Pity and Compassion

The last couple of weeks, I've continued my work with emotions.

I've had a particularly difficult week, where I've had to really assess the difference between pity and compassion.  I have to let go of an employee at my non-profit, and I have to balance my pity for the situation she will be in, with my compassion for my fellow employees who have to deal with the destructive emotions she introduces to the workplace.

My practice has really helped. And staying close to the mechanisms that Mingyur Rinpoche teaches has helped especially. First I rest in basic awareness, free of all objects, like the image and imaginary conversations I continue to have with this person and my peers. Then I allow whatever I'm feeling to come up, let's say pity.  And then rather than focus on the object of the pity, I focus on the pity itself.  Slowly the pity and my emotional pattern of pity start to naturally deconstruct.

I've felt a few things. How pity is a substitute for genuine grief and sadness. And also how pity is a stumbling block on gratitude.  If I'm focused on what other people don't have, e.g. job skills, emotional control, insight, good judgment, I'm not able to be grateful for having these qualities or to be grateful and respectful to the people who have them.

Still, it's tough. I'm putting someone in the same place I was five years ago. Without work, without money, experiencing the consequences of work that isn't stable. I was able to pull myself together, and then some. I'm so much better off financially than I was back then. That job was a rut for me, and this job is a rut for this person. I know she will never advance here.

Encouraging her to leave, and giving her the opportunity to assess the consequences of her behaviour, is the path to compassion.  I have to have faith that she has it in her to turn her life around. I did, and she has the same essential qualities as I do.

Pity, Overwhelm, Idiot compassion

This week and for the next while I want to start working on those things that obstruct change, that obstruct my ability to feel and sustain compassion for myself and others.

I'm going to do this in a systematic way.  This week look at the first near enemy of compassion: pity. According to Pema Chodron pity obstructs real compassion because it props up a story that we're better than someone. When we see another person as helpless, we don't see their strengths.

Another thing I might want to take a look at is self-pity.  This props up the story that I'm less than others and that I can solve my problems by appealing to pity.