Katie Byron quotes

"Some people think that compassion means feeling another person’s pain. That’s nonsense. It’s not possible to feel another person’s pain. You imagine what you’d feel if you were in that person’s shoes, and you feel your own projection. Who would you be without your story? Pain-free, happy, and totally available if someone needs you—a listener, a teacher in the house, a Buddha in the house, the one who lives it. As long as you think there’s a you and a me, let’s get the bodies straight. What I love about separate bodies is that when you hurt, I don’t—it’s not my turn. And when I hurt, you don’t. Can you be there for me without putting your own suffering between us? Your suffering can’t show me the way. Suffering can only teach suffering.
It’s amazing how many people believe that suffering is a proof of love. “If I don’t suffer when you suffer,” they think, “it means that I don’t love you.” How can that possibly be true? Love is serene; it’s fearless. If you’re busy projecting what someone’s pain must feel like, how can you be fully present with her? How can you hold her hand and love her with all your heart as she moves through her experience of pain? Why would she want you to be in pain too? Wouldn’t she rather have you present and available? You can’t be present for people if you believe that you’re feeling their pain. If a car runs over someone and you project what that must feel like, you’re paralyzed. But sometimes in a crisis like that, the mind loses its reference, it can’t project anymore, you don’t think, you just act, you run over and pick up the car before you have time to think This isn’t possible. It happens in a split second. Who would you be without your story? The car is up in the air."
- Katie Byron