If there’s something you want to learn in Life, learn to be compassionate.
Compassion is the purest form of love. When you have something to offer,
something to give – out of a deep understanding of the other’s predicament or
need, out of purely being human, without really worrying about what’s in it for
you! When you pity someone, you don’t really understand that person’s
situation. You merely feel an emotion that makes you feel superior than the one
that you are pitying – which is, in a way, you feel subconsciously good within
you that you are mercifully not in that person’s shoes. Compassion, on the
other hand, helps you relate to the other person and gets you to see the world
from that person’s situation and act from that reference point!
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| Devi, Sharma, Khan, Azmi - Being Human! Pic Courtesy: The Indian Express |
This morning’s papers in India have led with the story of
two women who offered their kidneys to each other’s husbands in order to save
their lives. These women are as disparate as you can find any two – age-wise,
social-strata wise, education-wise, income-group-wise and religion-wise. Yet
they reached out to each other and in the name of humanity offered to help each
other. Fitraus Azmi, in her 20s, from Aurangabad, gave her kidney to save the
Life of Uma Devi’s (in her 40s) husband, Devaki Nandan Sharma (52), who hails from
Patna. And Devi, in turn, gave her kidney to Azmi’s husband, Mohammed Akhtar
Khan, 29. The entire operation, in fact four of them, has been successful and
has given the two men another lifeline from the acute renal failure situation that
both were faced with. In a world where religion divides people, here compassion
has brought them together. And how!
I am reminded of what Osho, the Master, has once said: “In
compassion, you simply give. In love, you are thankful because the other has
given something to you. In compassion, you are thankful because the other has
taken something from you. You are thankful because the other has not rejected
you. You had come with energy to give, you had come with many flowers to share,
and the other allowed you, the other was receptive.”
Giving compassionately, contrary to popular sentiment, is
not at all difficult. Though many will submit that getting rid of the what’s-in-it-for-me
question is well impossible. To get over that limiting thought, to scale that
hurdle, remember these (relevant) words from the Gita Saram (Essence of The Bhagavad Gita):
“…What did you bring with you, for
you to lose it?
What did you create, for it to be wasted or destroyed?
Whatever you took, it was taken from here.
Whatever you gave, it was given from here.
Whatever is yours today, will belong to someone else tomorrow.
On another day, it will belong to yet another.
This change is the Law of the Universe.”
To be liberated, therefore, be compassionate, be human –
give freely!
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