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The more we connect with the purity of our inherent nature through meditation practice, what is revealed is our fundamental goodness—the good heart. Kindness, compassion and love simply exude.
What exactly is compassion? His Holiness the Dalai Lama explains:
“When I speak of ‘basic human feeling’, I refer to the capacity we all have to empathize with one another. This is what enables us to enter into the pain of others and, to some extent, participate in the pain of others.
Compassion
“Our innate capacity for empathy is the source of that most precious of all human qualities, which in Tibetan we call nying-je.
“The term nying-je has a wealth of meaning that includes: love, affection, kindness, gentleness, generosity of spirit, and warm-heartedness. It does not imply pity; on the contrary nying-je denotes a feeling of connection with and respect for others.
“Also, it belongs to that category of emotions which have a more developed cognitive component. So we can understand nying-je as a combination of empathy and reason.
“We can think of empathy as the characteristic of a very warm-hearted or well-meaning person; reason as that of someone who is very practical, truly intelligent and wise. When the two are put together, the combination is highly effective.”
A more detailed presentation of compassion can be found in Chapter 12 of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama during his visit to Lerab Ling in 2000
