Love & Compassion

Three passions have governed my life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind].

Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of [people].
I have wished to know why the stars shine.

Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.

This has been my life; I found it worth living.

~Bertrand Russell

adapted

How far you go in life depends

on your being tender with the young,

compassionate with the aged,

sympathetic with the striving and

tolerant of the weak and strong.

Because someday in life

you will have been all of these.

~George Washington Carver

...when we finally know we are dying,

and all other sentient beings are dying with us,

we start to have a burning,

almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility

and preciousness of each moment and each being,

and from this can grow

a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.

~Sogyal Rinpoche

May you each

have a week full of

joy, love, & compassion!