Ram Dass Quotes

Empathy is the faculty to resonate with the feelings of others. When we meet someone who is joyful, we smile. When we witness someone in pain, we suffer in resonance with his or her suffering.

People aren't very good at other people's pain.

History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another's pain in the heart our own.

Like we were connected, the echo of his pain twisted inside inside me. his pain, my pain.

It is only possible through the fact that sympathy for the general life and suffering of mankind is very weakly developed in the individual.

In contrast, compassion manifests in us as the offering of kindness rather than withdrawal. Because compassion is a state of mind that is itself open, abundant and inclusive, it allows us to meet pain more directly. With direct seeing, we know that we are not alone in our suffering and that no one need feel alone when in pain. Seeing our oneness is the beginning of compassion, and it allows us to reach beyond aversion and separation.

In your heart must well that sympathy which soothes away all pains from the hearts of others.

Compassion arises naturally as the quivering of the heart in the face of pain, ours and another's. True compassion is not limited by the separateness of pity, nor by the fear of being overwhelmed. When we come to rest in the great heart of compassion, we discover a capacity to bear witness to, suffer with, and hold dear with our own vulnerable heart the sorrows and beauties of the world.

We all have other halves, and when they're feeling bad, we get a little piece of the pain

That this is the source of our fellow-feeling for the misery of others, that it is by changing places in fancy with the sufferer, that we come either to conceive or to be affected by what he feels, may be demonstrated by many obvious observations, if it should not be thought sufficiently evident of itself. When we see a stroke aimed and just ready to fall upon the leg or arm of another person, we naturally shrink and draw back our own leg or our own arm; and when it does fall, we feel it in some measure, and are hurt by it as well as the sufferer.

Because Jesus Christ suffered greatly, He understands our suffering. He understands our grief. We experience hard things so that we too may have increased compassion and understanding for others.

We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.

One day I was sitting in my own pain, and suddenly all the pain and troubles of the world came to me. I received all the pain of the world, all through my body.

When compassion wakes up in us, we find ourselves more willing to become vulnerable, to take the risk of entering the pain of others.

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

There's no hierarchy in suffering. I think songs that are transcendent are the ones where everyone can feel something from it, you know?

Showing young children in these communities, that there are outlets for their feelings, that there is room in a space for their stories to be told, and that they will be applauded - and it's not about ego, it's about connection: that their pain is everybody else's pain.

When he is pierced, I bleed.

Human beings are members of a whole, In creation of one essence and soul. If one member is afflicted with pain, Other members uneasy will remain. If you have no sympathy for human pain, The name of human you cannot retain.

It's easy when you have suffered to feel the link with what others have gone through.

We are all connected. The pain and suffering of others is yours also, on some level, whether you choose to pay attention or not. The reason we can't achieve total bliss is because you're not here solo.

When I see people sad, I'm sad.

The happiest life has the greatest number of points of contact with the world, and it has the deepest feeling and sympathy with everything that is.

Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer more than I ever did before. The other night, on TV, I saw people in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed, innocent victims....and I just started to cry. I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I don't know any of these people. But - how can I put this? I'm almost......drawn to them.