Category: Joyce Rupp

Blog Post 17: Waking Up

Blog Post 17: Waking Up

I have begun to see a pattern in what I’ve been hearing, reading and writing for the last few months. 

It’s imperative to WAKE UP!

And waking up is essential to compassion.

Joyce Rupp, in Boundless Compassion identifies “awareness” as one of the 3 movements (“Aware, Awake, and Action) of compassion.[1] To be aware you have to wake up. The words awake and aware are interchangeable to me. Joyce also describes this as an attitude, “that of recognizing the inviolable oneness we have with all of life.”[2] What are we waking up to?  We wake up to the reality of Christ-consciousness in daily living. To be aware of and realize that like fish we are swimming in the sea of God’s Infinite Love. It’s not that God is in us, rather we are in God and like the fish we usually aren’t aware of how essential this is to our very life. “In Him we live and move and have our being.”[3]

“It is the active, real love of a Living God who is “over all works, through all, and is in all.”[4] This awareness, conscious of living in God, not as the criteria for salvation or morals but as Reality, changes our attitude toward all of God’s creatures, human and non-human. From this awareness and attitude, developed by realization that we are in Infinite Love and Compassion, we take action to alleviate the suffering we see in the world. Like the fish in the ocean we often are not conscious that we are permeated through and through with the Infinite.  Yet, we can be as surrendered to it as the fish to the water and allow compassion to flow through us and into the world around us.

The interbeing of Infinite Compassion does not divide us but is realized in daily life. “Compassion is the photosynthesis of the heart…”[5] It takes time to develop. Start now.

[1] Rupp, J. (2018) Boundless Compassion: Creating a Way of Life. Notre Dame, IN.: Sorin Books, p. 15.

[2] Ibid, p.15

[3] Acts 17:28

[4] Fox, M. (1968) “What is Prayer?” in Listening, Winter, p. 113

[5] Rupp. p. 14

Blog Post 16: Paths Beyond Ego

Blog Post 16: Paths Beyond Ego

This is an important key to understanding compassion as a way of life.  Although our ego is involved in daily living, the Source of compassion is infinite and beyond ego.  We cannot bypass the Source and expect to live compassionately, it is beyond the ability of our finite ego to accomplish.  And even if the ego could accomplish this it would just make it more egocentric, which is not a characteristic of compassion.

In Boundless Compassion[1] and in the retreats of the same title, Joyce Rupp fills a void that some other teachers of compassion overlook or don’t acknowledge.  To realize that we are one with and created in the image of Infinite Love and Compassion, that is, it is our essential nature (aka, True Self) is the foundation and reality of living compassionately. To quote Thomas Merton, “…for it beats in our very blood whether we want it to or not.”[2] Joyce speaks from this foundation, The Source of Infinite Compassion.

At the same time she focuses on daily living a compassionate life. Is this not who we are called to be?  To follow and live as Christ in the world; in the practical, daily life.  In the tradition of Merton, Joyce provides wisdom from theistic and non-theistic resources as a basis for a compassionate life. After all, Tibetan Buddhism has studied ways to practically implement compassion in daily life for over a thousand years.

In the Introduction to Week 1 of Boundless Compassion, Joyce writes “Compassion is a way of life-an inner posture of how to be with suffering, both our own and others, and a desire to move that attitude into action. Compassion involves an ‘inside-out’ movement. A radical change unfolds in us when compassion becomes a way of life, a transformation as far-reaching as an acorn growing into a tree,…or a caterpillar metamorphosing into a butterfly.”[3]  In this way we see that “compassion the primary agent of transformation”[4] as Jim Finley states.

In Blog 2, “What is Compassion and What is Suffering?” I described compassion as tenderness, courage, and wisdom (TCW). Joyce provides the basis for TCW and also identifies the “movement of compassion–awareness, attitude, and action—and the four essential aspects of nonjudgment, nonviolence, forgiveness ,and mindfulness”[5] in multiple aspects of daily life.  These aspects create the necessary training to habituate the transformation to a compassionate life of tenderness, courage, and wisdom.

Boundless Compassion is eminently practical since there are daily practices and prayers around each weekly theme of compassionate living. “Compassion is a photosynthesis of the heart…We cannot hurry this transformation, but we can give ourselves to it as fully as possible, knowing that it entails a continual recommitment.”[6]  My future blog posts will highlight these themes and encourage us all to live a compassionate way of life in the midst of today’s world.

 

[1] Rupp, J. (2018) Boundless Compassion: Creating a Way of Life. Notre Dame, IN.: Sorin Books. [2] Merton, T. (1961) New Seeds of Contemplation. New York: New Directions Publishing, p. 297.  [3] Rupp, p.12. [4] Finley, James said on many retreats and found in Christian Mediation (2004) San Francisco, CA and New York: HarperSanFrancisco. [5] Rupp, p. 12. [6] Rupp, p. 14.

Blog Post 15: Returning to Contemplative Compassion

It has been more than 1 year since my last post.  Life became too busy with moving houses and the serious illness of a relative. I didn’t have the time or the inspiration to keep up a weekly post.  I plan to return to the regular writing of this blog.

One thing that has inspired me to return is a book and retreat I attended on “Boundless Compassion.” The book, Boundless Compassion authored by Joyce Rupp, is the book that captures my understanding of Contemplative Compassion.  She captures the many aspects of compassion from both a Christ-consciousness perspective as well as an interfaith perspective.  The book’s focus is on “compassion as a way of life, an inner posture of mind and heart, one meant to infuse our whole being[1].”  The format is daily readings around a weekly theme. I plan to explore the teachings in future blogs.

Today I came across a reading on compassion that gave me some insight into why living a compassionate life is so vital to me. The book, Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet, by Joan Halifax, includes a chapter on “Compassion at the Edge.[2]” She writes a section called “the 3 faces of compassion,” which include Referential Compassion, Wise Compassion, and Universal Compassion.[3] Briefly, Referential Compassion is for those we share close connections; Wise Compassion is a moral imperative because ignoring suffering can have serious consequences self, other, and society.  Universal Compassion is “compassion without an object.”[4]

Universal Compassion, aka True Compassion, is compassion that we join with rather than what our ego may generate.  This is when our egoic operating system steps aside and we are awakened to Infinite Love and Compassion which in a theistic tradition would be called God or Christ-consciousness.  This is what I call contemplative compassion.  The example Joan Halifax describes is falling and breaking her leg, then connecting compassionately to the medic who cared for her.  In the midst of intense pain she became aware of his suffering “which came out of nowhere.”[5] She inquired and learned that his wife was dying from breast cancer.  She writes, “…in the midst of my own critical state I had opened into an experience of universal compassion…The upwelling of boundless concern and love for another had dissolved my sense of self, and with that my pain had melted away.”[6]

I recognized in this an aspect of my own experience. Compassion for another frees me from consciousness of my own pain and suffering. I have chronic nerve pain and an additional problem of that is becoming too self-referential.  Earl in my pain journey I seemed to be only focused on my pain and alleviating it.  I also felt like no one else understands “my” pain. I was so caught up in my constructed self[7] that it often closed me off to Infinite Love and Compassion. The way through pain and suffering for me was to awaken to compassion.

Prior to the chronic nerve pain, I was interested in compassion as a way of life, but living with the new incapacities meant that I had to learn another way of daily living. Self-compassion was not the way forward for me; it was joining in compassion for another that eased my pain.  As an aside, I’ve only found self-compassion helpful when I can extend it to all others who are in pain. Joan writes, “As the illusion of the small self falls away, we remember who we really are.”[8] She quotes David Whyte who recounts a conversation that he had with Brother David Stendl-Rast,[9] when they dialogued about the swan as a metaphor. “He (the swan) does it by moving towards the elemental water where he belongs. It is simple contact with the water that gives him grace and presence.”  The elemental water is infinite compassion. He continues, “You only have to touch the elemental waters in your own life and it will transform everything.”[10]

The practical way that I eased into the water was to volunteer at our local zoo. I was fortunate to be able to care for the animals by assisting zookeepers. It was discovering the reality of all sentient beings and joining in compassion with them that I initially found a way through pain and suffering.  The focus on caring and compassion for others rescued me from the egoic operating system’s emphasis on “my” pain and the self-referential focus.  The path has been to return to awareness of Infinite Compassion and joining with that when I am overwhelmed by the demands of the constructed self.

 

[1] Rupp, J. (2018) Boundless Compassion: Creating a Way of Life. Notre Dame, IN.: Soring Books, p. 4.
[2] Halifax, J. (2018) Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet, p. 205-249.
[3] Ibid, p. 217ff.
[4] Ibid. p. 217.
[5] Ibid, p. 219.
[6] Ibid.
[7] See Blog post 14 for more on the constructed self.
[8] Ibid, p. 221.
[9] Ibid, p. 175.

[10] Ibid.