Compassion and Charity

 

This was written way back in 2002, as a response to one of my friends when we had the debate on Compassion and Charity when he argued that Hinduism is more Self centered in Self Realisation and does not care about Humanity, while it is the corner-stone of Christianity......

This was my response:

 

Compassion and Charity

 

Compassion for fellow human beings has been the foremost compelling quality that evoked many of the philosophical and social systems. Right from Utopianism, Utilitarianism, Imperialism, Communism, Consumerism and Democracy and these came out of this basic premise of happiness for all.

 

Most of the religions too had, and few have this basic premise. For example in Christianity Compassion and Charity had been the driving force when it started but gave raise to religiosity imperialism that came to dominate in the later years.

 

However, in Hinduism, it has been the other way around. The driving force is Absolute Truth and in this Absolute Truth the Seers saw a universal ‘happiness for all’ hidden in it covered by illusion. The aim was not ‘happiness for all’ but it became a by product.

 

The Hindu tradition classifies pure bhaktas/devotees/ spiritualists in three ascending categories:

kanistha adhikari

madhyama adhikari

uttama adhikari

 

The definitions of these three categories are as follows:

 

The kanistha adhikari, is still limited in vision and therefore sees spirituality/ religion in a more or less material way; He feels compassion for the physical and mental sufferings of people, he gives charity to those who need food and medicine, and in general he tries to patch up situations so that people will feel happy. He feels superior and boosts his ego by “charity” and promotes his “charity” to boost up his ego within the society. He “enjoys” the” superiority” of him while he does not even recognise the insult he does to the “taker” of his charity and is under the illusion that the taker is “happy” for having received his charity, though at the material level he would have, but at an inner level he would be terribly hurt. Some call it “humanitarianism”

 

So at the foundation level of Hinduism, Compassion and Charity are very much embedded and ingrained, without which there can be no progress for a practicing Hindu or without Compassion and Charity, Hinduism can not exist.

 

The madhyama adhikari is able to see the difference between transcendence and material identification (even when applied to religious identification and attachment). He feels compassion for the living entities’ sufferings in a wider perspective, not only in their immediate circumstances but according to a larger scale of time and cause-effect relationships. In other words, he feels more compassion for the criminal than for the victim of a crime.

 

This kind of compassion is much more effective because it acts on the roots of the problems rather than on the external branches, and by trying to prevent the bad karma it automatically prevents the ensuing sufferings.

 

The uttama adhikari is completely situated on the transcendental level and sees the ignorance, illusion, fear and sufferings of materially identified people as nothing more than a bad dream.

 

His compassion is not for the immediate sufferings of others (which he sees as necessary to wake up the soul and destroy delusions), but for the ignorance and illusion that are the root cause of such sufferings, and therefore focuses on distributing knowledge and helping people to become aware of Reality

 

 Thus in Absolute Reality perspective, the materialistic Compassion and Charity are only at the initial stages in the pursuit of Realisation, when Realisation is attained he becomes the personification of Compassion itself. But Alas, many see only materialistic Compassion as the end in itself.

 

 

--- Sriram S L

3^rd December 2002