“In the paradox of life sometimes our compassion requires us to say yes and sometimes it requires us to say no. These may seem like opposites but they are not. There is no formula for the practice of compassion. Like all of the great spiritual arts, it requires that we listen and attend, understand our motivation, and then ask ourselves what action can really be helpful. Compassion exhibits the flexibility of a bamboo bending with the changing circumstances, setting limits when necessary and being flexible at the same time.
Compassion allows life to pass through our hearts with its great paradoxes of life, love, joy, and pain. When compassion opens in us, we give what we can to stop the war, to heal the environment, to care for the poor, to care for people with AIDS, to save the rain forests. Yet true compassion also loves ourselves, respects our own needs, honors our limits, and our true capacity.”
Jack Kornfield, in “A Path With Heart”
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Jeff Maziarek, author of Spirituality Simplified and Codi’s Journey, launched Pondercentral.com in April 2007 as a Web-based forum for “PONDER on THIS,” a series of weekday inspirational email messages he began sending to subscribers in March 1999. A FREE service since its inception, “PONDER on THIS” provides subscribers with meaningful content to assist them on their individual paths of spiritual growth. In addition, it benefits subscribers, authors, and publishers by including links to Amazon.com where subscribers can learn more about the book being quoted, and also purchase it.
