Quotes about Empathy

The most effective way to show compassion to another is to listen, rather than talk. You have an opportunity to practice deep, compassionate listening. If you can listen to the other person with compassion, your listening is like a salve for her wound. In the practice of compassionate listening, you listen with only one purpose, which is to give the other person the chance to speak out and to suffer less.

Shallow understanding accompanies shallow compassion. Great understanding goes with great compassion.

Understanding is a gift. The other person may feel understood for the first time. Understanding is the other name of love. If you don't understand, you can't love. If you don't understand your son, you can't love him. If you don't understand your mother, you can't love her. To offer understanding means to offer love. Without understanding, the more we love, the more we make ourselves and others suffer.

We need the vision of interbeing—we belong to each other; we cannot cut reality into pieces. The well-being of "this" is the well-being of "that," so we have to do things together. Every side is "our side"; there is no evil side.

We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love. We must look deeply in order to see and understand the needs, aspirations, and suffering of the person we love. This is the ground of real love. You cannot resist loving another person when you really understand him or her.

Whatever views we hold, we should be careful not to get caught up in thinking that our view is the "best" and that only we have the truth.

Compassion doesn't mean that you have to love that person who's so difficult. But if you stop and look deeper, you'll see that person's difficulties. If you can accept him, then you can love him.

Do everything in mindfulness so you can really be there, so you can love.

Love, understanding, courage, and acceptance are expressions of the life of Jesus.

When you begin to see that your enemy is suffering, that is the beginning of insight. When you see in yourself the wish that the other person stop suffering, that is a sign of real love.

When we look deeply and honestly at our own suffering, energies, and views, we find a peace that comes from being comfortable in our own bodies. But our true home is not only inside us. Once we have become comfortable in ourselves, then we can begin listening deeply to the suffering of our loved ones, and begin understanding their experiences and views. Then we can become a true home for each other.

We blame our suffering on another person or group, or on bad luck, but outside conditions are not the reason it appears. Our suffering was already there.