LET THE STREAM OF COMPASSION FLOW

ACHARYA VINOBA BHAVE

When life becomes dry, one needs a stream of compassion, and when the heart gets full of evil, one needs the light of Rudra. Today India’s life has become dry and the heart is full of evil.

When bad times come and life becomes all suffering, he is the light of Rudra in God’s eyes. Powerful rays scorch him, but his life is purified and he wakes up from sleep. This is the condition of India today. Its heart has evil and it needs the light of Rudra; its life is drying up and it needs the stream of love.

It is 25 years since independence and in this age of science 25 years is a lot of time. Yet India’s life continues to be dry. When Gurudev Tagore sang of India’s life drying up, it was dry, but today there has been not much of a difference. God is all-endowed, and the devotee sees only the qualities he needs. When we need love and compassion today, we see God as a stream of love and compassion.

Jesus Christ said: “Ye have the poor always with you.” This is why two thousand years ago he enjoined service to the poor. The poor are eternal, and we are to have them with us always. The Communists ask us whether we want to preserve poverty so that we may indulge in the virtue of serving them. Communism also wants to end poverty and it is thus an edifice built on compassion. But it wants equality based on repression–the repression of the “haves” to bring about equality. We agree on the need for equality, for this is the age of equality. But the road to equality should be through compassion and love. This is why we pray for stream of love. The Quran begins with a prayer to God the Compassionate. Prophets see God as the embodiment of love, and exploitation and worship of the Compassionate cannot go together.

Sankara all his life propounded the theory of Advaita, one God. He called Vishnu the stream of compassion (Narayana karunamaya) and prayed: “Bhut-dayam vistrutaya”. (spread compassion for our fellow beings). Sankara’s thoughts also flowed from the stream of compassion.

In Bengal another saint, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, said: “Love! Love and compassion are one and the same. To be happy at others’ happiness is love: to be unhappy at others’ unhappiness is compassion. Yet, compassion is not complete with this. Compassion is complete only when one works to end the unhappiness of others which has made him unhappy. One can thus say that compassion is Karma-prerana, or the inspiration to do good.”

It is a big question in social sciences where mankind is to get the inspiration for good conduct and to do good. Some reply to this that man gets the inspiration to do good only when it serves his self-interest in some way. Man seeks his self-interest. He strains his nerves to increase production, setting his sights on the Padmashri award. A good book may win a prize. Reward is supposed to serve as the inspiration for good work. Honour a man for good work, reward him with money, award a prize–these are supposed to be the inspiration for good work. This is the widely held notion today.

Compassion is apart from and above this. Where does get compassion? It is compassion that begets compassion. Parents deny themselves in order to bring up their children. Why do they do it? They do it for compassion. It is compassion which makes a man build a home, to pine for his home. Why does he pine for it? Because conduct at home is inspired by compassion. Compassion is the inspiration. Yet, the stream of compassion is somehow limited to the home: it does not flow out. It has today been confined to the home.

Just as water if confined in a box instead of flowing starts to smell and stink, so the stream of compassion starts smelling of selfish love if confined to the home, to wives and husbands, children and parents. This is why Gurudev Tagore said: “Let the stream of compassion flow; don’t confine it. Let it flow from one village towards another, from one race towards another, from one creed towards another, from one nation towards another; let it flow through the entire human society.”

Physically, the body will get pleasure if it gets rest and is asked not to exert. The senses are the seat of desire. Yet they get their inspiration from the mind; if they do not get such inspiration they will remain cold and without desire. Water is cold by nature but fire gives it heat and energy. The organs which harbour the senses–hands, feet, eyes, etc.–have no compassion of their own. If the eyes get hurt they pain, but simultaneously the sensation of pain reaches the mind, and inspired by it the other organs also feel the pain. Thus inspiration from the mind gives heat to the cold organs.

The cow grazes all day. She is an animal but she is unselfish. Her udders get filled with milk and she runs to seek out the calf and give him milk. This is because her heart is full of compassion for the calf. It pervades her whole being.

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was the embodiment of compassion. His wife was Vishnupriya. He deserted her and left. Poets have sung of the pain that it entailed for Vishnupriya. If her pain moved poets, would it not have moved Chaitanya Mahaprabhu? It did, but he realised that the world was full of the poor and the suffering who had to be given the nectar of knowledge. In those times mature and knowledgeable people set out in the world, spreading knowledge and compassion from village to village, from house to house. After a long time of grazing, it was as if they set out to provide milk to the calf. This is how the Buddha, Mahavira, Sankara and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu set out.

The job of the mature and the knowledgable today, likewise, is to make the stream of compassion flow. Life today is increasingly getting dried up of compassion. People compare China and India. They talk of the danger from China. But the real danger is from within us. How long can the country remain independent hiding its poverty? So, all those who have the stream of compassion flowing through their hearts should set out to make it flow through the country.

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