I love all of my work but one of my favorite things to do is to facilitate the Compassion Cultivation Training (“CCT”). The CCT is a training born out of CCARE at Stanford University to offer a space and opportunity for people to understand what it means to be compassionate for themselves and others in a structured way.
There were many profound moments for me during the class and one of them was when I could get in touch with self-compassion inside me for the first time. Compassion has been always a foggy concept for me. I understood what it meant intellectually and felt it for other people. But I couldn’t really feel it for myself. Thinking that compassion was only for others, it felt like an emotional burden rather than something good for me. When I felt the self-compassion for the first time in my heart, it felt like I got reunited finally with my best friend whom I have been separated from for as long as I could remember. And that friend was deeply kind to me.
Finishing facilitation of another CCT workshop, I am reminded of the importance of this kind presence again. People who come to this workshop have strong longing to understand compassion. Like I did, they understand compassion intellectually but can’t really discern it from empathy. This makes them feel overwhelmed by it, thinking it has to be only altruistic and it has to be about “fixing the problem” that causes suffering.
As they go through the 8-week process of breaking down compassion for themselves and others, what they finally get to realize is that the compassion is about embodying that kind and nonjudgmental presence of the best friend — for oneself and others.
George Saunders, the famous writer of the “Lincoln in the Bardo” and many other great books, spoke of this kind presence in his another famous convocation speech (“Err in the direction of kindness”) he offered at Syracuse University in 2013. When I first heard about it, I thought it was one of the best explanation of compassion. In his recent conversation with Sam Harris, he elaborated on this again:
“I think a lot about kindness. Let’s say you go to a coffee shop and you see the barista has been crying. That’s a great moment for kindness. But what is it? What do you do in that situation? And to me, what I would tend to do and probably a lot of people would do, is asking “Oh, are you ok?”.
But that might be wrong. She might be intensely private person who’s humiliated by crying at work, and now you are making it worse. So to me, that example makes me think; ok, let’s put the word kindness aside for a minute. What we really mean is that we want to provide benefit in that moment. Ok, what would that take? Hmmm. Well, I think the first word that comes to my mind is presence. This is not now to idealize a barista crying but it’s a person in front of you. The one who has a pink streak in her hair.
Ok. Hmm. Do we know enough yet? I don’t think we do. So now, if we’re actually in that coffee shop with that person, I think there is a variation in the extent to a certain people can sense what’s needed. That I think is mindfulness. I would correlate that roughly with having a pretty quiet mind. You are not thinking, “I’m gonna make her day; I’m gonna show everyone how kind I am!” You are just quiet and observing and in that state you’re getting a lot more data points.
But in that kind of scenario, I am always aware of my own Jesus complex. That’s a flaw of ego as well. That’s not kind to be rushing and saving people who don’t need saving. So I think it gets really deep really fast. In that moment, feeling love for her would be a good start. If you feel just basic human affection. That would have an element of respect, and especially curiosity; “Hmm where are we now?”
Life goes faster than we can manage it; because we’ll have five of those instances at least today. And I’m not prepped. I’m gonna botch about 4.75 of them (laugh). “
from <Making Sense: Life & Work, A Conversation with George Saunders>
What George Saunders is talking about is how we can “err in the direction of kindness”. It starts with kind and nonjudgmental presence. No need to jump to solutions. No need to “make things better”. Sure, it could feel awkwardly uncomfortable and squirmy that makes our internal system send off the alarm out loud: “I GOTTA DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!!”
The kind presence is first to be present with the process of life working itself through suffering of ourselves and others, not reacting out of all of these internal narratives. I witness the possibility of having the kind presence of the best friend at the end of the 8-week course of CCT, every time. It’s easier said than done but it can be done through practice.
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