Compassion

After school, a boy walked past the corner of the yard and stopped short. Some older children had gathered around a smaller child. They had snatched a schoolbag and were passing it back and forth over the child's head, out of reach. The little one stood in the middle with red-rimmed eyes.

The boy felt a sharp pang in his heart. He wanted to step closer, but his feet seemed rooted to the ground. What if the older ones turned on him? Better to hurry on. That evening at home he told his father what he had seen, his voice still uneasy.

His father did not scold him. He sat the boy down beside him and asked quietly whether he knew what the Buddha taught about Từ Bi.

The boy shook his head. His father began to explain.

Từ Bi is not one word but two hearts that go together. "Từ" is the wish that all people and all living beings be happy. "Bi" is the wish that they be free of suffering. One wants people to have joy, and the other wants them to have less pain. The two hearts are like the two wings of a bird. With only one wing, it cannot fly.

Then the father came to the most important point. "Remember this well," he said. "Từ Bi is not pity."

The boy looked up, not understanding. His father went on. Pity is when a person stands above someone weaker, looks down, and feels sorry. Buddhist teachers explain that pity places a person outside another's suffering, or above it. Từ Bi looks down on no one. It truly wishes the other person to be happy and at peace, just as one would wish it for oneself.

To make it easier, the father gave him an image from the Từ Bi Sutra. The sutra teaches that this love must be deep and strong, like a mother's love for her only child. A mother shields her child and protects the child, gladly, even at the risk of her own life. "Think about it. A mother does not love her child out of pity. She loves because the child is her child, because in her heart that child is beyond price."

Từ Bi is that mother's heart spread wide. Not for one child alone, but for everyone.

The boy asked how a person could grow a heart so large. His father smiled. There is a way to practice, he said, called Từ Bi meditation. A person sits still and sends love outward like rings of ripples on water.

The first ring is for oneself: may I be at peace. The second ring widens a little, to the people one loves: parents, grandparents, a close friend. The third is wider still. It is for people one does not know. A passer-by on the road. Someone never met. And the last ring, the widest, is even for those who make one sad or angry. So the love spreads evenly, leaving no one out.

With each ring, a person whispers a line in the heart. May all be happy and at peace. May all suffer less.

The father continued. Here was the biggest difference. Pity brings sadness and helplessness, and then a person turns away. Từ Bi brings real love, and that love gives the strength to step forward. It does not make anyone weaker. It gives the courage to walk toward the person who needs help.

And Từ Bi is not something far away, meant only for those who live as monks. Vietnamese people live with it every day. In many pagodas, monks and lay Buddhists cook pots of hot porridge and carry them to hospitals for poor patients. Some pagodas have clinics, called Tuệ Tĩnh đường, that treat the sick without taking a single dong. That is Từ Bi turned into action, into a bowl of hot porridge, into a hand that helps someone stand up.

"You do not have to be a monk to have Từ Bi," he said. "You can begin right now, even with the little one in the yard this afternoon."

The boy sat quietly for a while. The next day he came to the same corner and saw the same scene. This time he did not hurry past. He walked straight up, stood beside the child, picked up the schoolbag and handed it back, then took the child by the hand and walked on together. Nobody forced him. A door had opened in his heart, and now he knew how to keep it open.