When I first heard this story, I couldn’t see how the heartbreak Julia felt when reciting the four immeasurables verses connected with Ken's teaching story about a village elder knocking on an angry woman’s door. The story felt clever and funny, but it didn’t touch the place Julia was describing.
Recently, I listened again. I had been experiencing what feels like a consequence of practice: relationships falling away, a sense of loneliness or isolation, and grief arising in huge waves. This time, what stood out was the elder’s response. He doesn’t take sides, rebuke, explain, or attempt to fix anything. He stays, his heart breaking as he listens to her, and asks a single question: Can you imagine how Amitabha must feel? We don't know what happens for Mrs. Fong, but an unspoken implication is that the question shifts her perspective.
Compassion, Ken reminds us, doesn’t resolve suffering or make things right. It asks us to be present, without protection, perhaps the deepest form of companionship there is.
From Four Immeasurables 4
Ken: This is the fourth class on the four immeasurables. I believe the focus for practice over the last couple of weeks was compassion. Compassion being the wish that others not suffer, at least at one level. We’re working with the four lines:
May I be free from suffering, harm, and disturbance.
May I be present with everything I encounter.
May I experience the world wishing me freedom from pain.
May I accept things just as they are.
—Four immeasurablesWhat was your experience with this? What questions, insights, challenges? Julia.
Julia: I had two experiences that were frequent and notable. One was heartbreak. And the other one was very strong movement of energy as I did the lines.
Ken: As you did the lines. Describe the heartbreak.
Julia: [Pause] I had an increased awareness of the degree to which people suffer. And also a sense that for many people, they may not have the means available to them to help them with their suffering.
Ken: Thich Nhat Hahn tells a story of an extremely bad-tempered woman in a village in Vietnam. We’ll call her Mrs. Fong. And while she was very bad-tempered, she was also extremely devoted to Buddha Amitabha, who is the buddha of compassion.
And she would pray at the top of her voice to Amitabha every day for hours. [Laughter] People in the village found this somewhat disturbing. And because she was so short-tempered, her noise pollution was creating a body of resentment in the community.
And the elders met together to talk about what should be done. One of the elders said, “I know what to do. Leave it to me.”
So the next day when she was right in the middle of her prayers, he went over to her house and knocked on the door and said, “Mrs. Fong, I'd like to speak with you.” There was no response. After a few minutes, he knocked again, and said in a somewhat louder voice to be heard over her prayers, “Mrs. Fong. You know who it is. Please come down. I’d like to speak with you.” And the only indication that there was any effect was an increase in the decibel level of the prayers. So finally he knocked very, very loudly, and said, “Mrs. Fong. I really must speak with you. Please come down.”
The prayers stopped. There was a sound of a mala or rosary being slammed on the table. Stomp! Stomp! Stomp! The door was thrown open. Mrs Fong said, “You are disturbing me in my prayers!”
And the elder looked at her and said, “I’m very sorry. Obviously you are very agitated by this and very disturbed. But I’ve only been calling you for a few minutes. Can you imagine how Buddha Amitabha must feel?”[Laughter]
And what you say, Julia, is very much to the point. The immeasurables build on each other. When we start with equanimity, through equanimity, we come to the understanding that everything everybody does, they do for one and one reason only. In that moment, they think that what they’re doing, or what they’re saying, is going to make their world a little happier, or a little better.
Of course, because of the confusion, it often has the absolutely opposite result. But that’s why people do these things, to relieve some pressure internally or externally. “It’s just going to make things a little better.” Because they can’t stand the ways things are right then. Or they think, maybe it’s very good, and they just want it to be a little better. And they ruin it by their action. But that’s why they do things; that’s why we all do things. We think it’s going to make our world a little better. and in that way, a very profound way, we’re all the same.
Then in loving-kindness, we connect with this deep yearning, which drives our actions. We want to be happy. We tend to make a mess of it, because even though we want to be happy, we don’t really see things very clearly, so the actions we do aren’t really appropriate for the situation. So, it makes a mess.
As we come into touch with our own wish to be happy, it actually becomes quite easy to wish that others be happy, too. It doesn’t mean we have to like them. A lot of people confuse loving-kindness with liking. But there’s a difference between liking people and wanting others to be happy.
Then we come to compassion, which is the wish that others not suffer. And as we cultivate compassion, then as Julia describes, there’s a heartbreak. Because in order to cultivate compassion, we have to see the suffering that is there. And we tend to see it, not only in others, but also in ourselves. And the more intimately we become acquainted with our own suffering, the more clearly we understand that the process of suffering—how we create our suffering—operates exactly the same way in everybody else. Again, there’s no difference.
And now it’s a very short step to that heartbreak. Because we see and know how people are creating suffering for themselves all the time. And our heart goes out to them. And that heartbreak is not pity. It’s not feeling sorry for others. Each of those sentiments has an element of separation, and possibly an element of arrogance, superiority. In compassion, there is no sense of superiority. There’s just being present with the pain and suffering, our own and others. And when we do that, we experience a broken heart.