Bleeding Heart (Remix)

Adapted from this post originally published 9/14/06.

Too often many people who take human suffering and dignity seriously and personally are viewed in some quarters as being wimpy. As pansies. Or as "bleeding hearts". I, for one, pray for the strength to be a bleeding heart. It is a label that should be worn with honor. There is nothing weak or shameful about learning to surrender to, realize, accept, and promote boundless compassion. To cultivate bodhicitta. To embody agape... caritas... divine love.

The use of the term as an insult comes from failing to parse "weak" and "meek" in the sense that it is one thing to forgive or be patient when you are in a position of perceived powerlessness and when you display such qualities from a position of strength. Bragging, boasting, bullying, and intimidating those weaker than yourself is not courage or bravery. It is a sign of inner weakness and insecurity. Imposing your will on someone through force isn't nearly as tough as submitting to faith, hope and love. To have restraint. To forgive. To care. And so in a classic form of desperate rhetoric, those too weak to show restraint, to offer and accept forgiveness, and to care and be cared about by others, try to re-define their weakness as a sign of strength. They confuse force for power, fear for respect, and arrogance (which is threatened by the success of others) for confidence (which celebrates and is strengthened by the success of others).

With such a mindset it is easy to say or think that if someone is advocating "love, love, love" that she or he must be an idealistic weenie who needs a dose of the cold, hard, and harsh nature of reality. But that's just it. A truly sacred path (Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu, Jain, Sihk, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Indigenous/Earth-Based, etc, or even a path with no name) is not one of shutting yourself off from the world, or transcending it in the sense of ignoring it or not caring about it. It is quite the opposite.

In the Mahayana tradition, for example, the Bodhisattva ideal of Buddhism involves learning to hear the cries of the world, to see and truly appreciate the nature of suffering. You are not building up walls, you are tearing them down and making yourself even more open to the circumstances which tend to buffet people about emotionally and mentally. Liberation comes from facing the causes of suffering - birth, sickness and injury, old age, and death - not from hiding from them. You don't just get a "dose" of reality - you get the whole thing.

Similarly, in the Abrahamic traditions people are to love others as they love themselves. Christians should (and generally do) understand this better than anyone - according to their theology and view of history, Christ was meek, loved everyone, and embraced pain and the suffering of all in order to save them. According the the Gospels, he loved so much he bled for the world. His heart pierced by the Roman centurion's spear, he bled for love. I wonder how many people who use the term "bleeding heart" as a pejorative claim to worship and obey one on Sunday mornings? I myself am humbled to be in such company.

And so it goes with each sacred path.

Cultivating love, loving-kindness, metta - whatever name you prefer - in the face of such exposure to the best and the worst in humanity, for all of humanity, for all sentient beings - THAT is tough. Tough love. But you keep going - learning to allow, learning to accept, learning to appreciate. There is a popular imagery of doing something so long, so hard, and with such extreme resolve, that you are said to do it "until you bleed". This is a powerful image because A) blood is equated with life and vitality and our most intimate and precious resource(s) and B) many types of repetitious physical activities wear and crack the skin until the person does literally bleed. As the fictional vampire Spike points out in a memorable quote from an episode of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "{I}t's always got to be blood... Blood is life. It's what keeps you going. Makes you warm. Makes you hard. Makes you other than dead."

So, then, do those who risk and give of themselves to truly care, not just about an abstraction like humanity (or some defined subset of people like "Americans"), but for each individual as a unique person worthy of that love, have bleeding hearts? Of course. You keep giving. You keep loving. You love until you bleed. (Then you love a bit more*)



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*Of course, you have to care for yourself as well, and realize your reasonable limits. No one runs a marathon the first time they decide to get in shape by jogging. Burning out from over-extending yourself is neither beneficial nor inevitable.