Compassion and Ethics

Many years ago I made a spiritual retreat with a group of women at a retreat house in Houston, Texas.  Sometime within few years or months near that time I also took a course about the philosophy of morality.  While the ideas I gleaned and contemplated as a result of those two events did not change either my moral philosophy  nor my life's ethical framework, I gathered much that both began and encouraged deeper consideration of why I chose as I did then and continue to choose through my life since.  Indeed, as I have learned to live more connected with the truth of my soul inculcated with the depth of Spirit of Love and compassion I continue learn, my decisioning process has become increasingly built on the foundation of ethics framed within the aura of as much compassion as I am able to experience.

To my way of thinking, compassion is the agape we about which we hear and read, the love for others that seeks only the highest good without judgment about those others, this deep commitment to accept others without question while learning to maintain the balance of appropriate boundaries.  My more religiously fundamental friends and family will state this as, "Hate the sin, love the sinner."  For me, it is much more accurate to express my approach as this:  love the person and accept and respect the choices that person makes that have nothing to do with love and acceptance of the person her/himself.  Perhaps an example might be helpful as illustration.

Some years ago I had a committed relationship with a passionate, mercurial man whose emotional and psychological balance began to deteriorate towards what eventually could be described as manic-depressive disorder.  He was very clearly in a mental and emotionally depressed state over a very long period that continued only to worsen as life events seemed to ensure more and more pain and difficulty.   When I committed to marry him, we had been friends for over three years and seemed reasonably stable in most ways, although he definitely showed signs of wide mood swings at times when the going got a bit more than usually challenging. 

Then, the downhill slide began in earnest after moving to southern California and his growing lack of realistic thinking and inability to both find and maintain adequate employment.  The proverbial final straw began bending towards breaking when we brought his elderly mother to live with us and spent the last short years of her life dealing with her declining health and death.   He was becoming more and more financially irresponsible and erratic, and eventually I had no choice left but to file for bankruptcy.  Over the six years of marriage cohabited only two.  Otherwise I stayed to take care of his mother and to provide as best I could for both of us.  After her death I stayed one more year because he had become suicidal.   This was the only compassionate choice I had at the time.  Staying through the end of her life was a compassionate choice for her since I was the only person upon whom she could rely for her needs.  I loved her.

The final decisions were compassionate for both of us.  While I filed for divorce finally, the state was kind and compassionate in recognizing the short duration of our life together and annulled the relationship.  He was compassionate eventually in opening the door and telling me he would be able to make it without me taking responsibility for him any longer.  And I was compassionate towards myself.  We remained friends and are still, although I have had little contact in the years since I left southern California.  However, I do not miss the financial cartwheels I endured or the emotional whirlwind that I lived each day.

Any serious decision, if it is to be the best one, must be considered with the clearest honesty possible in both mind and heart.  There usually is unity and peace when one makes a decision based on those together.  It can be very easy to let the "monkey mind" confuse the process, but taking the time to examine what one's heart says in the silence and what one's mind knows when the cobwebs are swept out can lead to the most loving choice.  That choice is not always the easiest or the least painful in some respects, but it usually is the best one.  A decision made in fear rarely is a good decision, nor is it compassionate towards one's self.

When I have faced my aunt's end-of-life choices, the compassionate choice was not to extend her process of leaving this earthly home unnecessarily.  She had clearly and frequently expressed her desire to pass from life without intervention.  To honor that request was not a difficult decision, and her passing was peaceful and actually rather beautiful.  She had lived just weeks short of ninety years.

The ethical choices in life, whether about relationship, job, or any other area where we must choose, are the best choices when we remember to consult our hearts without self-deception.  Unfortunately, many among us have not learned self-honesty and integrity in living.  Yet, it is not up to any one of us to judge or condemn when another chooses badly.  All we can do is love each other and accept each other, be compassionate companions.