Hugo: “But if love is compassion and compassion is love, how can you tell the difference between the two?”

Adano Ley (Swami Nitty-Gritty): “If you were to hit me in my face and I were to hit you in your face, would there be any compassion?”

Hugo: “No.”

Adano: “What would be the result?”

Hugo: “There would just be hate.”

Adano: “If you gave me a cup and I gave you a cup, would there be any compassion?”

Me: “Love, but not compassion.”

Hugo: “No, but if you gave me back a cup with something in it, then I would experience maybe compassion.”

Me: “I think love, but not compassion.”

Adano: “Whatever you gave, I gave back.”

Hugo: “OK, well, what is that then? Is that love?”

Adano: “That’s love. Equal exchange of anything is love.”

Me: “Compassion would be when you gave your cup to him and he felt he didn’t have a cup to give back to you?”

Adano: “That’s right.”

Hugo: “Well, who’s showing the compassion then?”

Adano: “You’re showing the compassion.”

Hugo: “Because I have something to give back?”

Adano: “You’re causing me to be compassionate because you have nothing to return. Therefore I will give you a second cup.”

Hugo: “But then I’m not showing compassion.”

Adano: “You will show compassion because somebody will come along and break those cups accidentally, and you will do your best to return those cups to me.”

Hugo: “Now I will do my best to return the cups to you? That are broken? That you have given to me? That’s the way I’ve operated all my life.”

Adano: “That’s compassion. But you never realized it. You were living it but you didn’t recognize you were doing it.”

Hugo: “What are you trying to say?”

Adano: “That the man who’s busy doing is never talking about it, but the one who’s talking about it may not be busily doing it.”

Hugo: “I go along with that. But what are yo trying to say to me?”

Me: “I’ve got it. Compassion’s sort of love with consideration, because you can love someone and not consider them, and therefore your love may not encompass what is best for them. Only what you love in them or what …”

Adano: “You’re on the right track.”

Me: “It becomes like a two-way love.”

Adano: “If somebody breaks the cup that he was given by me, and he has never given me back any cups to show his appreciation, which would be considered the love, or receiving to give back, but yet someone comes and breaks his cups, he would work to the extent to have cups not only for himself but to give back as gifts.

“That’s the compassionate nature.

“It took an incident to generate the greater effort to demonstrate the appreciation.

“But if you operated like that already, it is because you are already living what the thing represents.

“And that is what compassion is: the ability to give back under pain, not under one-for-one love.

“The Good Samaritan, was he a compassionate man or a loving man?”

Me: “A compassionate man.”

Adano: “Are you familiar with the story?”

Hugo: “Very much so.”

Adano: “Good. To love and not to have been hurt will not generate compassion, and that Samaritan had to be hurt.”

Hugo: “But why was the Samaritan hurt?”

Me: “He had to be in the same place at one time and be …”

Adano: “Was he in a group that was looked down on?”

Hugo: “Yes.”

Adano: “Then he was hurt …”

Hugo: “OK, I see what you’re saying.

Adano: “… regardless if he never paid any attention to it. The mold he came out of was already hurt.”

(to be continued)