Western Society Would Upgrade Overnight If It Borrowed This Buddhist Philosophical Concept

But because it causes awakening, you’re probably conditioned against it

There’s a tangible reason why the Dalai Lama keeps talking about altruism: it is both the expression of what it means to be enlightened, as well as the path to get there.

So it’s for good reason the following sentiment is so commonly found in Buddhist texts:

If you want to reach enlightenment quickly, Don’t follow many dharmas [teachings]. Follow just one dharma — great compassion. Whoever has great compassion, That person will have the entire Buddhadharma In the palm of their hand, without effort.

- The Well Condensed Dharma Sutra (Tib: ཆོས་ཡང་དག་པར་ད་པ་།)

But what actually is compassion?

It is a caring for others that is balanced by the means to actually make a difference — and both of these are increased to literal infinity.

It’s a focus on your heart’s capacity to motivate more and more positive action — not on “fixing” this world of impermanence which will always be broken.

This is the realization that unless you expand the sheer energetic power of the heart, you can’t really transform at a deep enough level to awaken.

Notice how this is definitely not modern compassion — the bleeding-heart-identity-weaponization that sjws use to spread brainless, contextless wokeism.

This is divine love balanced, at every step, with wisdom.

More importantly, there are different levels of it.

It is said that to fully realize the wish to alleviate all suffering, you need the omniscient wisdom to know exactly how to help.

Which means merely setting your consciousness free won’t cut it. In fact, that’s been said to be like relaxing on the shore while one’s own family members drown!

Buddhism is diverse, as much as any other contemplative Dharma tradition or Abrahamic religion.

But one thing does set it apart.

It sees an infinite number of beings in need of an infinite number of teachings — not just of the “Buddhist” identity-labelled variety.

Just like Hinduism, it considers there to be as many paths of salvation as there are sentient beings. Each one must travel their own journey.

But after you reach the summit, will you shove your car off the cliffside, or use it to help ferry your loved ones up too?

The motivation you have at the bottom of the mountain & throughout the path will determine what happens at that final moment.

So it’s not about “feel-good” idealism.

Many people encounter Mahayana philosophy and get put off by how “hippie” it sounds.

At first glance, it seems like a bunch of hyper-emotional dreamers that think they can enlighten the whole world.

They’d like something practical, tangible, and instantly transformative instead.

But as Zizek famously stated, Buddhism [distilled and digested] has become the perfect ideological counterpart to capitalism.

We need something more than just meditating like isolated plants growing in a laboratory.

We need to infuse a sense of purpose back into our social fabric.

Most of the public arguments, rude encounters, and social disharmony you encounter on a daily basis has its root in one cause: an incorrect way of relating to one another.

When a country is built on merely the social contract to make money, other people on the street become merely fellow consumers at best, and inconveniences or competition at worst.

They’re no longer humans; living containers of conscious potential to blossom into divinity. They’re no longer sleeping magnets for us to infuse with wholesome intentions.

Because all such talk is the realm of “religion” in the West, which doesn’t realize that Eastern traditions didn’t suffer the issues plaguing dogmatic book based Abrahamic ideologies — and thus do not need to be straightjacketed, drugged, and dismembered before consumption.

So develop compassion to its fullest.

Unceasingly and unfearingly. Wish that you can be connected, at a strong energetic level, with every sentient being, and help them in exactly the ways they need.

But you won’t know what those are, unless you use this urge to be of use into practical application, by upgrading your consciousness.

This wholesome root is what will get you through all the distraction, dread, and disruption on the path to perfecting & enlarging awareness.

Because if you merely do it for yourself, the loneliness of the path itself may swallow you up before you reach the end.