Broken Mirror

The practice of compassion arises from understanding the situation. If our understanding is lacking (i.e. is tainted by ignorance), then everything we perceive appears as if being reflected in a broken mirror. Things and events appear fractured, fragmented, jagged, and in general, very unpleasant and jarring.

Every now and then, we do manage to find a special angle in that fractured mirror where things start appearing a little more palatable to us. This precarious balance is difficult to achieve, and is typically very short lived. A slight, minor change or shift in our perspective is sufficient to 'break the spell' and to push us back into viewing things as being disjointed, unpleasant, even threatening to us.

Because of that, some people tend to hide their heads in the sand, or to run away from that fractured mirror. Substance abuse (overeating, alcohol, drugs), sexuality abuse (incest, child molestation, S&M), material cravings (acquiring goods and services), throwing oneself into therapy, or into some irrational cultish ritual, are all signs of not being able to cope with the broken mirror.

At the other end of the spectrum, some people, being seriously disturbed by the broken mirror, tend to practise 'growing up' in order to reach some sort of a truce with the unbearable broken mirror. Instead of sticking their heads in the sand, or running away from it, they try to embrace as much as what they find embraceable in there. In order to understand that, we should study selfishness, as it occurs among humans:

At the most crude level, we see that some people never outgrow their preschool/kindergarten age. Such people always hasten to let us know how all they care about is their own self, and how they don't really care about what happens to anyone else. These are the people that can easily sell their own mother, even their own children, when push comes to shove. They cannot tolerate even the slightest discomfort.

At the next, somewhat more cultivated level, we see that some people learn to outgrow such childish obsession with their own little comfort zone, and manage to develop some level of empathy toward other humans (and maybe even animals). These people can have functional family lives, including even developing a circle of close friends.

At the even more cultivated level, we find people who managed to enlarge their own self to the point where they start loving not only their immediate family members and close friends, but their own tribe, their own nation, their own race. Even loving the entire humankind. These people like to think they are practising compassion.

But, are they really? Are they any less selfish than the kindergarten types (the 'me, me, and only me!' types)? We can see that, by enlarging their self to embrace the others, and, ultimately, the entire world, they have also enlarged their selfishness. All this compassion that they practise is actually only compassion towards their own self. By identifying with things apparently outside of themselves, they have enlarged their self, they have conquered the new territory, and are working to ensure that their now bigger self will achieve a beneficial status in the future. That's not the spiritual path of cultivating compassion. That's just an effort to fix the fractured mirror, to appease and tranquilize the troubled mind.

The problem is, no amount of mending is ever going to cure the problem. What is needed is the realization that the mirror is not actually broken. It is as if a dislocated screen was placed between the interpretative perception and the mirror. Once we see through this charade, and the imagined screen is dispelled with, the mirror appears as if restored, in its incomparable brightness and shininess. For the first time, things appear as they truly are, unfractured, unfragmented, whole.

Once this happens, we can safely abandon the search for those 'special' angles. Any angle is the angle we want to look at.

So, once we get to the point where we see things objectively, as they truly are, instead of seeing them subjectively (through the distorted imaginary screen, i.e. selfish), we can finally understand the situation. Then, we can truly help others, because we clearly see what it is that they need. Before that happens, what we may see in other beings is certainly not what they really need. Everything is tainted with our own fractured and fragmented, personal selfish agenda.