What do you call compassion?
Is it the sentimentality stirred by a moving image, a news report of suffering, or a prescribed act of "kindness"?
Is it the fleeting warmth that arises when you "help" another, often to feel better about yourself, to affirm your own illusory goodness?
That is not compassion.
That is psychological accounting, a transaction designed to maintain the fragile existence of the self.
Compassion is in reality as "strong as death", not a weakness to be exploited. It is not the tender touch of pity, but the unblinking gaze of intelligence that perceives reality without distortion. It is the very intelligence that prevents the despoliation of this earth, that comprehends the futility of war, not through moralizing, but through a direct, unmediated seeing of cause and effect.
This cosmic heart, therefore, is not a symbol of aspiration.
It is a mirror reflecting the utter emptiness required for true seeing.
The immense, swirling complexity of the universe is not separate from the biological impulse,
just as genuine compassion is not separate from radical intelligence.
When the incessant hubbub of "me" finally stills,
when the false heart of psychological accumulation ceases its throb,
then, and only then, does the true, cosmic pulse of compassion reveal itself
not as an ideal, but as the living, undeniable truth of what is.
It is a mirror reflecting the utter emptiness required for true seeing.
The immense, swirling complexity of the universe is not separate from the biological impulse,
just as genuine compassion is not separate from radical intelligence.
When the incessant hubbub of "me" finally stills,
when the false heart of psychological accumulation ceases its throb,
then, and only then, does the true, cosmic pulse of compassion reveal itself
not as an ideal, but as the living, undeniable truth of what is.
AI assisted heart using ChatGPT and Illustrator AI