Quotes about Empathy

It's amazing how many introverts go into the ministry. It's amazing how many people go into the ministry who don't really like to be with people.

In this world, few people look with the eyes of compassion, and so we are cruel and merciless toward each other. The weak are always oppressed by the strong.

Understanding is the very foundation of love. When you understand someone, you cannot help but love him or her.

You see clearly that he has a lot of pain inside and doesn't know how to handle it. That is why he suffers so much and makes the people around him suffer. What he needs is help, not punishment. If you stay with this practice, the suffering of anger or jealousy in you will dissipate and the flower of compassion will be born.

When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That is the message he is sending. If you are able to see that, offer him what he needs — relief. Happiness and safety are not an individual matter. His happiness and safety are crucial for your happiness and safety. Wholeheartedly wish him happiness and safety, and you will be happy and safe also.

Our children learn reading, writing, math, science, and other subjects in school that can help them earn a living. But ver few school programs teach young people how to live - how to deal with anger, how reconcile conflicts, how to breathe, smile, and transform internal formations. There needs to be a revolution in education

The more you understand, the more you love; the more you love, the more you understand.

Caring for yourself, reestablishing peace in yourself, is the basic condition for helping someone else. So that the other can stop being a bomb, a source of pain for ourselves and others, you really have to help him to defuse the bomb. To be able to provide help, we have to have a little calm, a little joy, a little compassion in ourselves.

Men cannot be our enemies--even men called Vietcong! If we kill men, what brothers will we have left? With whom shall we live then?

Avalokiteshvara means "the one who listens deeply to the sounds of the world.

Before you do the work of reconciliation with another, you need to restore communication with yourself.

To build community, it is important to accept the insight of interbeing, of interconnectedness. We must realize that happiness is not an individual matter. Finding happiness through our separate, individual self is impossible.