Compassion is aspiring to help all beings.

Wisdom is knowing how to help.

If, when empathizing with other’s suffering, we feel overwhelmed, we may reassure ourselves that at least we’re being compassionate. But even with good intentions, when we fail to employ wisdom, our efforts to help will likely prove ineffective and lead to our feeling disappointed and frustrated.

What we ordinary beings have yet to realize and thus so far failed to remedy, is that we invariably act from emotions. Rather than from wisdom. Oh, what tangled webs of emotion we weave. They overwhelm us to the point that not only are we unable to help others, we make things worse.

We may have empathy, but can we help others in a substantial way?

Will they be any closer to ending their suffering?

In our practice, instead of reacting blindly from emotions, we need to temper our compassion with wisdom. When we do this, we can begin to truly ease not just our own suffering but that of others as well.

Regrets—afflictions that cause grief and distress . . .

Even in the face of accidents, there is choice.

Once, after I had spoken about choices, a man asked about his friend who survived a horrific accident. To save the friend’s life, the doctors had to amputate her legs.

He asked, where was her choice? The accident was just that, an accident. It was followed by more suffering—the myriad emotions and thoughts that had to be assailing her every moment. Perhaps anger at the driver of the other car. Perhaps anger at herself for not having done something differently. Perhaps an anguished Why me? or If only!

I told him that at some point, when her shock and initial reactions ease, when she gradually stops reacting numbly to her grief, this friend will, hopefully, come to realize that she has choices. 

One choice involves holding on to the suffering, which could go on for years. The other involves a realization that causality is at play here. And asking “How can I move forward from here?”

Pain is an integral part of life here in samsara; suffering our reaction to it.  

Choice determines how long and deeply we will suffer from our pain.