Articles on Spiritual Books | Vedic Cosmos

The word compassion is often imagined to be a magical ingredient that induces one to overlook faults, to avert all undesirable outcomes, and to suspend punishment. In addition, hastening one’s demise or failing to avert one’s demise is seen as the very opposite of compassion. Consequently, when the Supreme is spoken of as the embodiment of compassion, it automatically follows that he fit this benevolent perception. We hence expect to see a benefactor completely devoid of indignation, no matter the crime perpetrated; we expect to witness the invalidation of all our past mistakes, merely upon our remorse; and we expect to have all our desires granted, no matter how unfair our desires may be in the larger picture. In addition, we conceive of a God who exists to relieve us of the pains of the world, and hastens to suspend the catastrophe called death. कृपणजनकल्पलतिकां कृतापराधस्य निष्क्रियामाद्याम्। वृषगिरिनाथदये त्वां विन्दन्ति संसारतारिणीं विबुधाः॥ kṛpaṇajanakalpalatikāṁ kṛtāparādhasya niṣkriyāmādyām| vṛṣagirināthadaye tvāṁ vindanti saṁsāratāriṇīṁ vibudhāḥ|| O’ Compassion of the lord of the Vṛṣa hills, the wise know you to be the wish-yielding creeper, the first atonement of the guilty, and the cruise that ferries (man) across the ocean of materialistic existence. - Dayāśataka, 14 This however, is not what is experienced in the world. Instead of being the utopia that a benevolent conception of the Supreme should promise, the world abounds in inexplicable cruelty, baffling inequities, unforgivable crimes, and chilling death. An innocent child is born blind, a man who has spent almost all his life helping fellowmen dies a ghastly death, an absolute sinner goes scot-free, and many a young child is snatched away by an untimely death. ‘Where is the fairness or compassion in any of this? Does God exist and if he indeed does, is he compassionate as claimed?’, are some of the questions that assail us. To add to the confusion, texts that hail the Supreme to be an embodiment of compassion do not define compassion the way the word is popularly understood. To be more specific, most texts do not offer as explicit definition for the word at all, leaving us to gather sense from the anecdotes found in Itihāsas and Purāṇas. Attempting to unravel the compassionate persona of the Supreme in the light of the Purāṇas would first require us to suspend present presumption of compassion as an agent of pleasure. The second requisite would be to bear in mind that the Supreme is not isolated compassion alone. He is, rather, a composite of divine attributes amidst which compassion expresses itself in ways that are not easily grasped. In essence, compassion of the Supreme does not conform to popular understanding of the word. Moreover, expression of compassion vies with the expression of other attributes such as fairness, righteousness and justice, and transmutes further, to assume a form that is not grasped right away. Let us take the instance of king Śantanu. The Mahābhārata hails him as a righteous and noble king. He falls in love with an ethereal damsel and in good faith agrees to her terms of marriage, namely to never question her actions. What he is encountered with however, is not an ordinary wife who liked her freedom, but rather a woman who drowned his innocent, new born children. If this episode is weighed by its earthly aspect alone, God who allowed such a heinous act is indeed blind and lacks compassion. The true complexity of the situation comes to light when the wife, who in reality is the river Goddess, Gaṅgā, reveals the identity of the seven children she had led to a watery grave. She reveals that the aṣṭa-vasus or eight attendants of Indra incurred the curse of Sage Vasiṣṭha, and were forced to be born on earth. They were required to relinquish the pleasures of heaven, the divine and youthful physiques of celestials, and repair to earth to lead a mortal life. Alarmed by the curse, the Vasus pleaded with the sage to mitigate the effect of the curse. Moved by their piteous pleas, the sage promised them that seven of them would be relieved of human birth within the first year of their mortal life. The sage then requested Gaṅgā to assume form upon earth and to mother the Vasus and to ensure their sojourn upon earth is not extended beyond the year of their birth. In the light of this revelation, the act of kindness on the part of the Supreme was in allowing Gaṅgā to drown the babies so that their life upon earth, a life that would require them to ail, endure pain, age, and die, would be over soon. The act of compassion was in allowing the Vasus to return to their pleasurable realm of heaven within just a year upon earth. That still does not explain however, how this act may be termed as compassionate to king Śantanu. As stated earlier, the Supreme is as much the embodiment of justice as he is the embodiment of compassion. It is the duty of the Supreme to ensure that man experiences the consequences of his past deeds so that his karmic debt may be paid off, and consequently may be delivered from the cycle of materialistic existence. In other words, the attribute of justice that extracts the experiencing of the consequences of past deeds, aids the attribute of compassion that concentrated on bestowing the highest good upon a being, namely liberation. Śantanu for instance, was destined to undergo the anguish of losing seven sons, and if the Supreme averted that consequence, then Śantanu’s karmic debt would remain unpaid. In extension, the king would not be redeemed. Compassion in this case hence, is not in sparing Śantanu the agony that is due to him in this life as would be understood in the world. It lies rather, in stoically allowing Śantanu to experience the agony so that his karma may be worked off, and he may consequently be one step closer to liberation. An appropriate analogy to give would be that of a surgeon. The act of a surgeon is innately violent and painful. It does not appear compassionate. However, in the absence of the pain he inflicts in surgery, his patient would die. Similarly, the compassion of the Supreme lies in bearing in mind the larger good of liberation and stoically resorting to justice in subjecting the devotee to pain of repaying the karmic debt. In so doing, the Supreme mitigates the karmic debt of the devotee that stands in the way of his eternal good – liberation. Svāmi Vedānta Deśika treats the compassion of the Supreme as an embodied Devī and states – कमलानिलयस्त्वया दयालुः करुणे निष्करुणा निरूपणे त्वम्। अत एव हि तावकाश्रितानां दुरितानाम् भवति त्वदेव भीतिः॥ kamalānilayastvayā dayāluḥ karuṇe niṣkaruṇā nirūpaṇe tvam| ata eva hi tāvakāśritānāṁ duritānām bhavati tvadeva bhītiḥ|| O’ Compassion, the abode of Kamalā, Lord Viṣṇu, is hailed as compassionate owing to your (association), yet upon consideration, you are merciless. Hence do the sins of those who resort to you fear you! - Dayāśataka, 26

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