Qualities of Existence at Individual Level: Compassion
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In a Forbes Article ‘Compassion as a business objective: why it matters and how to cultivate it’, Caroline Vernon shares what maketh a Compassionate Leader: “are descriptors such as passionate, trustworthy, calm in the face of adversity, present, connected, sensitive, service-oriented, empathetic and encouraging”. We also get some clues “Compassion is a practice. As a compassionate leader, you invest time and make an active commitment to the people around you, which sets them on a path for success. You inherently support their growth and clear their way of obstacles…”
Let’s reflect deeper from work and life context. Say Satish is a manager and one of his team members is very sincere but underperforming. Enough inputs have been given and coaching as well.
Now, what can be done? Put pressure, spend more time, talk to him kindly, be tough with him, etc. are some of the options. Which would work? Let’s draw attention to the insight of Caroline Vernon – Can we detect their obstacle? Can we be catalysts to help them clear it? Can we support their growth? Each of us are unique and if each of us find our ways of doing this, then in a practical way I believe we are practicing compassion.
Some examples then of the opposite – at a thought, emotion, or behaviour level:
In this manner, compassion seems to be a Master Quality with at least three other qualities under it – Clarity (Light), Love, and Power.
Now let us take this exploration of Compassion into the personal domain. Here is a message from Tenzin Gyatso; The Fourteenth Dalai Lama – “You should take good care of others, be concerned for their welfare, help them, serve them, make more friends, make more smiles.” This is clear and simple. How do we put it into practice? Say there is a neighbour of ours who is throwing garbage out. It is spoiling the ambience, and environment and it is not ecologically sound. We tell them and even take support from other neighbours.
In this case, the situation is more difficult. As values systems, outlook, or visions of life would be different between people living in neighbouring houses. Now if we don’t tell them anything we have not solved the problem. If we get angry and shout we have lost our poise. If we give up in-between saying why disturb them, clearly we are not practicing compassion from a?nature/environment angle. What do we do? Here is where compassion gets truly hands-on.
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We place a hypothesis here that truly to practice Compassion we need all three of its sub qualities: Light, Love, and Power.
In this case, we need the holistic clarity of what is good for us, the neighbour, nature, and society at large. We need to have the love, that even though the external actions of the neighbour are causing a challenge if we bring in hate we generate negative karma to solve negative karma. So it then boils down to us connecting to deep love, seeing that within all of us there is a spark of Goodness even though for moments it can get clouded. We also truthfully check whether we are fully considerate of all. Apart from Light and Love, we need to hold power too. What is right for all is that garbage is put in its right places and the environment is kept beautiful, for that we need to patiently ensure that it occurs. When we get entangled with the neighbour’s behaviour this becomes difficult.
When we can clearly hold the vision, love, and personal power and act for what is good for all we will find our way. Each one of our paths are unique. When each of us find our ways to do this, then Compassion has existed and lived more in a practical way.
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This article insights are shared by Arul Dev, Founder CEO of People First Consultants.
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Chartered Engineer (Chemical) | Technocrat | Pharma & Chemicals | Process, Environment, Energy & Sustainability Specialist | Writer | Scholar | Researcher
2 年Power here is the spiritual power (Spiritual Energy) which comes by cultivating thought culture of bright, sunny, radiant, creative and miraculous nature and is a result of connecting with God mind or Quantum / dhamma field or Universal mind (God / God mind), if I'm correct or correctly understood. Right?
Organizational & Culture Development Mentor | CEO – Talent Hiring | Deeper Body Work Facilitator | Head – Mindfulness Tools
2 年We sincerely thank Caroline Vernon for her article on ‘Compassion As A Business Objective: Why It Matters And How To Cultivate It’ in Forbes. We have been exploring Compassion in few groups where we anchor coaching and development. Still how to bring it as a concrete practice and into the daily life was eluding. As we were searching we came across your article on Compassion. Our clarity lit when we read two insights in it. We have now been able to fully apply this as a practice that can be done both at work and home. "You inherently support their growth and clear their way of obstacles" - this phrase is still resonating and lingering within us, as we take this practice forward. Deep Gratitude. The article is also based on true instances in life and work, where we are applying the practice of Compassion and exploring how this can make us better humans, leaders and team members.