Trapped In My Hypocrisy
No matter which way you cut it - impossible to be totally true to thy own self.
Compassion. Come Passion.
It’s been slowly arising in me for years. It seems to be coming to a crescent, these days. I am not formally a Buddhist but compassion as a principle, a moral weather vane and must is paramount to those fortunate enough to be able to exercise it. I’ll return to this point shortly.
“Compassion is where peace and justice kiss. No one knows what the soul is. But we do know that the soul is where compassion issues from.” Meister Eckhardt
I’ve been spending lots of time with our dog Viernes (Friday). My wife is in Korea looking after her ailing Dad and I’m here on the mountain. It’s holiday time here and the locals love the “bombas”, fireworks, firecrackers. We just went through La Grita, the Purisima. And Viernes is a nervous wreck. I end up screaming down the valley for people to stop it, so she’ll stop shaking and drooling but I might as well be asking for the wind to stop.
My whole relationship with Viernes has really been one of compassion. She’s an odd one, full of quirks and weaknesses. But I force myself to understand her - to grow in my own compassion. All higher knowledge resides in compassion. The knowledge of “the other”, the respect for it, the putting yourself in their shoes act.
Viernes grew up on the streets of Guatemala, we found her, only 6 pounds, dirty, growling in fear, 3 months old outside our house gate. She ate horse shit to survive and will still go for the stuff if we let her. She’s scarred like so many, by her childhood, by man’s inhumanity. Hard to pet her. Touch her. She deserves compassion.
So why am I telling you all this? Well, it is because I feel myself trapped by compassion. The very act of being compassionate is stressful and I feel anger sometimes in me. It’s hard to be compassionate at all times. Especially where I live - people so poor. You literally can’t go anywhere (and I mean ANYWHERE) that won’t tear your heart out if you don’t turn your compassion switch off.
And then there is the issue of food.
I love food, I’m a gourmand, I must declare. Yet, when I eat meat these days, my questions about compassion rise up. How can I both eat meat and be compassionate to all living creatures as I wish to command myself?
I’m a hypocrite. There are the ants each morning that scurry away from the counter when I go to make my coffee. I kill so many. The world here is alive with death. Outside, I slap at poor mosquitoes, sending them to heaven or hell without a second thought. And then there is the thought that even should I become vegan - I’d still be killing 10s of 1,000s of living creatures each time I expel each breath. We recently found out that plants have feelings, feel the world.
“Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.” - Thomas Merton
I’m trapped in hypocrisy. We all are. One can’t truly, be fully anything. I guess the best we can do is try, to sing in our chains. Try. Force yourself as much as possible to be compassionate, share in our common heritage that is the pulse of life that ebbs mysterious through us all.
Tonight, Viernes will jump panicked onto my bed. Waking me up for the millionth time. I’ll try not to get angry. I’ll try not to be a hypocrite. But I just might be. But I’ll keep trying to be less so.
DESIRE
I once knew a guy
who was always hungry
even though
his fridge was full.
He’d order out while
all the cheese, cold cuts, milk
rotted to hell.
It’s like that guy
I heard about on the news
floating for days
on top his windsurfing board
Lake Baikal.
They rescued the poor sod
and evacuated him to the hospital
suffering from severe dehydration.
So many of us poor souls
suffer irreparably
from farsightedness.