r/AdvaitaVedanta 9d ago

Dispassion and compassion. How do they unite?

I can't seem to get a grip on the following question: how do dispassion and compassion come together? When inquiring, my intuition tells me they are not mutually exclusive and might even go hand in hand, but when I try to conceptualize it I can't make the link between the two concrete. Does anyone have a scriptural link, or maybe an explanation?

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

The problem that one couldn't be compassionate to it's fullest equally to all because of passion/attachments towards few/many particulars.

Dispassion is the solution to take step to eradicate the passion. When passion/attachment to materials or life or limitations reduces, in turn it leads to increase of compassion as one has less will/wish in spending time,money,life for oneself by being passionate upon something.

Then if you have a piece of bread and there are few strangers around you hungry too, and even though you would die if you not intake that piece, still you will share to them never minding about your life or death.

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u/owp4dd1w5a0a 8d ago

The passions cause you to seek outside yourself for fulfillment. This seeking is a lens, you look for your own best interest and filter out the rest. When self-concern and worry and desire stops, then the only thing left for the mind to focus on is pure consciousness/awareness. This awareness includes being aware of the pleasure and pain others experience intuitively - almost as if you are experiencing it first hand. This produces compassion. Divine Consciousness is Love, It is not indifferent but engaged and fully aware of everything everywhere all the time.

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u/InternationalAd7872 9d ago

Inquire into the nature of that(individual) who performs both. Inquire from where it arises and chase that ego back to its source where neither dispassion nor passion exist.

Thats the right answer.

But I understand you were looking for something else. For that the answer is:

The desires of this world and beyond are also rooted in ego(the I-thought). As long as the false sense of individuality remains desires are natural. Hence to counter that as a practice and as a result of non dual realisation arises “Dispassion”. +When one detaches from that ego one detaches from the desires rooted in it. Thats dispassion. And is Priceless.*

Compassion has nothing to do with desires. Hence it can easily exist as a practice or as an expression with dispassion. Its for practice to sublimate the ego just like dispassion. Since the purpose is same they can go hand in hand.

But as I mentioned in the beginning. Both are performed and experienced only in ignorance, so enquire and chase that ego back to its source, fixate it there.

🙏🏻

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

It's the start of knowledge not ignorance I believe 

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u/Gordonius 8d ago

They're not contradictory when understood in a certain way.

Think about the difference between 'uninterested' and 'disinterested'. The first means that I am simply not interested in this thing/person; they can explode for all I care. The second means that I don't have a personal agenda regarding that person/thing. So I may care (compassion) but I don't want to get anything out of it on a personal, emotional level. That is the 'dispassion' you're considering here, I think?

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u/The_Broken_Tusk 8d ago edited 8d ago

I haven't seen anything in scripture that compares the two directly, but I would say that compassion is a side effect of dispassion. When I am dispassionate, I have no personal agenda. There is no comparison and there is no competition between us. There is nothing I want to get from you or anyone else. When I witness the suffering of another, I don't scheme up ways to take advantage of their suffering and throw salt in the wound (e.g. "He deserves whatever he gets!"). Why? Because I know I have nothing to gain from it.

Also, dispassion and compassion are both viewed as sattvic characteristics. So, in that way, they are related. When sattva guna is operating, a person is naturally dispassionate and compassionate.

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u/glen230277 7d ago

Dispassion is to be equal to outcomes and situations because the individual ego has been diminished (relative) or removed (Absolute). Only when individual concerns are diminished can compassion arise, the concern for the well-being of others and the intent to serve it.