Crucification Of Compassion

By Aakarsh Sharma

Compassion is spoke of as though it were the heartbeat of morality that is as natural as breathing . Yet it is to be inquired that if it is really so innate , then why must it be instilled through education . You sense of stimuli is also innate , does it need to be taught ? The answer to this simple and brutal : compassion is natural , but it is crucified every day on the cross of our self-interest .

We are born soft and rigorously programmed to be hardened . The world instructs us in selective empathy : we grieve for the faces we recognize and scroll past the rest . We build temple of imaginary natural force we have ourselves invented and graves for feelings we have outgrown . Compassion becomes an antique in our hand which is admired in speeches , photograph in virtue , shelved in practice . We praise kindness in public and punish it in private . The compassionate are often first betrayed and last to be remembered . Still , the children forgive; the poets write; compassion refuses to remain dead . Perhaps that refusal is its quiet mastery . It dies , and yet keep rising .

Our modern sense of kindness is performative . We feed the poor for the photo , hug the suffering for applause , congratulate ourselves for being “aware.” Empathy becomes emotional cosmetic which is worn when it flatters , removed when its inconvenient . In contrast , cruelty is at least honest .

Indifference is cruelty in a suit . The world does not fall to monsters alone; it collapses by those who sit comfortably and watch . Indifference is a luxury of privilege . It is a deliberate blindness that drinks coffee while someone else bleeds .

We like to think there is a difference between the innocent and the wicked . There is not . As long as one lives , one’s hands are woven into karma; innocence ends with the first breath . To breathe is to kill . To eat is to steal energy . To love is to possess . Every touch leaves a mark , every step bends another’s fate . Innocence is a myth invented by guilty to sleep better . A boy playing in sand crushes the ant without thought; a dictator crushes nations with equal indifference . The boy is innocent only because his victims are small enough to be ignored . Scale makes morality look tidy . The scale differs , not in essence . Innocence is a matter of proportion . The boy is too small to be called evil; the dictator , too large to be called innocent.

So too with good and evil . These are costumes tailored from convenience . Acts are labelled “good” when they soothe us emotionally , “evil” when they disturb our comfort . Morality , then , becomes a puppet show . We paint halos on ourselves and horns on others , swapping costumes when the crowd changes . Ethics proceed less from transcendence than from self-flattery . We craft moral language not to become better but to feel better about remaining the same .

What , the , is real awakening ? It is not sterile detachment . Detachment without compassion is apathy without better marketing . True enlightenment is not absence of feeling but presence of such sharp understanding that illusions cannot survive . It is not withdrawal from life but walking through it without pretence . Real awakening kills the theatre of sanctimony . The saints who feed the poor to silence their guilt and thieves who steal to silence their hunger are revealed as kin , both driven by lack of a thing . When illusion falls away , the stark human truth remains : everyone is trying to survive the unbearable fact of being alive .

Virtue is not a performance of goodness under a light; anyone with an audience can do that . True virtue starts where applause ends . When you choose the abyss when stage is dark . Compassion , then , is less glorious act and more of a wound you have to live with . Every noble deed casts a shadow; every choice costs someone something . The moral question is not whether our hands are clean but whether we can look at the blood on them without denial . 

Peace , as commonly marketed , is overrated when it Is the price of numbness . The indifferent man with his elegant posture of calm is not free , he is asleep . Give me burning awareness over freezing serenity . I will not accept peace that demands blindness; I want clarity that still bleeds . I would rather burn in consciousness than freeze in painless stupor . 

How , the n one should live in this tragic economy of the heart ? Answer is simple . Live as if your life is not special , and yet treat it as sacred . Help , but not to feel superior , Love , but not under the illusion of purity . Act , but without theatrical righteousness . Be conscious of the blood that your choice spills; choose the manner of that spilling with honesty . The truly awakened one is not the hermit on a mountain but person who looks at the mess , the filth , the machinery of selfishness , and refuse to become indifferent . Indifference masquerade as balance; it is actually moral laziness , a refusal to feel because feeling costs . 

This is not a comfortable philosophy and it is not for everyone . Most people will prefer comfort over truth , approval over honesty , simplicity over complexity . But for those who cannot unsee theatre of morality , those cursed to feel too much and yet still act , there is a single path which is to live consciously amid contradiction . Accept that compassion will be crucified again and again by others , by institutions , and by the self . Yet when it dies , some soul rises with it , not into heavens , but into sharper honesty . Perhaps that is salvation enough: not perfection , but painful , beautiful awareness .

Compassion will never survive unscathed . It will be betrayed and used , applauded and discarded . And still , in the end , compassion does more than survive us; it defines us . It is not that which makes us holy; it is that which keeps us human . To keep the heart open while it breaks , to remain compassionate while knowing compassion will be crucified , is the last human act of courage . To keep feeling is to stay free .

By Aakarsh Sharma