Why Should You Care About Empathy for People You Barely Know?
🙋🏽♀️ Why is empathy important when considering someone else's feelings or situation, especially if you don't know the person well or are unsure how much they care about their own situation?
This thoughtful question was posed by one of my students during a meditation class at the women's prison I teach. It highlights a profound curiosity about the nature and importance of empathy and how our sense of self frames our response.
🔶 Why Should You Care About Empathy?
We often think of empathy and compassion as obligations. This mindset can lead to people doing good deeds with an attitude of superiority or bitterness, turning acts of empathy into burdensome tasks. But what if we approached empathy differently?
🔶 A Fresh Perspective on Empathy
Being empathetic and compassionate means opening up to ourselves and others. It involves creating enough space in our hearts for feelings to flow and having the strength and courage to see the world as it is, rather than shutting ourselves off to protect our sense of being.
🔶 The Power of Meditation
People engage in meditation for many reasons. Many start meditating to feel less anxious, more grounded, and clearer.
At its core, meditation helps us befriend ourselves. It reminds us not to fear any aspect that shows up within us when the light of awareness makes those parts of ourselves visible. This self-befriending takes time.
As it does its work within us, it also spills over into the way we see the world around us. Meditation practice is the ground and path that allows us to show up in the world not merely for ourselves and our limited interests.
Over time, it opens us to the possibility of extending ourselves with compassion and empathy without the resentment that comes from feeling obligated.
🔶 Introducing Bodhichitta
A concept that can help us understand this deeper approach to empathy is bodhichitta, a term from Buddhist teachings.
Bodhichitta means "awakened mind-heart" and refers to a state of mind and heart characterized by a profound sense of compassion and empathy for all beings.
It encourages us to recognize our interconnectedness with others and to cultivate an open heart and a courageous mind, seeing the suffering of others as our own and striving to alleviate it.
🔶 How It Benefits You
Ultimately, we can have empathy for others, even if they don't have empathy for themselves, because we see others as part of ourselves. Through the practice of bodhichitta and meditation, we realize that we carry others within us, not just as separate entities we observe, but as interconnected beings whose well-being is intertwined with our own.
This understanding helps us approach empathy not as a duty, but as a natural and heartfelt response to our shared humanity.
🎁 The practice of empathy leads to freedom from the claustrophobia of our prison cells. If we close ourselves off from our own hearts, we will never be free. This is true for the women on the inside but especially for all of us who are reading these words on the outside.