Do you look at others with the eyes of compassion?

In the book Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh, he reminds us that the Sixth Mindfulness Training of a Buddhist says to look at other beings with the eyes of compassion.


It is easy to look at little children or pets with the eyes of compassion, but harder to look with this attitude toward adults.


How do you feel about your own life day to day? Do you personally look at others with great understanding of their suffering?Do you look at others with the eyes of compassion?
Yes I do, I have seen so much suffering in my life, I am older than dirt, that I can see ';the other side'; of the situation. I always feel as if I were in their shoes. It is hard for me to have tough love of friendship because I empathize too much.





Someone said to me today, '; I haven't had a drink for over 8 months.'; I said ';That is wonderful'; He said that all the money he had spent in his life staying out of jail was not worth it.'; I said ';And you would not have even done it if you had not been drinking'; He said ';That is true.';





I felt proud of him, he is someone that I see every week where I buy water. My mind was not on the dirty deeds he might have done, it was on how hard it must have been for him to quit drinking, and all the suffering he went through before he did. He is working hard at a tough job. He is struggling to be the best he can be.





When I see someone standing by the bus stop I feel for her. She usually has a big bag of groceries on her arm. I think of how she has walked and ridden the bus to buy food for her family.





We go to a Mexican restaurant, they have had a hard time surviving the economy. The owner comes and sits with us, we are only an old couple with not much money. He tells us of his trials and speaks of his children and his dreams for their future.


i wonder what will happen to them if the restaurant does not make it.





Yes I feel compassion for almost everyone.Do you look at others with the eyes of compassion?
There are times when I do, and there are times when my anger gets the better of me and I just wish harm and suffering on other people. I think that there is a balance in a person's life where on the one side suffering through something helps the person to be compassionate through empathy, but on the other side of that a person may have had to endure something that they couldn't quite handle and the anger becomes greater than anything else and all the person is capable of is hate or inflicting pain on others.
Yes, when I am seeing clearly. While I am not always in that state of mind I try to remember those times when I could see clearly and so know that the real is hiding just behind that facade of ego and self unawareness. When in an awakened state I would always see right through the false self that was expressing in front of me whether through anger or sorrow, bitterness or indifference, I would see the joy of spirit that was hiding beneath that false idea of self. Compassion wells up and overflows and the thought seems always to be, ';How can I help to bring that healing joy to the surface?';
Only sometimes, actually.





I spend quite a lot of every day being angry, which I would guess Thich Nhat Hanh and the Compassionate Buddha would both say is a bad idea.





I do try to think more emphatically about people on 2nd thought, though.





First I tend to think, ';I want to drop a nuclear bomb on them, and annihilate them completely, and then them suffer in torment in a Christian hell for eternity just for getting on my nerves.';





Then on second thought I try to remember Buddhist compassion, Christian compassion, humanist universalism and Marxist class analysis.





I may tell myself, ';Well, they probably couldn't help it, for this and that reason.'; Or, ';Well, I've often done bone-headed things like this myself. How can I get so irate at them?';





Or I may remember that the Buddha declared everything to be impermanent %26amp; void, including this particular individual who has just infuriated me -- so why cling to my anger against the person? Because in an impermanent world, it makes no sense.





Or I may remember that Jesus said to love even our enemies, and to judge them not, lest we be judged harshly in return.





I'm probably not as tuned in to the suffering of other people as Thich Nhat Hanh recommends, however.





Also I tend to think about suffering with a certain amount of American impatience and/or Marxist anger:





not ';Oh, everyone suffers,'; but rather


';Why isn't somebody FIXING THIS DAMNED PROBLEM ALREADY?';
If I could silence myself in front of them, with no thoughts/expectations/anticipations/pref鈥?and totally open, I see the compassion welling up in me and flows over the other soothing and nourishing both.
I look with great curiosity! Why has this happened?How have you got like this?What can i or we do to help? Do you call that compassion?
Yep, just like my Father's eyes.