The spontaneous expression of intelligence is compassion…

“Wisdom is a type of intimate knowing revealed in love or openness. It is not the product of our efforts or processes. It is uncreated or self-existing, and only discovered by unknowing all of these contrived and futile efforts to be some-one or some-thing. Chogyam Trungpa and Thomas Merton described this process of unknowing as meditation.

When we cease trying to produce or create some kind of self-image we discover our true identity, selflessness. The discovery of selflessness is the death of ego, which may seem bleak or dismal, but it isn’t. It is in fact, the experience of luminosity or clarity. The experience of selflessness is the discovery of life because, in life there can be no solid self. Life is change without beginning or end, so there are no accommodations made for finished products!

In the realization of selflessness we are overcome by love. This love is the pure energy which has always been present, but was distorted by our fragmented-dualistic consciousness. It is direct contact with life. Once such concepts as self/other dissolve, a type of open-mindedness or spaciousness emerges that allows others to be as they truly are. This open-mindedness or love can then be communicated with precision and honesty, and this sort of communication is called compassion.

We no longer see life as threatening because there is no solid idea to be threatened. Therefore we are capable of working with the situation as it is; instead of how we think it should be. All struggle and conflict ceases, because we have discovered that the origin of this conflict was an internal hallucination.” ~from The Mindfulness Manifesto by Ben Riggs on Elephant Journal

The Dalai Lama on compassion under the most extreme circumstances…

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