Reflections on Empathy
I’ve been thinking about empathy, which I would define as the capacity to feel another’s experience as if it is happening to you. There’s an intimacy to it that makes it quite different from pity, sympathy, or even compassion, which are witnesses to another’s experience without necessarily feeling it “from the inside”—as if it is one’s own. Empathy in this sense is the ultimate “not two” experience.
It’s fairly obvious that this capacity is more evident in some people than in others. From this observation you might assume that empathy is an inherent trait that simply manifests in one’s personality or character, like having blue eyes or red hair. Some people, in fact, have such a strong empathic sense that they can be overwhelmed by others’ experience, so swamped that they lose their own bearings and self-awareness. So it is not the case that more empathy is always better. There is a healthy balance between attending to one’s own experience and another’s.
The capacity for empathy is not fixed. It can be developed with practice. It is not an act of moral imagination, trying to project our mind into the mind heart, and body of another (or others), presuming to know what they are experiencing. That only creates an illusional kind of understanding. Of course we can’t expect to imagine another’s inner world. What we need to cultivate, then, can’t be some imaginative capacity, or some noble ideal of “caring.”
What is needed, rather, is the capacity for attunement, of experiencing “not two.” It can be quite difficult, even terrifying at first. Do we genuinely want to feel another’s pain as our own? Most of us do not. We have enough difficulty dealing with our own concerns. But empathy is not limited to another’s pain; it is attuning to and sharing the whole range of human experience: joy, grief, wonder, delight, agitation, rage—everything. Cultivating empathy enlarges our humanity, our wisdom, and our connection to the whole of life, rather than protecting the tiny corner of it we call “my self.” It is an experience multiplier.
So if not through trying to imagine the experience of another, how is empathy cultivated? Some evidence shows that reading novels increases some measures of empathy. But I think we can do better than that. We first need to consider some essential components of the capacity for empathy, which map on to some of the Buddha’s teachings on the Eightfold Path:
Clear, undistorted observation. The ability to truly see another. (Right view, in Buddha’s teaching)
The willingness to engage with another (Right intention)
The capacity to be present, with any agenda or goal, without judgment, without making up stories. (Right effort)
Genuine curiosity about the other, about oneself, about the world. (Right mindfulness)
The utterly open question, whether voiced or not: What are you going through? (Right Speech)
The ability to listen from the heart, without striving to do anything, to make anything happen. It is a gift of time and attention. This means allowing our habitual self-constructions and protections to fall away, for the time being. (Right action)
We can practice each of these aspects of empathy separately or collectively, all at once. When we do, we are building our empathic capacity.
Empathy goes beyond listening—even sympathetic listening. It is an active expression of care—both for oneself and for another. It is anchored in present moment awareness. It does not have to do or help or fix anything, which tends to impose an invisible burden on the other, a burden of showing their gratitude, or effort, or some kind of improvement in response. The longing for relieving another’s suffering is instead the aspiration of compassion. Compassion is the natural consequence of empathy, but empathy comes first—it is the ground of compassion.
Our Zen practice helps us develop all of the components of empathy. In stillness and silence we begin to recognize and see through our self-project and our stories about ourselves, others, and the world. Zazen is mind-, heart-, and body-expanding, making room for more and more others, the “larger container” for life that Joko spoke of. There’s the liberating potential to ultimately realize all life, all experience as one’s own —not by possession but by unhindered, intimate participation in the entire human experience we are living, together with all living beings, and the whole cosmos.
Empathy is, therefore, a true Dharma gate for awakening together with all being, just as the Buddha proclaimed, seeing the morning star 2500 years ago, under the Bodhi tree.
