Compassion

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Overview

A personification of compassion as represented by a statue in The American Adventure in the World Showcase pavilion of Walt Disney World's Epcot.

Compassion is an understanding of the emotional state of another or oneself. Not to be confused with empathy, compassion is often combined with a desire to alleviate or reduce the suffering of another or to show special kindness to those who suffer. However, compassion may lead an individual to feel empathy with another person.

Compassion is often characterized through actions, wherein a person acting with compassion will seek to aid those they feel compassionate for. Acts of compassion are generally considered those which take into account the pain of others and attempt to alleviate that pain. In this sense, the various forms of the Golden Rule are in part based on the concept of compassion, if also on the concept of empathy.

Compassion differs from other forms of helpful or humane behavior in that its focus is primarily on the alleviation of pain and suffering. Acts of kindness which seek primarily to confer benefit rather than relieve existing pain and suffering are better classified as acts of altruism, although, in this sense, compassion itself can be seen as a subset of altruism, it being defined as the type of behavior which seeks to benefit others by reducing their suffering.

See also

• Empathy
• Caregiving
• Forgiveness
• Humility
• Patience
• Tenderness
• Hope
• Anger

External links

Look up compassion in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Greater Good magazine article examines human compassion
• Compassion from Encyclopedia of Spiritual Knowledge.
• Beyond Sympathy: Learning to Serve with Compassion by Cynthia Wall. Excellent article that shows differences between Compassion and Sympathy.

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