.” Christian visitors to hospice patients dying of AIDS
responded to their suffering with what he called “mothering” gestures, expressions
of love similar to those mothers express toward their children, while Buddhist
visitors tended to respond with generous gestures, offering gifts, food,
flowers, or money. Buddhism and Christianity both teach that compassion is
attending and responding to the suffering of another. Followers of Buddha
and Christ share a call to feel empathy towards those who are suffering, but
the cultural response to that affect is often different.
