The second aspect of true love is karuna, the intention and capacity to relieve and transform suffering and lighten sorrows. Karuna is usually translated as “compassion,” but that is not exactly correct. “Compassion” is composed of com (“together with”) and passion (“to suffer”). But we do not need to suffer to remove suffering from another person. Doctors, for instance, can relieve their patients’ suffering without experiencing the same disease in themselves. If we suffer too much, we may be crushed and unable to help. Still, until we find a better word, let us use “compassion” to translate karuna.
And I started to think about my years with Wife. How did I react when she lost it? (See, for example, any of the posts tagged "Wife loses it" ... just for a start.) Or never mind a complete meltdown -- how did I react when she was just plain angry or morose or anxious or upset -- when she was suffering and needed me to be there?
Well mostly I was there. That is, ... early in our marriage I used to offer suggestions on how she could fix things, but I rapidly learned that was a bad idea. She could tell me right away why every single one of my suggestions was stupid and doomed to fail. So mostly I just sat and listened to her and tried to swallow the pain as fast as she could dish it out ... hoping that somehow if I swallowed enough of it there would be less pain available to torment her and she might start to hurt less.
So far as I could tell, this approach didn't really work; and unfortunately it wasn't easy for me to think of alternatives. But what caught my attention tonight was the line, "we do not need to suffer to remove suffering from another person." That would have been good to know, because certainly my approach to easing Wife's suffering -- sitting and listening and swallowing all the pain that she vomited forth -- caused me an enormous amount of suffering in turn. I did it because I told myself that I could be strong for both of us and therefore could be strong enough to take it. (Compare that with the posts here and here.) But in fact it hurt like hell. And now all these years later I read that this means I was doing it wrong. So I talked about this with the others in the Sangha, and explained that I didn't understand what (on this measure) I should have been doing instead? How could I have been compassionate without drinking in all of Wife's pain? What is compassion supposed to look like?
I can't say that the ensuing discussion was terribly helpful. Of course in a sense the whole discussion is academic now, because I'm not around Wife any longer. But I'd still like to know. Maybe some day I'll need to use these skills with somebody else, God forbid. And if nothing else I'd enjoy knowing the answer just because answers are more gratifying than questions.
In any event, one woman started by saying that in any difficult situation you have to have compassion for yourself first. Know what you need and what your own boundaries are because you can't help anybody else if you yourself are beaten into the ground. (But wait, ... doesn't this same article say a little farther on that when you truly understand the other person then the boundaries between you melt away?) And sure, this sounds like the kind of advice I could have gotten anywhere. But what is she telling me to have done, in practical terms? When Wife was weeping and crying out about how everything in her life was going to be bleak and miserable from this day forward, ... what would this woman have had me say that wouldn't sound smug or clueless or uncaring, or that wouldn't make me sound like a ninny?
Then another woman told a very difficult story about a time when her son was on suicide watch, and when she and her husband were frantic to do anything they could to help him. The lama she was seeing at the time (and still sees, in addition to attending our Sangha too) told her to take no action and not to interfere, but to spend her whole day in prayer and meditation. And in the end her son didn't kill himself, so it worked! Which is great. I'm glad her son didn't kill himself, of course. But it is hard for me to look back, in retrospect, and think of that as helpful advice.
It would be fair to reply that I might not recognize good advice if I saw it. After all, to all appearances my approach didn't work. What makes me think I have any idea what the right approach ought to look like? And I guess I don't. That's one reason I'm writing this out now. As things turned out, I finally ended up pulling back because I recognized that I wasn't doing any good. (This came after lots of variations on trying to be helpful or compassionate or simply present, all of which failed more or less spectacularly.) I would tell her that I was sorry, that I wished things were better for her, but that I just wasn't smart enough to know what to do ... or, depending on the concrete situation, that it was literally out of my hands and there was nothing I could do. This didn't solve anything, but it actually didn't make things worse (I had feared it would) and it got me out of the line of fire. And in the end, as you all know, I pulled so far back that I asked her for a divorce, and then moved out, and then we legally separated.
Is that what compassion is supposed to look like? Somehow I can't think so. Surely the Buddha himself, or even Thich Nhat Hanh, would have figured out a more intelligent approach.
Let me know if you think of something.
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