Compassion fatigue

Buddhist ethical conduct including the Five Precepts (Pañcasikkhāpada), and Eightfold Ethical Conduct (Aṭṭhasīla).
binocular
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Re: Compassion fatigue

Post by binocular »

dharmacorps wrote: Tue Jul 17, 2018 9:41 pm Ah yes I have heard this term a lot. My wife is a therapist and this is discussed a lot in her circles. From a dhammic perspective, I would recommend equanimity meditation.
Chogyam Trungpa borrowed from Gurdjieff the very useful notion of “idiot compassion.” Gurdjieff, a rather fascinating spiritual teacher of the early to mid-20th century, had said that we are all idiots of one kind or another, and his extensive lists of the various types of idiots included “the compassionate idiot.”

Compassion is wishing that beings be free from suffering. Idiot compassion is avoiding conflict, letting people walk all over you, not giving people a hard time when actually they need to be given a hard time. It’s “being nice,” or “being good.”

It’s not compassion at all. It ends up causing us pain, and it ends up causing others pain.

The more someone self-consciously thinks of themselves as compassionate, the more likely it is that they’re a compassionate idiot.

Idiot compassion lacks both courage and intelligence.
/.../
https://www.wildmind.org/blogs/on-pract ... compassion
*And please, don't ya'll get your knickers in a bunch because this term was made popular by Chogyam Trungpa.*
Hic Rhodus, hic salta!
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Crazy cloud
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Re: Compassion fatigue

Post by Crazy cloud »

befriend wrote: Tue Jul 17, 2018 12:31 am Has anyone experienced compassion fatigue? i volunteer and also help my parents and it makes me happy in moderation but it's taxing on me or taxing on my defilements I'm not sure. Before I do something good I have to give myself a pep talk about how Buddha fed himself to a hungry tigress and all the sacrifices he made for eons of existences. Should I do more of the brahma viharas?
Yeah, but the feeling wasn't compassion, it was something that had a certain degree of self interest in it, so therefore it was a lie and it drained energy. Real compassion is impossible to make any harm whatsoever, at least is it so in my world
If you didn't care
What happened to me
And I didn't care for you

We would zig-zag our way
Through the boredom and pain
Occasionally glancing up through the rain

Wondering which of the
Buggers to blame
And watching for pigs on the wing
- Roger Waters
befriend
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Re: Compassion fatigue

Post by befriend »

My illness has been coming up recently that may be the real cause. Thanks for the replies everyone. I think I will work this out internally because there may be more things going on.
Take care of mindfulness and mindfulness will take care of you.
chownah
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Re: Compassion fatigue

Post by chownah »

I don't think that compassion (as used in the suttas) produces fatigue....I think it is carrying the burden of kamma brought about by self which causes fatigue......put down the burden!
chownah
Spiny Norman
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Re: Compassion fatigue

Post by Spiny Norman »

befriend wrote: Tue Jul 17, 2018 12:31 am Has anyone experienced compassion fatigue?
Yep, I used to be a social worker! :rolleye:
befriend wrote: Tue Jul 17, 2018 12:31 am Should I do more of the brahma viharas?
That might help, alternatively you could focus more on the first stage of metta bhavana.
Buddha save me from new-agers!
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pitakele
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Re: Compassion fatigue

Post by pitakele »

Regarding the appropriate measure in helping others, I find the Chavālāta Sutta a useful teaching. Here, Buddha rates the person who practises to benefit themselves, but not others is superior to the one who practises to benefit others, but not themselves. Sometimes, people are so intent on helping others that they neglect their own practice. Of course, one can also know that one is benefitting oneself by benefitting others. In this respect, it was reported that Gandhi, when praised by a foreign journalist for greatly helping the people of India, replied (something like) 'Don't say such a thing, I did it all for myself'.
'Mendicants, these four people are found in the world. What four?

One who practices to benefit neither themselves nor others;
one who practices to benefit others, but not themselves;
one who practices to benefit themselves, but not others; and
one who practices to benefit both themselves and others.

Suppose there was a firebrand for lighting a funeral pyre, burning at both ends, and smeared with dung in the middle. It couldn’t be used as timber either in the village or the wilderness. The person who practices to benefit neither themselves nor others is like this, I say. The person who practices to benefit others, but not themselves, is better than that. The person who practices to benefit themselves, but not others, is better than both of those. But the person who practices to benefit both themselves and others is the foremost, best, chief, highest, and finest of the four.'
https://suttacentral.net/an4.95/en/sujato
aniccā vata saṇkhārā - tesaṁ vūpasamo sukho
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Aloka
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Re: Compassion fatigue

Post by Aloka »

.

There's a recent 35 minute talk by Luang Por Munindo :

"Coping With Compassion Fatigue"

https://ratanagiri.org.uk/teachings/tal ... hn-munindo



:anjali:
chownah
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Re: Compassion fatigue

Post by chownah »

If you feel fatigued from trying to be compassionate then you should study the suttas with the aim to learn about what the buddha meant by compassion because what you are doing is not what the buddha talked about.
chownah
Laurens
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Re: Compassion fatigue

Post by Laurens »

What is it that makes you tired of acting compassionately?

What is the part of you that needs the pep talk trying to tell you?

Maybe you are grasping at this idea that to fit in with the idea of being a good Buddhist you need to continually act in a selfless and compassionate manner. If we are doing something because we feel we ought to in order to fit in with some identity construct we have about ourselves, sometimes we meet resistance because it seems like something we have to do, a chore, rather than something we want to do because our heart is telling us to.

I act selflessly when my heart tells me to, when it feels right. The more I practise metta meditation the more frequently it happens. I don't believe in doing it if it feels like a drag. My advice would be to just stop worrying about it so much, don't do it if your heart isn't in it, and work on making your heart more in it.

Going to feed the homeless resentfully because you think its what an Indian Prince from two and a half millennia ago would want you to do is the wrong way to go about it if you ask me.
"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
LuisR
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Re: Compassion fatigue

Post by LuisR »

Clearly a lot of people on these forums have lost compassion. Not only that, instead of helping each other learn, so many are quick to use their knowledge of the suttas to put others down .
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Coëmgenu
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Re: Compassion fatigue

Post by Coëmgenu »

LuisR wrote: Fri Aug 24, 2018 1:28 am Clearly a lot of people on these forums have lost compassion. Not only that, instead of helping each other learn, so many are quick to use their knowledge of the suttas to put others down .
He speaks the truth, this man.
What is the Uncreated?
Sublime & free, what is that obscured Eternity?
It is the Undying, the Bright, the Isle.
It is an Ocean, a Secret: Reality.
Both life and oblivion, it is Nirvāṇa.
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Crazy cloud
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Re: Compassion fatigue

Post by Crazy cloud »

LuisR wrote: Fri Aug 24, 2018 1:28 am Clearly a lot of people on these forums have lost compassion. Not only that, instead of helping each other learn, so many are quick to use their knowledge of the suttas to put others down .
Agree, and adding: and a lot of practitioners behaves like goody goody cosy cosy little fuzzy Bhuddas, and don't use their capability to at least flash their teeth when that is a proper thing to do ...
If you didn't care
What happened to me
And I didn't care for you

We would zig-zag our way
Through the boredom and pain
Occasionally glancing up through the rain

Wondering which of the
Buggers to blame
And watching for pigs on the wing
- Roger Waters
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