October 30^rd, 2026

Sympathetic Understanding Born of Ego

In the Mahayana teachings, compassion is the key to transforming intolerance into genuine tolerance. This is a step-by-step process of direct experience and introspection. Without such introspection, compassion is just an emotion or an acquired knowledge...

After months of traveling and teaching around the world, I remember very often returning home and complaining to my teacher about various issues related to students and practitioners. During the course of one such discussion, he stopped me abruptly with a simple question: “Do you really like the people you work with?” This stopped me and made me think carefully. To my surprise, I found that while I did not necessarily dislike them, I didn’t particularly like them either. This exchange ... clearly pointed out the importance of realizing that—before I could have any hope of ever demonstrating compassion for all sentient beings—I had to take the first small step...

To develop a sympathetic attitude that will eventually blossom into compassion, you start by first training the mind to see and listen to others. Then you will have a deeper understanding of their hopes and fears, which are no different from your own. You have to be brave enough to look straight into the eyes of their pain and suffering and see their hunger and anxiety and insecurities beneath the makeup and polite words...

In practice, when any thought or experience of empathy knocks at the door of your heart... open the door and let it fully enter your mindstream... We do not begin the journey on the bodhisattva path without ego. The self-cherishing ego is there, but its movements can be moved in the right direction... Just as a perfectly clean and beautiful lotus grows from a muddy pond, let the experience of your own self-cherishing ego be your reference for understanding others.

From How Not to Miss the Point: The Buddha’s Wisdom for a Life Well Lived, by Jetsun Khandro Rinpoche