A question was posed to a religious teacher on how he will react when witnessing a person verbally and emotionally abusing another. The teacher replied that he would approach the perpetrator to ask "Are you ok? Do you need help?". Asking that of the perpetrator instead of the victim is kind of unusual but that is what the teacher termed "curious compassion" ie. to find out what affliction the perpetrator is suffering from that they have to vent it on another person.
Instead of judging the perpetrator one has to find out what they are going through. In fact the perpetrator may be surprised by the question because they themselves may not know what's going on within themselves.
Similarly one should be curiously compassionate towards oneself. This morning I was peeved with the attitude of a bank's hotline customer service officer. I was so furious that I slammed the phone on her and felt bad afterwards. Remembering the term "curious compassion" I asked myself "Are you ok?" I replied "I am angry, I felt she didn't think me important". I then asked myself "Do you need help?" to which I answered "Yes, I need help with my constant need to be well regarded".
Curious compassion acknowledges that there is a lot of things we don't know about another person or even our own self. In some sense it goes beyond the rational to judge and goes deeper to understand the emotions and the roots behind. For example a teacher who practices curious compassion does not just write off a student for being lazy for not doing his homework but instead is curious as to why he does not do so.
I guess not everyone are empathetic by nature but every person can be curious to start with. In the example of the "lazy" student, the teacher may be the " no nonsense " type but being curious and finding out more about the student may change his approach in some ways.
Well we were curious when we were kids weren't we? Let us revive it.
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