On Compassion

"Compassion is not sentiment; it is not this woolly sympathy or empathy. Compassion is not something that you can cultivate through thought, through discipline, control, suppression, nor by being kind, polite, gentle, and all the rest of it. Compassion comes into being only when thought has come to an end at its very root."

"That which conforms can never flower in goodness. There must be freedom, and freedom comes only when you understand the whole problem of envy, greed, ambition, and the desire for power. It is freedom from those things that allows the extraordinary thing called character to flower. Such a man has compassion, he knows what it is to love."
- J. Krishnamurti

All true expressions of compassion come only after compassion itself exists within, in totality. Without a single discriminating thought, there is no separation, and thus a deep connection to all that is, what we can see and experience, and even what we cannot. It radiates outward from the center, like the roots and branches of a tree.