Passion and Compassion
Com = together. Passion as any mental happening in which feelings and thoughts are unhindered.
Background art by courtesy of my good friend Gary Conway, painter of Big Sur, California.
About passion
Passion is the fire that burns in the bush without destroying it.
Othello’s wrath was not his passion, but only the anxiety that temporarily enveloped it.
Passion is the energy of the person who is entirely himself — bravely and freely indeed, loose from any prior oppression, ready to passionately find himself and others, and thereby ‘God,’ if you like.
Compassion is a kind of passion.
It is the longing to experience passion together and from a total person perspective.
The energy of Compassion – which comes from passion – can be seen in its striving to see and do, even when the doing is not readily apparent. This way, Compassion strives to actively relieve suffering and heighten growth through words and deeds wherever possible.
Sanctus
That is why ‘saints’ can be found not only in seclusion but also in hugely significant worldly accomplishments.
In any case, if they’re genuine, there is a lot of passion in their Compassion — even while not always correctly understood.
Erotic passion
Probably even less understood than in religion is Compassion in the domain of sexuality — say, eroticism.
Sex without eroticism is barely rape. Unfortunately, it is frequently misunderstood as passion.
Truly passionate sex is one kind of Compassion — the longing for unification in body and mind of two total persons. In this lies the relief from being alone and the longing for growth in union.
Alignment
The ‘unhindered’ in the subtitle points to the alignment or congruence of mental-neuronal patterns in one’s mind/brain. This way, mental energy doesn’t get dispersed in a mental mist. It flows in one direction, unstoppable and focused like a laserbeam.
The feeling is one of burning desire.
What about the Com-passion of Buddha?
Even Gautama Buddha had the burning desire to bring Compassion into this world. His unrelenting flow of energy may even have provoked his untimely death by not refusing to eat meat that was off.
There’s the master of Compassion with the biggest passion of all — not surprisingly, His flame was very much alive!
Compassion predisposes to passion.
By overlapping with others, Compassion may find in the burning of others much fuel for the own eternal flame — burning begetting more burning.
May the present-day burnout pandemic be a symptom of a lack of Compassion?
May burnout be the name we give nowadays to an ensuing and profound crisis of meaningfulness?
May Compassionate passion be the cure?
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