Compassion

Yesterday one of the readers of this blog mentioned that among the qualities of Christmas about which I'd written this month that I had neglected "compassion."  The season isn't over yet. 

As I thought about compassion, I recalled an appearance by Karen Armstrong  on Oprah's Super Soul Sunday program a few weeks ago.  Armstrong is a former Roman Catholic nun, who studies and writes about comparative religions.  She has written that the heart of all religious, ethical, and spiritual traditions is "compassion."  She describes the manifestation of "compassion" as being the Golden Rule--do unto others as you would have them do unto you. 

Armstrong has crafted a Charter for Compassion. (http://charterforcompassion.org/)  The Charter calls for a restoration of compassion as the center of morality and religion.

While Armstrong finds "compassion" as the Golden Rule, Wikipedia describes compassion as "the feeling of empathy for others. Compassion is the emotion that we feel in response to the suffering of others that motivates a desire to help."  The source of the desire to help is captured by the name of the East Asian Goddess of Compassion--Guanyin.  Guanyin means "observing the sounds or cries of the world."  How more could we feel with others more than to hear the cries of the world?

Besides being a religious, ethical, and spiritual concept, feeling with others is among the most important aspects of leadership.  Empathy--the capacity to recognize emotions that are being experienced by another--is a critical aspect of emotional intelligence, and emotional intelligence, in turn, is the single most important predictor of leadership. 

In Leading from the Heart, I described leadership as "seeing things as you would have them be and then having the courage to be the change you would create...If I can think it," I said, "it can happen....Leadership begins with one person--one person who believes he or she can make a difference."  In the spirit of that definition, how wise could it be to hear the cries of the world and then do unto others as you would have them do unto you--be compassion. 

The reader who introduced "compassion" was responding to the Christmas Day posting, "Honoring Christmas," (12/25/13) which quoted Dickens: "I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year."   She was right: caring, hearing the cries of the world, helping, empathy, the Golden Rule, and making a difference are indeed qualities of Christmas to hold in our hearts for the whole year.  May you hold compassion in your heart all year.