Compassion Quotes - Page 3

Fifteen years ago, a business manager from the United States came to Plum Village to visit me. His conscience was troubled because he was the head of a firm that designed atomic bombs. I listened as he expressed his concerns. I knew if I advised him to quit his job, another person would only replace him. If he were to quit, he might help himself, but he would not help his company, society, or country. I urged him to remain the director of his firm, to bring mindfulness into his daily work, and to use his position to communicate his concerns and doubts about the production of atomic bombs.In the Sutra on Happiness, the Buddha says it is great fortune to have an occupation that allows us to be happy, to help others, and to generate compassion and understanding in this world. Those in the helping professions have occupations that give them this wonderful opportunity. Yet many social workers, physicians, and therapists work in a way that does not cultivate their compassion, instead doing their job only to earn money. If the bomb designer practises and does his work with mindfulness, his job can still nourish his compassion and in some way allow him to help others. He can still influence his government and fellow citizens by bringing greater awareness to the situation. He can give the whole nation an opportunity to question the necessity of bomb production.Many people who are wealthy, powerful, and important in business, politics, and entertainment are not happy. They are seeking empty things - wealth, fame, power, sex - and in the process they are destroying themselves and those around them. In Plum Village, we have organised retreats for businesspeople. We see that they have many problems and suffer just as others do, sometimes even more. We see that their wealth allows them to live in comfortable conditions, yet they still suffer a great deal.Some businesspeople, even those who have persuaded themselves that their work is very important, feel empty in their occupation. They provide employment to many people in their factories, newspapers, insurance firms, and supermarket chains, yet their financial success is an empty happiness because it is not motivated by understanding or compassion. Caught up in their small world of profit and loss, they are unaware of the suffering and poverty in the world. When we are not int ouch with this larger reality, we will lack the compassion we need to nourish and guide us to happiness.Once you begin to realise your interconnectedness with others, your interbeing, you begin to see how your actions affect you and all other life. You begin to question your way of living, to look with new eyes at the quality of your relationships and the way you work. You begin to see, 'I have to earn a living, yes, but I want to earn a living mindfully. I want to try to select a vocation not harmful to others and to the natural world, one that does not misuse resources.'Entire companies can also adopt this way of thinking. Companies have the right to pursue economic growth, but not at the expense of other life. They should respect the life and integrity of people, animals, plants and minerals. Do not invest your time or money in companies that deprive others of their lives, that operate in a way that exploits people or animals, and destroys nature.Businesspeople who visit Plum Village often find that getting in touch with the suffering of others and cultivating understanding brings them happiness. They practise like Anathapindika, a successful businessman who lived at the time of the Buddha, who with the practise of mindfulness throughout his life did everything he could to help the poor and sick people in his homeland.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Always show kindness and love to others. Your words might be filling the empty places in someone's heart.

Live in such a way that when you die you leave God in your will for your children.

Shannon L. Alder

Compassion is a lifetime business. You can't say something like, "I will have compassion on Monday, Thursdays and Fridays only. But for the rest, I will be cruel". That is hypocrisy.

Israelmore Ayivor

The greater ignorance towards a country is not ignoring what its politicians have to say, it is ignoring what the inmates in its prisons have to say.

God has a way of picking a “nobody” and turning their world upside down, in order to create a “somebody” that will remove the obstacles they encountered out of the pathway for others.

Shannon L. Alder

Money isn't the solution to your problems. It only lets you carry your unhappiness around in style.

Shannon L. Alder

Family and friends become oppressors the moment they teach you that loyalty is more important than what is done to people outside your social circle. What they are really saying is this: Save yourself because God is more interested in an intact family or social circle that looks righteous, rather than you being a person of integrity that has compassion for others. It is this absurdity that teaches the wrong version of God and creates the next generation of "me" centered individuals.

Shannon L. Alder

The most important gift you can give your children is the importance of standing up to injustice. Children will remember moments spent with you. However, it isn't togetherness that creates humane parents and righteous kids. It is the example of integrity that a parent sets and the on going lessons they teach about compassion toward others throughout their lives. A good father or mother teaches their children that cruelty is not something you cause or ignore, rather it is the moment you suit up for war.

Shannon L. Alder

One HELLO? can change a life.One HELLO? can save a life.

A kind word will never replace the conversation that God has prompted you to repeatedly have.

Shannon L. Alder

They said my solution was foreign because I lived on another planet. It required honesty. It required communication. It required kindness. It required integrity. It required compassion. It required empathy. It required a deep understanding of what it meant to be humane. It required courage to be something above the others. It required proving your love of God.

Shannon L. Alder

Forget what hurt you in the past, but never forget what it taught you. However, if it taught you to hold onto grudges, seek revenge, not forgive or show compassion, to categorize people as good or bad, to distrust and be guarded with your feelings then you didn’t learn a thing. God doesn’t bring you lessons to close your heart. He brings you lessons to open it, by developing compassion, learning to listen, seeking to understand instead of speculating, practicing empathy and developing conflict resolution through communication. If he brought you perfect people, how would you ever learn to spiritually evolve?

Shannon L. Alder

No one has any right to tell you that the way you perceive yourself is wrong. Because by doing so, they also discourage the person you aspire to be.

Compassion is even more powerful than courage. Sure, with courage you can conquer a world - but only with compassion can you heal and build it.

Rasheed Ogunlaru

Power without compassion is like a giant that blocks the sunlight.

Is not the true respect and worship of God the exercising of our power in such a way that we are also respected?

Shannon L. Alder

Our greatest power as nations and individuals is not the ability to employ assault weapons, suicide bombers, and drones to destroy each other. The greater more creative powers with which we may arm ourselves are grace and compassion sufficient enough to love and save each other.

Aberjhani

Your heart will always go where your mind wanders.

Shannon L. Alder

I suspect that 'Kindness and Cruelty' and 'Mercy and Justice' all have secret affairs, as though they rendezvous only within certain sophisticated souls: those who hate being offensive, but love telling the truth.

All roads out of hell lead home.

Shannon L. Alder

A man of God has many brothers. He is a wounded soldier - he is familiar with the pain one feels in his heart, as a close and loving brother, when a brother falls victim of evil men or turns to evil desires (the latter sometimes even betrayal). Because of this, too, he is and must be well-acquainted with and trained in the strengths of hope and the gentleness of forgiveness and mercy.

God of great mercy!God of great compassion!

Lailah Gifty Akita

It is our responsibility to pray for a peaceful world.

Lailah Gifty Akita

Gracious words refresh, restore and revive the soul.

Lailah Gifty Akita

The best way to look back at life fondly is to meet it - and those along your journey - warmly, kindly and mindfully

Rasheed Ogunlaru

Lingering, bottled-up anger never reveals the 'true colors' of an individual. It, on the contrary, becomes all mixed up, rotten, confused, forms a highly combustible, chemical compound then explodes as something foreign, something very different than one's natural self.

When people want to win they will go to desperate extremes. However, anyone that has already won in life has come to the conclusion that there is no game. There is nothing but learning in this life and it is the only thing we take with us to the grave—knowledge. If you only understood that concept then your heart wouldn’t break so bad. Jealousy or revenge wouldn’t be your ambition. Stepping on others to raise yourself up wouldn’t be a goal. Competition would be left on the playing field, and your freedom from what other people think about you would light the pathway out of hell.

Shannon L. Alder

When there is too much sorrow in your heart, true compassion gets its ways out of it. Don’t make a will over your sorrow, nobody needs to inherit it!

Israelmore Ayivor

When you're having what you feel like is a "bad day" and then someone comes along out of nowhere and extends to you the simplest of kind gestures, you feel it so deeply within your heart.

Miya Yamanouchi

*Prostitution* is a euphemism for rape incidents that the victim and the economy profits from.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

In the end, you will not see the physical beauty in others that caught your eye, but the fire that burned within them. This kind of beauty is the bonfire you had to attend.

Shannon L. Alder

In some cases, it is the woman’s stomach—not her heart—that has left her man for another.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

In many cases, it was the woman’s stomach—not her heart—that fell for her man.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

We are, or rather our natural desire to evade pain and to attain pleasure is, the primary reason we do or say every single thing we do or say.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

God whispered, "You endured a lot. For that I am truly sorry, but grateful. I needed you to struggle to help so many. Through that process you would grow into who you have now become. Didn't you know that I gave all my struggles to my favorite children? One only needs to look at the struggles given to your older brother Jesus to know how important you have been to me.

Shannon L. Alder

Speaking a painful truth should be done only in love - like wielding a sword with no hilt - it should pain oneself in direct proportion to the amount of force exerted.

The highest goodness is like water.Water is beneficial to all things but not contend. It stays in places which others despise. Therefore it is near Tao. The weakest things in the world can overmatch the strongest things in the world. Nothing in the world can be compared to water for its weak and yielding nature; yet in attacking the hard and strong nothing proves better than water. For there is no alternative to it. The weak can overcome and the yielding can overcame the hard. This all the world knows but does not practice. This again is the practice of ‘wu-wel’ and nonviolence. Water may be weak, pliable, fluid, but its action is not one of running away from an obstacle. On the contrary, it gives at the point of resistance, envelopes the object and passes beyond it. Ultimately it will wear down the hardest rock. Water is a more telling symbol than land… crossing the river to get to the other side is, again, attaining the state of enlightenment.

The objective of nonviolence is to create a beloved world community.

Amit Ray

Perhaps above everything compassion is the most important thing to embrace and emanate in life. It will enhance your life - and it's the one thing that will elevate and heal mankind

Rasheed Ogunlaru

Light the candle of love. Spread the rays of happiness in every direction in every breath.

Amit Ray

Forgiveness is a transformative act because it asks you to be a more empathetic and compassionate person, thereby making you better than the person you were when you were first hurt.

Feed your child ideas of peace, harmony and compassion but at the same time give them courage to defend their identity and dignity.

In reality, we live in every one. Deep down there is a rose in every heart.

Amit Ray

I cannot live my life striving only for my own security, I can only feel secure when I see myself useful in other people's life.

Nurudeen Ushawu

If you are going to judge others it is wisest to do so individually not collectively and on your own direct experience of them personally. But first - and throughout - examine yourself closely. Blurred vision can often occur due to the lens, perspective and perceptions of the viewer projected onto the object that it sees. Be wary of taking to the judges seat. Above all meet at treat yourself and everyone else mindfully, compassionately with humanity.

Rasheed Ogunlaru

Love has no gender - compassion has no religion - character has no race.

If a man cannot understand the beauty of life, it is probably because life never understood the beauty in him.

Mental illness is not a fraternity or a social club for like minds. It is its own religion to each person that has it. Their mind is their pastor, their feelings are their scriptures and their delusions are their own bible story. To break them free, is to break their faith in signs. That is why so many feel lost.

Shannon L. Alder

Echo of the waves appears in the sky, their lights reflected in your eyes. I'm back in our world and happy again. The sound of your voice, compassionate embrace... The power in your touch, serenity of stride... The beating of your heart calms down my presence, gracing with eternal peace of mind... Bathing in the sunshine of your arms I'm deeply aware of the melodic stream that has no language...gliding beneath the quiet Heaven of your eyes...

Seek a man that doesn't ask you to prove your love. Seek a man that will prove God's love.

Shannon L. Alder

I don't want to be rich and famous but I want to die knowing I stood infront of a broken man and gave him one reason to smile again.

Compassion makes you strong, caring and creative. It creates a different attitude, a level of maturity and understanding, where you do something which makes you stand out of crowd.

Amit Ray

Let your love be the kindness to make a homeless person believe that a soul needs something more than just four walls and a ceiling.

The best of who you are is not from who you have in your life, rather who they helped you become because they loved you.

Shannon L. Alder

It's easier said than done but when you feel yourself out of balance within, stop in that present moment and catch your breathe. Remind yourself of 5 things, that help you feel most alive and re-centre your own energy frequency so you can continue living out of your intentions not the world's distractions.

Anyone who falls short of God’s grace, out of rage, can harm many.It our sacred duty to love, motivate and pray for one another, so we will all be under God’s grace.

Lailah Gifty Akita

Love is divineLove is pure.Love is noble.

Lailah Gifty Akita

How blind is the delusion that the greatness of a man is measured by his living; rather, it’s always by his giving.

Do you not know that God entrusted you with that money (all above what buys necessities for your families) to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to help the stranger, the widow, the fatherless; and, indeed, as far as it will go, to relieve the wants of all mankind? How can you, how dare you, defraud the Lord, by applying it to any other purpose?

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