Foundation series : Enlightened morality (I)

In all cases, coercion is the enemy of Reason. A coercive society is not harmonious, does not promote Reason or spiritual understanding. A coercive relationship is not harmonious, does not promote Reason or spiritual understanding.

Violence is essentially wordless, and it can begin only where thought and rational communication have broken down. Any society which is geared for violent action is by that very fact systematically unreasonable and inarticulate.

Thomas Merton, "Ghandi and the One-Eyed Giant"

2. Compassion.

Compassion is another important moral attribute, which is a focus of Buddhism as well. However, it is easy to misunderstand it. In common parlance, and perhaps because of Christianity, compassion is associated with "being nice". While that may be the case in some instances, it is not the nature of compassion. Compassion comes first and foremost from understanding. Compassion is sympathy and understanding towards other people's suffering, especially mental suffering.

We can use the stages of individualism as an example. A person filled with awareness would reside on the third stage of individualism. From this stage, one observes most individuals as caught up in their partly unconscious, pre-individualistic neuroses, or their attempt to differentiate themselves from other people. We remember when we ourselves dwelled in those stages, and that makes us feel compassion for people. We will examine the stages of individualism specifically in more detail in the second part of this article.

Or if you want, imagine that bears are pursuing you ferociously and without rest, for days and days on end. You would probably feel a great deal of anger towards those bears. But if you saw that those bears were angry because their paws were caught in traps and in constant pain, driven to pursue you by blind fury, then you would still feel threatened, but you would also feel compassion instead of anger.

This is how we must see other people. Once we truly understand why people think the way they think, and act the way they act, once we realize that even the most evil people genuinely think they are acting in their best interest and are evil out of ignorance, then we cannot help to feel anything but compassion.

I said that compassion is not necessarily "being nice". This is a superficial definition. Sometimes the best way to help people is

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