Verse 67: Three Jewels

Verse Sixty-Seven
I have three priceless treasures:
The first is Compassion
the second, thrift
And the third is that I never want to be ahead of you.

If I have compassion, you will die for me. I know that.
If I waste nothing, I can give myself to you all -
And if I don't seem perfect, then you'll trust me to lead you.

These days people scorn compassion. They try to be tough.
They spend all they have, and yet want to be generous
They despise humility, and want to be the best.

I tell you that ways Death's.

If you have loved your people, you will know it
they will fight tooth and nail for you in attack or defense.

This is the protection of Heaven, and your harvest.
~ Man-Ho Kwok, Martin Palmer & Jay Ramsey translation ~

Having dealt with the third jewel in the previous two verses, I will focus on the first two in today's post.

In my mind's eye, the first two jewels simply are different facets of the same thing. The person who deeply cares for the world will not run around wasting its resources! Put another way, how could a person be wasteful and still think that they could extend compassion and mercy to all? You can't have one without the other.

Roger Ames and David Hall express this thought very well.

The text describes these conditions as "three treasures," but in fact they are three dimensions of the same temperament. A sense of frugality reflects an abiding respect for the integrity of things and an unwillingness to compromise them. It is the respect for other things that allows one to be magnanimous and accommodating in dealing with them.

And an unwillingness to contend for domination over other things is again a reluctance to sacrifice the creative possibilities of either oneself or one's environing others through recourse to coercion.

If you add these three treasures together, what you end up with is selfless love. It is when we see ourselves not as distinct islands in a sea of life but as the sea itself, we are able to see the connection of all things. Since most of us treat ourselves with great compassion, if we are one with the world, then all things are treated compassionately.

Diane Dreher underscores this point when she writes,

The Chinese term for compassion, tz'u, combines two characters. Hsin means both heart and mind, the source of all thought, feeling, and motivation. The character tzu (abundant vegetation) placed above hsin indicates an open and compassionate heart. Taoist compassion unites the individual with all creation. As there's no inner division in Chinese between head and heart, with compassion there's no outer division between ourselves and our world.

To put this in perspective, think about a person who hoards great wealth and also slovenly wastes a significant portion of their largess. That waste represents subsistence living for many. While this person may brag about their great level of philanthropy, their planned giving is more than canceled out by their less than compassionate lifestyle. Donating bread crumbs while wasting hundreds of loaves of bread is vulgarity in the extreme!

But a person doesn't need to be a billionaire to exhibit the same behaviors. When ANY OF US take more than we can use or toss away things cavalierly, we're wasting resources that others may need simply to live.

Selfishness is not compassionate.

This post is part of a series. For an introduction, go here.