Selfishness & Empathy

Above in the section on Boundaries, we asked questions about how you are you, and what are you? Are you your body and mind? where do you start and end? Now we can ask - how much of you is strictly yourself? How much of you is because of your context? Are you part of your family? Are you one of your group of friends? Are you a part of your cultural group? Are you a part of the whole world? Are you a part of Everything? Are you tiny or are you large? Are you almost nothing or almost everything?

Did you come to this understanding by yourself or did you learn this from your surroundings, your social context, your culture? Is your culture helping you to value yourself? Keep this question in mind for later.

Your perception of what you are and who you are is important. When we are small, we need to be selfish. As we develop and grow older, our real needs become smaller in relation to the rest of our whole selves. We become more connected with the world around us. As we become more connected, we feel and exhibit more empathy for others and for the world. Our identities become larger, and more integrated with our world. Where are your boundaries? Do you have layers? Do these layers include your relationships with others?

Which of these two places appeal to you?
• Imagine that you live in a place where you are the only one who controls all the resources, the only one who has all the power. Everyone else comes to you for permission, for allotments, for access to resources - money, land to grow food, water, technology, everything. You decide whether you wish to allow each person to live and survive and how much they will have and use.
• Alternatively, imagine that you live in a community where power is shared, where everyone decides together and has agreed to share the basics, and no one has to ask permission for the basic needs. It's true that some people work more and some have great ideas and are rewarded because their work and ideas produce more resources for the entire community, but no one can take from everyone's basic needs. You have all the basics that you need and have plenty of time and extra resources to work on the things you enjoy, your creative activities and ideas. Some people choose to improve their homes, some choose to get more education, some choose to travel while others spend their extra time and resources in the arts or sciences and many other pursuits.

Try this exercise:
Make two small groups with five students in each group.
Give each group a small bag of 10 jelly beans or peanuts or cookies.

Have one group distribute the beans or nuts or cookies, two to each person, thereby sharing them.
Have the other group select just one person to eat all the beans or nuts or cookies.

Ask each group to sing a simple song while the beans or nuts or cookies are being eaten.
(Select any familiar song like "Row, Row, Row Your Boat", "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star", etc.)

When the song is finished and the treats have been eaten, discuss how the students feel about this exercise.

Quotes

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”
Dalai Lama

“The world exists for the sake of kindness.”
Rashi - Shlomo Yitzchaki

“The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.”
Albert Schweitzer

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.”
Dalai Lama

“I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.”
Lao Tzu

“Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life's search for love and wisdom.”
Rumi

“Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men.”
Confucius

“Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”
Mark Twain

“Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.”
Albert Einstein

“For a lot of people, Superman is and has always been America's hero. He stands for what we believe is the best within us: limitless strength tempered by compassion, that can bear adversity and emerge stronger on the other side. He stands for what we all feel we would like to be able to stand for, when standing is hardest.”
J. Michael Straczynski

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”
Maya Angelou

“Mama was my greatest teacher, a teacher of compassion, love and fearlessness. If love is sweet as a flower, then my mother is that sweet flower of love.”
Stevie Wonder

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
Plato

“Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“One love, one heart, one destiny.”
Bob Marley

“Compassion is the basis of morality.”
Arthur Schopenhauer

“No one has ever become poor by giving.”
Anne Frank

“for there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.”
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”
Aesop

“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.”
Andrew Boyd, Daily Afflictions: The Agony of Being Connected to Everything in the Universe