Karuna · Pāli/Skt: karuṇā; Tibetan: snying rje

Karuṇā is compassion in a particular, trainable sense. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts its content simply: “The content of compassion is a wish for others to be free from suffering”, a quality that “makes it possible to be fully aware and present in the face of others’ suffering”. Tibetan renders it snying rje, and the Study Buddhism glossary of the Berzin Archives widens the wish to freedom “from suffering and from the causes of suffering, just as one would wish oneself to be similarly free”.

It is one of the four brahmavihāras, with mettā, joy and equanimity, which “Most lineages of Buddhism, including the Theravāda, value and practice”, the same encyclopedia notes. The early discourses train it by deliberate radiating: in the Vatthūpama Sutta (MN 7) one “abides, having suffused with a mind of compassion” one direction of the world, then the rest, “above, below, around and everywhere, and to all as to himself” (trans. Nyanaponika Thera).

Buddhaghosa’s Visuddhimagga, which its translator ranks as the Theravāda’s chief non-canonical authority, analyses it closely. Compassion, it says, is marked by allaying suffering, works by not bearing the suffering of others, shows itself as non-cruelty, and fails when it turns to sorrow (IX.94). It then names two enemies: “Compassion has grief based on the home life as its near enemy, since both share in seeing failure” (IX.99, trans. Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli), meaning worldly grief at failing to get, or at losing, what one wanted, while cruelty, its plain opposite, is the far enemy. The guide to the four brahmaviharas sets out all four pairs.

In the Mahayana, compassion becomes the motive of the whole path, since “all serious Mahāyānists take the bodhisattva vow, promising to become Buddhas in order to help all beings”, and it travels with wisdom. Candrakīrti’s Introduction to the Middle Way traces buddhas to bodhisattvas and names three causes of “the victors’ heirs”: “A compassionate mind, understanding of non-duality,” and bodhicitta (1.1, trans. Adam Pearcey). 84000 calls Avalokiteśvara “the bodhisattva who embodies compassion”, a special protector of Tibet and, in female form, China’s Guanyin; in the Heart Sutra it is he whom Śāriputra asks how to practise the perfection of wisdom.

The pairing is not confined to the Mahayana. Commenting on the perfections, the Pali commentator Dhammapāla writes of the bodhisattva: “Through wisdom he brings himself across (the stream of becoming), through compassion he leads others across” (trans. Bhikkhu Bodhi), though Bodhi suggests Mahayana influence “may further be discernible in the emphasis on compassion and skillful means”. For compassion as daily practice, see practising compassion.