Compassion. This word was not new to me. And I believe it is not for most of us. We know it, right? Kindness? For those who are slightly scholarly, compassion means having an understanding towards sufferings.

But recently I came to know much in detail about compassion. I was astonished to find how deep people have gone describing it. So much so that in Buddhist literature, compassion has been regarded as one and the only thing to follow in a religion.

They have terms for the various levels that can be achieved when we start practicing compassion. We can start with practicing kindness, which is something like wishing others to be free from suffering.

The level above kindness is called loving kindness, which is not only wishing others to be free from sufferings but also wishing them happiness. For the people you truly love, you want to see them happy, right? Hence the term is named loving kindness.

There’s another level that can be achieved if you can master loving kindness. When you truly wish happiness for others, you would naturally start feeling joy in their happinesses. That is being happy ourselves when we see others to be happy. This has been termed sympathetic joy in Buddhist literature.

But there’s one more level in this ladder of compassion. That is equanimity. Very few people reach this level. It is like not favouring a particular set of sufferers while practicing compassion. You are not limited to your biological family members or your close friends when you wish happiness. You see on the road down below from the balcony and try to wish happiness for those random people out there. You see them as your extended family. And it’s here that the Sanskrit literary word Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam correlates with the Buddhist philosophy. We can express compassion for the entire world. It is more difficult than it sounds.

But even more difficult is practicing self-compassion—a feeling of kindness towards ourselves. Self-love. It has been observed that people find it relatively easier to direct compassion towards others than to do the same for themselves. That’s because when you are wanting to become compassionate towards others, you don’t want to be selfish, right? But is self-love a selfish thing to do? Are we not one of the sufferers? The law applies equally to us; we cannot criticise ourselves that much; after all, we are part of this inevitable suffering.

I request my readers to think on that. It is like correcting the dysfunctionality in our minds that compassion is meant for others only. Compassion is meant for sufferers. It equally applies to all, including ourselves.

Quite hard to digest? We all need practice. Let’s begin.