Karuna or compassion is our spontaneous response to the suffering and pain we encounter with a wish for the suffering to end. There is no formula for the practice of compassion.  As with all of the great spiritual arts, it requires that we listen deeply, understand our motivations, and then act.  When compassion opens in us, we respond in the way we understand to be appropriate.

Yet true compassion includes love for ourselves, respect for our own needs and honoring of our limits and  capacities. Even the Buddha had to face such limits.   One time, powerful disagreement broke out in one of his monasteries. When the Buddha came to speak with the fighting monks, he tried a number of ways to help them to reconcile. He finally realized there was nothing more he could do.  So he left the unruly monks and spent a peaceful  retreat far in the forest, living with only the animals around him.  He did what he could do and no more. Similarly,  when compassion arises in us, our response includes understanding and accepting our limits.

Compassion allows life to pass through our hearts with its great paradoxes of life and death, love and difficulty, joy and pain.  And understanding that, we are like  bamboo bending with the changing circumstances, simultaneously strong and flexible.