When separation softens, compassion emerges from a shared depth of awareness
We know how quickly distance can appear between two people: misconstrued word — a curt or tightening tone … misunderstood position … unintended hardening.
And suddenly a “you” and “me” crystallizes: a subtle but firm line emerges … that’s then defended … reinforced … causing unnecessary suffering.
But what if this “boundary” is not as solid or real as it seems? … if this “sense of separation” is illusory or mind constructed? And therefore open to softening.
When that softening begins, something unexpected happens: we find that beneath our habitual reactions there is a deeper ground we share — a space not divided by “self” and “other.”
And from that shared ground, compassion is revealed, or emerges – naturally!
What keeps that line seemingly firm is not only circumstance, but the way the mind fixes itself around its own interpretations. We take our reactions to be reality. We mistake our thoughts about one another for who the “other” truly is. In Buddhist language, this tightening is called reification — the unconsciously solidifying what is fluid.
Makransky suggests that when we settle more deeply — beneath these reflexive stories — we may discover a dimension of awareness that is not divided in the way our reactions are. He calls this nondual awareness, or buddha nature: a depth of being in which “self” and “other” are not fundamentally separate. Even a glimpse of this shared ground reveals that compassion need not be manufactured. It simply arises as a natural expression of that undivided depth.
In the concluding section of How Compassion Works, Makransky & Condon name this shift explicitly — from effortful compassion to the recognition of a nondual ground in which we are already undivided. What the Buddhist tradition calls bodhicitta is not a moral demand but the deepest form of compassion: a commitment rooted in that shared nature, expressing itself as a presence that supports others in their own freedom.
In Part 1, we explored the “receptive mode” of practice — receiving before giving — and how compassion can be remembered from within, when we allow care to touch us..
Today, in Part 2, we step into the deeper question: when the illusion of separation softens, what reveals itself between us? What the Buddhist tradition calls bodhicitta is not something we create, but something we remember — a compassion arising from the recognition of a shared ground not divided by “self” and “other.” This is how compassion works at its deepest level.
This post is part of our ongoing Shambhala Publications series that offers substantive previews of selections from Shambhala Publications new and classic titles …
All italicized text here is adapted from How Compassion Works by John Makransky & Paul Condon, © John Makransky & Paul Condon. Reprinted in arrangement with the publisher Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO.You can purchase the book at Shambhala Publications or Amazon.
HOW COMPASSION WORKS: FULLEST COMPASSION AS BODHICITTA…
Recall our discussion of the three levels of suffering in chapter 4: the obvious suffering of body and mind, the suffering of changeableness, and the suffering of ego-conditioning. Most of our discussion above, as with most social activism, focused on obvious sufferings, including our wish for beings to be free from that suffering and the struggle for that freedom. But there are further layers of suffering that are normally not fully conscious to people. To be freed from those layers and their causes comprises a deeper level of liberation. The suffering of changeableness is the futile attempt to have and hold on to changing things as if they were the very source of our well-being, when deep down we know we will lose them all. (Again, it is the power of love, compassion, and wisdom that are the actual sources of our well-being). The suffering of ego-conditioning refers to the subtle anxieties, fears, and reactions that are endlessly generated by the ego-centered conditioning of our minds.
While we work to address the obvious level of suffering noted in the section above, we are probably still caught in the latter two levels of suffering ourselves, driven by conditioned patterns of thought, feeling, and reaction in mind and body. The deepest inner cause of suffering, from a Buddhist perspective, is the mind’s tendency to reify and grasp onto its own mental constructs of reality, mistaking everyone and everything for our own reified images and thoughts of them and endlessly reacting to them from self-grasping habits of afflictive emotion: self-clinging attachment, aversion, and so forth.
Even when we think we are working to improve the world, as long as we remain caught up in those conditioned habits of mind, we contribute to the suffering around us in ways we are not conscious of. While we are identified with those conditioned habits of reaction, we cannot access a deeper source of freedom from suffering with its powers of equanimity, discernment, and unconditional compassion from which to address the suffering of ourselves and others.
But as noted in chapter 2, when we enter into deepening levels of tranquil abiding in the releasing phase of each meditation and in the Letting Be of Body, Breath, and Mind meditation, we start to settle into an unconditioned, nondual dimension of our being, the basic space and lucidity of our buddha nature, which is the ground of all our experience. That is the place of deepest freedom from all three levels of suffering and their inner causes. As noted, with the support of teachers and community who practice at that depth, we can begin to have glimpses of that nondual and unconditioned ground of experience—buddha nature—and even start to reunify with it more and more. From a Buddhist perspective, when we do so, the patterns of mind and body that condition all three levels of suffering begin to release, to “self-liberate,” and we start to experience a profound relief from within.
As we reunify more and more fully with that unconditioned ground of basic space and clarity, buddha nature, we sense the same in all others, for we are undivided from them in the infinite openness of that ground. Then we can recognize more clearly how much we have all been caught up in conditioned causes of suffering for not having realized that ground of inmost freedom. From a Buddhist perspective, this recognition informs the deepest purpose of compassion—to hold all beings in the vision that knows them all in the unconditioned ground of their being, the place of their inmost freedom from suffering. The ultimate aim then is to become so unified with that enlightened ground and its qualities through practice that our presence to them can support them in their own realization of freedom from all levels of suffering, each in their own best way.
This commitment to fully realize and embody our buddha nature and its qualities in order to support all others in their process of awakening and liberation is called bodhicitta, the awakening mind of a bodhisattva. From a Buddhist point of view, it is bodhicitta that comprises the deepest form of compassion—compassion attuned to the fullest reality of beings, both in their enlightened capacity for inmost freedom and in all the layers and causes of suffering that obstruct it. It is therefore bodhicitta that is a most precious resource, perspective, and motivation for compassionate responses to the problems of the world.
Those who take up the commitment of bodhicitta to reunify with the unconditioned ground of their being—the place of deepest freedom and primal goodness—for the sake of all, have found the ultimate secure base from which to respond to the problems and needs of the world without being overwhelmed by them. That nondual ground of openness and awareness provides the discernment, awakening qualities, and energy needed to target all three levels of suffering in beings when working to meet problems and needs, not just the obvious sufferings.
Stay tuned for more substantive previews of other books (both new and classic) in this ongoing Shambhala Publications series …
All italicized text here is adapted from How Compassion Works by John Makransky & Paul Condon, © John Makransky & Paul Condon. Reprinted in arrangement with the publisher Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO.You can purchase the book at Shambhala Publications or Amazon.
Images (edited & Logo added): Header: Annapurna mountains by saiko3p, 1 & Featured) Silence and peace enfold the kyle by smitk51@gmail.com, 2) How Compassion Works cover image from Shambhala, 4) & 5) Image (AI-generated): OpenAI / ChatGPT, 6) Sunrise at Moeraki Boulders, New Zealand by DavidChrastek. 3) & 7) Shambhala Publications logo. All images (except ones from Shambhala Publications) purchased from depositphotos or 123rf. All are for use only on our website/social channels (these images are not permitted to be shared separate from this post). 2), 3) & 7) generously provided by Shambhala Publications with permission to be used on our website and other digital assets.
