Understanding You Passion

In my post about the first half of the book, I questioned how doctors could shed their duties and simply leave all the suffering behind when they were off the clock and returned to their families.

Suffering is a very strong, powerful feeling that has immense strength. Rinpoche notes that the third state of compassion is “to regard others as more important that ourselves” (Rinpoche 91). In this sense, doctors are very respectable because they are required to sacrifice themselves selflessly and ask for nothing in return. Thus, according to Campbell’s definition of hero that we discussed at the beginning of the semester, doctors are heroes because they are self-sacrificing. Moreover, the idea of nonconceptual compassion is quite thought-provoking. To “act without first having made the decision to do so” is an idea that echo’s what Ram Dass write about in How Can I Help? (Rinpoche 99). However, because of the intense stress and immense suffering in the medical profession, doctors often get desensitized to suffering. Rinpoche provides a “solution” to this desensitization to suffering by suggesting that people train to be a bodhisttva.

This requires developing six major virtues—generosity, pure ethics, tolerance, perseverance, cultivating pure concentration, and intelligence when practicing all the virtues. I discussed in my pervious post that doctors are often working long hours and getting extremely tired. According to Rinpoche, “[Realizing] whatever you take joy in doesn’t make you feel tired. You can carry on much longer with an activity that is satisfying and gives you joy” (Rinpoche 106). Thus, those aspiring to become doctors must truly have a heart for compassion and must truly gain satisfaction in relieving suffering. The popular cliché “If there is a will, there is a way” certainly applies to this idea. Many of my close friends are pre-med and know that they want to go into medicine to help others. In fact, this world literature class is reading Medicine and Compassion because many of us share a passion for compassion and also are pre-med majors.

In my opinion, humans are generally good people who hope to do good but are corrupted by society and by evil when they feel hopeless in their attempts to do good. To avoid setting unrealistic goals that can lead us to evil, Rinpoche discusses how to calm one’s mind in saying, “During a human life, there is so much hope and fear, so much worry and anxiety, even in a singe day. We experience all kinds of negative emotion—endlessly. We cannot always fulfill our expectations and ambitions… One way to pursue spiritual practice is to check which of our desires are realistic” (Rinpoche 121). I don’t think that Rinpoche is trying to smother our desires to help others, but rather, he is encouraging us to set attainable goals that challenge ourselves: goals that push us to our limits and allow us to know ourselves better.

In answering my question of how doctors can balance their desires to help with their personal lives, I feel that doctors who really understand their own goals and desires and know their capabilities can rest assured that they have done everything in their power to alleviate suffering. “Using intelligent compassion can prevent becoming hardened to the patient’s worries. Compassion allows you to continue to want to relieve their suffering, and intelligence can help you understand where their suffering is actually coming from” (Rinpoche 139). Thus, those aspiring to be doctors or who seek careers in compassion can learn to understand their own desire to relieve suffering. Only through complete understand of oneself can an individual then continue on to help alleviate suffering and express their compassion.