Preventing Compassion Burnout

Venerable Thubten Semkye gives a short talk and leads a guided meditation on identifying the near enemy of compassion—the feeling of burnout that occurs when our self-centered thought hijacks our virtuous intentions. By learning to distinguish between personal distress and genuine compassion, we are better able to sustain a compassionate intention in a balanced, healthy way.

Transcript

And think about your everyday life.

That despite our great efforts from the time we get up in the morning to sort of plan them out,

To navigate ourselves through our lives hoping to find happiness and the causes of it,

And to be able to avoid suffering as much as we can in the causes of it,

We have really come to realize if we're doing any type of spiritual practice that despite our efforts,

The truth about samsara is that it is an unexpected surprise most of the time because of its transitory nature by the fact that its very nature is unsatisfactory and that under analysis there is no permanent findable independent essence of anything,

We find that during the course of the day we're going to run into all kinds of unexpected things.

Being separated from the things that we like,

Having things show up on our doorstep that we don't want to have show up on our doorstep,

And being unable to attain or acquire things that we really put our heartfelt efforts into,

Our energy,

Our determination into,

And they seem to sort of elude us.

And then so put those three types of dukkha in the experience of human beings along with the fact that moment by moment we're getting older,

Sickness comes usually also unwelcomed,

As well as the inevitability of death.

So knowing that our days are sort of unpredictable,

The beauty about spiritual practice is that we get to sort of create a wonderful medicine chest,

Or if you're a little bit more handy with your hands,

A toolbox,

Of the Buddha's teachings in order to give us the kind of mind by cultivating our good qualities and sort of subduing,

Lessening the qualities that don't help,

That when samsara throws us a curve or pulls the rug from underneath us or brings us some over the top excitement,

Some giddy pleasure of samsara,

That our minds will stay balanced and centered,

Not having the strong reaction to the things that we have an aversion to,

And not grasping and clinging at the things that we have a strong attachment to.

So by showing up every morning,

Every night,

Having a consistent practice in order to really become friends with our minds and figure out what's going on in there,

Using the Dharma as our tools or as our medicine,

May we be able to have lives that are although fully completely engaged,

May they be balanced and wholesome,

To be not of only creating the causes for our own peace and our own well-being,

But by extension may we be able to help and benefit all living beings as well.

So we can use samsara to our advantage by using the Buddha Dharma as our tools,

To not only be able to benefit others,

But to eventually free ourselves from this ocean of cyclic existence and to become awakened as quickly as we can.

So life is kind of like that.

You don't know what to expect.

And so tonight I wanted to share a little bit.

I don't know if I'll get into all of it that I want to share,

But I've been thinking a lot lately of compassion.

And so I've had it on my mind a lot,

What compassion is and how we very much want,

I think,

As human beings to be able to,

Especially Buddhist practitioners,

To really grow the wish that all living beings be free of suffering and its causes,

Including ourselves.

And that is an extremely powerful mind to cultivate,

Because it's a deep feeling in our heart that can't bear other's suffering without at least making an attempt to somehow alleviate it.

But to be able to do that,

We have to have a very,

Very strong mind that understands that suffering is sort of the nature of dukkha and that it's a mind that generally believes that all living beings have an innate right to be happy and not suffer.

That is kind of the natural entitlement of all living beings,

Simply because we all exist,

Whether we're human or non-human.

And so to be free of suffering and its causes and to be happy,

And to have the causes for happiness is a fundamental right.

And so by trying to cultivate compassion within our own minds,

We're going to be able to grow the capacity to engage the world,

Despite the difficulties that arise,

Wholly,

Completely,

Within our capacity in a realistic way,

And to really bring a great amount of benefit to the world.

And compassion is one of the main causes for bodhicitta,

Which is the awakening mind,

Which we all,

For those of us in the Mahayana tradition,

We want to become Buddhas as quickly as we can.

And one of the main causes of that is bodhicitta.

And so compassion is one of the fuels that helps us to generate bodhicitta,

Which is to become awakened as quickly as we can,

Because then we've got this perfect situation.

We've got an omniscient mind.

We've got the Buddha bodies in order to benefit sentient beings as perfectly as we can.

So compassion is one of those beautiful virtues that all awakening minds have.

And so we're kind of going to think about that tonight.

And one of the reasons why I wanted to,

I've been thinking about it also too,

Is that we have a lot of people who write us here at the Abbey via email,

And we have folks who come here as guests and stay and spend some time with us.

And a lot of people now,

I've just noticed that they're holding a lot in their lives.

They're holding a lot of challenges.

They're holding a lot of difficulties.

Many have aging parents.

A number of them have children that are struggling with substance abuse and mental disorders.

They've got siblings that are struggling with health issues.

And so compassion is one of those beautiful qualities that we really want to have in our hearts so that when we have these situations come up with our near and dear ones,

Our friends,

That we can be able to engage them.

But with a,

Compassion has got a lot of wisdom to it because we've got to be able to be realistic to understand what it is that we're capable of doing.

And what happens,

Especially when we're dealing with trying to help and to benefit those that are near and dear to us,

Like our families,

Our friends,

Our pets,

Our colleagues,

Our classmates,

Is that sometimes this compassion gets hijacked by the self-centered thought and turns it into something that isn't a benefit whatsoever.

They become,

Instead of being compassion,

The self-centered thought throws it into what we call the near enemies of compassion.

I wanted to talk a little bit about those tonight because this is what happens when we don't have the wisdom that's conjoined with this wonderful mind that wishes to,

That all sentient beings be free of suffering and its causes and that we want to personally engage as best as we can to help alleviate that.

So there are two of these particular near enemies of compassion and I'll probably only get to one of them tonight and then we'll revisit it some time later on in the future.

And so the first one,

They call it compassion burnout,

But it's really just burnout because compassion really isn't in there whatsoever.

Okay,

So I'm going to give you some of the symptoms and then as we do our meditation later on,

We'll be able to see if this is one of those near enemies of compassion that arises in our own lives.

So here are some of the symptoms of compassion burnout.

The first one is a famous quote from this self-centered mind that says,

Only if I am suffering as well,

Am I truly compassionate.

Okay,

So think about that one,

Is that here we are trying to help another sentient being to alleviate their suffering,

But it's not until we have this thinking that unless we're suffering,

That we're over committed,

That we're totally immersed,

That we're not really being truly compassionate.

So it's almost like putting ourselves into a state of stress and huge amounts of expectations that we somehow have to be suffering along with them to be truly compassionate.

So this is one of the famous well-used quotes of the self-centered thought that's hijacked our compassion.

The second symptom is that we lose sight of the journey of being of help as best as we are able and we get too fixated on the goal,

No matter what it takes.

Okay,

So we've lost the journey of being able to benefit our friend,

Our family,

Our colleague,

An organization in town,

Charity,

Youth at risk,

Whoever we really feel called to help.

And instead we are so fixated on the goal,

We're invested in future results.

We've stopped caring about the journey,

Our family and friends never see us,

Our health starts to fail,

We spend all of our time talking about this thing that we're doing,

Our mental happiness is gone and we get extremely stressed and we get very,

Very exhausted.

So these are very sort of physical and mental symptoms of this compassion burnout where the self-centered thought has hijacked it and once again is turning our mind not towards the beings that we want to help but now we're being sort of consumed with our situation.

We're in over our heads,

We have over committed and what we do is we complain about the enormity of the commitment but for some reason we're unable or we're resistant to finding alternatives.

This is the martyr,

This is where the self-centered thought takes this beautiful mind and just totally over commits us and it's all about us,

How hard it is,

How over committed,

What am I going to do,

I don't see my family.

But we don't have the clarity,

We don't have the space to be able to get some perspective and say,

Well am I doing what I need to be doing right now,

I'm so over committed but I don't see any type of alternative to it.

So this is another symptom of this compassion burnout,

We're just in over our heads.

The other thing that happens here too besides being in over our heads is that the self-centered thought disconnects us from what we are really capable of doing and how this gets to be hard to see is that we start worrying about our reputation,

We start worrying about what people think about our endeavors to help alleviate suffering or to benefit or be of help of whatever the situation is and then we're attached to our reputation and praise and we're terribly afraid of failing.

So we don't see any way out but we're just going to put our nose to the ground and we're just going to keep pushing until we've just totally overextended ourselves and exhausted ourselves.

We should ourselves,

I should be able to do that,

I should be able to stay there longer,

I should have more energy,

I should have more time,

I should have more patience,

I should,

I should,

I should.

We're just shooting ourselves in the foot.

That's another symptom of this compassion burnout.

Another one is that we get angry more frequently because no one appreciates our efforts,

No one is acknowledging us.

So as you can see instead of being outwardly focused and wanting to benefit somebody we're very self preoccupied on what's going on in our own minds and in our own hearts and we're just not very happy people.

So here are some of the antidotes to this near enemy.

First of all it's so important to have wisdom,

To have a kind of discernment or this compassion becomes sort of a Mickey Mouse compassion,

Has absolutely no wisdom,

We have no way to have a perspective,

We have no way to have balance,

We can't give ourselves reality checks.

We've got sort of this naive kind of idea that if we just suffer enough and we just push through it that we're going to be able to save people and it just doesn't work like that.

We have to really be willing to see what is our responsibility in the situation,

You know,

What is our capacity.

And a lot of this we learn from just,

You know,

The wisdom that's able to see,

Well this is the best that I can do right now due to my life,

Due to my schedule,

Due to my health,

Due to my previous commitments.

That we have to be able to see what our capacity is and until we do we won't be able to discern on how much we can give and to do it with joy,

To do it with a sense of purpose rather than doing it with guilt or coercion or sense of obligation.

We might need to take a break,

You know,

We might need to kind of like hit the pause button.

And it's really helpful to always come back to our motivation on why we're doing what we're doing.

You know,

When it comes to compassion,

Compassion is an extremely powerful mind but it's also a mind that has to grow over time.

You know,

You can't be fully engaged,

Fully compassionate right at the beginning and you have to understand that you're doing it for a long term goal to become awakened in order to be able to benefit sentient beings.

And you're going to do the best you can with the capacity,

The knowledge,

The resources,

The time,

The abilities that you have.

And once you kind of get a little bit of a reality check on your life,

Then if you can engage,

Then you engage from a little bit more balanced perspective,

A little bit more joy,

A little bit more understanding that it's not the goal.

You know,

You're not,

The Buddhas didn't alleviate suffering of the world,

How do we think that we're going to be able to do it ourselves?

But we can certainly contribute to try to alleviate the suffering.

So it's really important to kind of give ourselves credit for the capacity that we have and to engage to the best of our ability,

But to not drive ourselves into the ground.

Because that no longer serves the people or the beings that we want to help,

Nor does it serve ourselves.

So it's very,

Very important or else we're going to get burned out and then we're going to be of use to nobody.

Okay,

So that's one of the near enemies.

So right now let's just take a little bit of time and look at our lives.

Let's see if we can get a little bit of a,

Let's see if this is something that we struggle with.

Let's see if we can look over our lives and maybe ask a few open-ended questions to see if compassion burnout is one of those things that comes into our life.

Particularly if we have people who are sick in our lives or if we're in the healing professions,

The medical,

The psychological,

The counseling,

If we take care of others particularly.

So let's see if we can do a little bit of self-exploration.

So just think about your life,

Let's say in the past three years.

And try to recall a situation or an experience or a relationship where someone that you cared about or an organization that you were involved in was really struggling,

Either physically,

Mentally,

Emotionally.

Try to get in touch with your good heart.

Do you wish to step in and help to ease the suffering in that situation or for that person?

And try to remember your motivation.

Try to see how clean and clear it was.

So just a little bit of a self-evaluation of your experience.

Were you able to keep perspective and balance in your life while you were helping?

Or did you over-commit yourself,

Find yourself stressed,

Exhausted,

Totally almost obsessed with this situation that you just couldn't take a little break from it mentally?

Do a little bit of a self-evaluation.

Alright.

And then maybe think of one thing,

Maybe something that you've just heard tonight,

Maybe you've got some clarity on your experience.

And think of one thing that if you were to be put into a similar situation now,

After maybe some time of having a Dharma practice,

Being able to listen to some Dharma,

Some teachings,

Taking it to the cushion and thinking about how to integrate it into your life,

What one thing would you do differently that would maybe increase your capacity to be present in that situation and yet retain somewhat of a balance in your life with your other relationships,

With your other commitments?

What's one thing that you might do differently knowing what you know now about your own mind and your own capacity?

What's one thing that you might do differently?

Well,

It's certainly a challenging thing to deal with.

I mean,

Whether it's your favorite pet or a very dear friend or if you're in the healing professions,

It's a mind worth checking because we do want to be able to sustain our compassion for long,

Long periods of time.

And knowing that if we don't have some wisdom in there,

That we're not going to be able to sustain that.

I mean,

I don't know about anybody else,

But we have incredible amounts of people writing us here at the Abbey having a lot of challenges.

So I was just,

I think it's a human experience right now,

If not here across the world,

Just looking at what other people are dealing with.

Something to look at because if not,

Then compassion just becomes an intellectual exercise.

Let's just dedicate just quickly here.

Due to this merit may we soon attain the awakened state of Guru Buddha,

That we may be able to liberate all sentient beings from their suffering.

May the precious Bodhi mind not yet born arise and grow.

May that born have no decline but increase forevermore.

Aapa Amma

Reviews

As a healthcare professional this is a much needed perspective. Thank you for deepening my Dharma practice.

So much gratitude for this dharma talk and meditation. I am feeling the burnout with so much going on. With Metta ❤️🌻

Very good points to consi about Compassion. As I continue to offer respite and outreach I’ve learned and grown through experiences such as these. So in many ways this was very affirming for me, which is always appreciated too. Thank You 🙏

Seriously what I needed to hear. I will re-listen tomorrow. Thank you

Thank you, I shall benefit greatly from teaching in my daily life 🙏

Thank you for this very important talk ☺️ I

Thank you so much. This is just what I needed. Beautiful wisdom and very gentle approach.

A really important and timely message to hear. Thank you.

Awesome transitions.

I have experienced compassion burnout which lead me to withdrawing for an extended period. Through focusing on my daily practices and opening myself to exploring the experience, I am healing. Discernment is so important and having someone in your life who can ask me, “Why are you......?’, when I forget to pause and listen. Thank you for adding to my clarity and understanding.
🙏🏻
Susan

I have been there before myself & now have a dear friend suffering with this.
This has given me the tools to continue supporting her with better understanding while taking care of myself with healthier boundary lines. Thank you.

Blessings