“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”
In Buddhist teachings we are encouraged to contemplate ideal, wholesome and virtuous states of the heart and mind such as Compassion. We do this to both expand our understanding of awareness and to see how our thinking mind limits our ability to experience the fullness of life as it actually is.
As we practice, we gain clarity and wisdom beyond the limitations we place on experience. We begin to relax or let go of the limitations we learned or conclusions we formed when we experienced life as separate beings. We come to know our own open heart as being the same as the universal heart we share with all beings.
Seeing all beings as expressions of the one open heart, we effortlessly know the virtuous, wise and wholesome states such as Compassion. It is in realizing the one heart and consciousness that we know each other's suffering and are moved into action to assuage it for them and for ourselves. It is this spontaneous action that Thich Nhat Hanh refers to when he says "Compassion is a verb."