Everyone alive has suffered. It is the wisdom gained from our wounds and from our own experiences of suffering that makes us able to heal. Becoming expert has turned out to be less important than remembering and trusting the wholeness in myself and everyone else. Expertise cures, but wounded people can best be healed by other wounded people. Only other wounded people can understand what is needed, for the healing of suffering is compassion, not expertise.
Rachel Naomi Remen
All the suffering in the world comes from seeking pleasure for oneself.
All the happiness in the world comes from seeking pleasure for others.
Shantideva
All of our emotions are our babies.
Treat them tenderly, care for them. Be with them.
Understanding and compassion will ultimately transform them.
Thich Nhat Hanh, Walking Meditation
Both our upbringing and our culture provide the immediate breeding ground for this contemporary epidemic of feeling deficient and unworthy. Many of us have grown up with parents who gave us messages about where we fell short and how we should be different from the way we are. We were told to be special, to look a certain way, to act a certain way, to work harder, to win, to succeed, to make a difference, and not to be too demanding, shy or loud. An indirect but insidious message for many has been “Don’t be needy.” Because our culture so values independence, self-reliance and strength, even the word “needy” evokes shame. To be considered as needy is utterly demeaning, contemptible. And yet, we all have needs – physical, sexual, emotional, spiritual. So the basic message is, “Your natural way of being is not okay. To be acceptable you must be different from the way you are.”
Tara Brach
Love is not a matter of getting what you want.
Quite the contrary.
The insistence on always having what you want,
on always being satisfied, on always being fulfilled,
makes love impossible.
Thomas Merton
The act of compassion begins with full attention, just as rapport does. You have to really see the person. If you see the person, then naturally, empathy arises. If you tune into the other person, you feel with them. If empathy arises, and if that person is in dire need, then empathic concern can come. You want to help them, and then that begins a compassionate act. So I’d say that compassion begins with attention.
Daniel Goleman
Mindfulbalance 