| | Hi Jamie,
A few disjoint thoughts
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For one perspective on the subject of compassion, there are the sutta accounts how the Buddha, shortly after his enlightenment, was unwilling to teach what he discovered. In the end, he changed his mind out of compassion.
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Not-self / compassion
Not-self refers to the fact that every conditioned, caused sensation is impermanent, and thus not a satisfactory or even safe refuge, not worth identifying with; *desiring* a permanent sense of self dependent on impermanent phenomena; building houses on sand. The relationship of impermanence, not-self, suffering.
Compassion refers to the desire for there to be less suffering.
It's useful to note that even criminals acts out of compassion, if mainly towards themselves. They want something, or they want something else to go away, in order to alleviate some suffering they experience. That's greed and aversion motivating compassion. It's unskillful compassion, compassion out of delusion, not compassion out of seeing clearly. So compassion and the three roots of unskillful behavior are closely related.
All of this is expressed succinctly in the first two noble truths: suffering (and impermanence and not-self) and the origin of suffering (the three roots, compassion out of delusion, desiring unskillful resolutions of suffering).
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The late Ven. Panya (English monk who lived at Ven. Maha Boowa's monastery) said something along the lines that the Bodhisattva Vows to enlighten all sentient beings have a built-in cop-out, because once one is enlightened, all sentient beings arising in one's experience are also enlightened. Could be a sly Theravada pun, or very deep Dhamma - I can't tell, but it does ring true.
Cheers, Florian |