It is not your right to receive compassion, but being compassionate is your duty.

शमथ। Samatha

“Nobody understands me” is a passionate expression of sorrow we are familiar with from
teenage to old age. Seeking understanding and compassion is very common. But how many of
us are willing to give those to others?

Everybody wants to be understood with benevolence. It is treated genuinely as ‘my right’. Rights
are not handed down to you mechanically. Somebody else has to enable it or be the provider for
you. How easy it is for you to be that provider? When you feel wronged, how often are you
willing to be the agent of compassion? It is not easy, isn’t it? The more you think that you have
been wronged, the more difficult it becomes to understand the other. Even the thought that the
other deserves compassion disappears.

Replace your need to be understood by the need to be understanding towards the other. When
each of you begin to do that, there would not be anyone out there constantly demanding their
right to compassion. Teach yourself to be a giver, and not to be a beggar.

It takes compassion to yourself to understand your shortcomings, and not to be overconfident
about your strengths. It takes compassion to recognize the strengths of the other, and not to
make a mountain out of the shortcomings of the other.

Feel Blessed
Swastham Shantam Sampurnam