Page 46 - The Buddha‘s Noble Eightfold Path

(c) Karuna, or Compassion
Compassion is of course closely connected with love. Love, we

are told, changes into compassion when confronted by the
suffering of a loved person. If you love someone, and you then
suddenly see them suffering, your love is all at once transformed

into an overwhelming feeling of compassion. According to
Buddhism karuna, or compassion, is the most spiritual of all the

emotions, and is the emotion that particularly characterizes all
the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Certain Bodhisattvas, however,
especially embody compassion; for instance Avalokitesvara,. 'The

Lord Who Looks Down' (in compassion), who among the
Bodhisattvas is the principal 'incarnation' of Compassion, or the

Compassion archetype. There are many different forms of
Avalokitesvara. One of the most interesting of these is the
eleven-headed and thousand-armed form which, though it may

look rather bizarre to us, from a symbolical point of view is very
expressive. The eleven heads represent the fact that Compassion

looks in all eleven directions of space, i.e. in all possible
directions, while the thousand arms represent his ceaseless
compassionate activity.

There is an interesting story about how this particular form arose

— a story that is not just 'mythology' but based upon the facts of
spiritual psychology. Once upon a time, it is said, Avalokitesvara
was contemplating the sorrows of sentient beings. As he looked

out over the world, he saw people suffering in so many ways;
some dying untimely deaths by fire, shipwreck, and execution,

others suffering the pangs of bereavement, loss, illness, hunger,
thirst, starvation. So a tremendous compassion welled up in his
heart, becoming so unbearably intense that his head shivered

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