Many people imagine that having a harmless heart is the same as kindness. Kindness is a much larger idea than harmlessness, or even an aversion to cruelty.

Someone who is truly kind—*mehr-bān*, a guardian of love—has chosen to safeguard light and love in the world, and only someone who has risen to protect love in the world is worthy of such a position. Such a heart cannot merely be harmless, devoid of courage and readiness to act.

Many people regard themselves as kind because they see themselves as tender-hearted, harmless and sympathetic to others. But if you look into the depths of their sympathy, you can see fear and pity for themselves.

That tenderness is in fact filled with a fear that begins with this thought: let me help and give to others so that, if one day I too am brought low, others will extend a hand to me. Such self-pity is nothing more than a diminished form of self-centredness.

If our compassion and kindness are rooted in pity for ourselves, somewhere in the depths of our heart we will always retain a sense of fear and hostility. Such an understanding of compassion is not the same as true kindness.

Compassion is not giving to those in need.
Compassion is not a relationship between one who fulfils needs and one who is in need.
Compassion is not bestowing something upon the weak and condemned from a position of power.
Compassion is not even imagining ourselves as those who reduce the suffering of others and of the world.

A heart filled with compassion sees itself in equality and connection with all human beings and with the world, not in the position of the one who knows, possesses, gives, grants or forgives.

Compassion is a profound understanding of the truth of the inner connectedness of human beings with one another and with the world; to the extent that we become emptied of it, we become more alone and more severed from the world.

Compassion is the strength and courage to go beyond our own suffering in order to see and accept the suffering of others and to try to lessen the pain and affliction of the world.

Philo of Alexandria wrote, a century before Christ, in the rendering given here:
“Be kind to everyone, for everyone you meet is fighting a suffering of which you know nothing. Whenever it is possible, withhold kindness from no one, and know that it is always possible.”

Aydin Areta