The Power of Self-Compassion: Finding Your Buddha Nature
Welcome to Satsang with Ajahn Samvara. Today, I’d like to share with you a profound teaching about self-compassion — a cornerstone of Buddhist practice that many of us overlook in our spiritual journey.
Full Satsang with Ajahn Samvara is available on YouTube
Your Buddha Nature Is Within
First, I want you to know something essential: you are a wonderful person. This isn’t just positive thinking — it’s the reality of your being. We all have Buddha Nature. Our true nature is enlightenment.
When we experience disturbing thoughts, limiting beliefs, or painful emotions, that’s not who we really, really, really are. Enlightenment is already within you.
Yet at the same time, we suffer. We face difficulties, pain, and hardships. And since you’re such a great person and yet you suffer, we must begin with what Buddhists call Bodhicitta (compassion) for the self.
The Jan Story: A Lesson in Self-Compassion
There was a man who learned about Bodhicitta and witnessed something profound in a supermarket. He observed a woman with a toddler who was making quite a mess. The toddler spilled juice, screamed loudly, and even broke a jar of pickles.
After each incident, the woman would gently say, “There, there, Jan. It’s okay. You’re going to be alright.” She remained patient and compassionate throughout the entire ordeal.
Impressed by her patience, the man approached her after checkout and said, “I’m so impressed by your compassion with little Jan here.”
The woman replied, “Oh, this is Jennifer. I’m Jan.”
That is self-compassion.
Why Self-Compassion Isn’t Selfish
Many people believe focusing on self-compassion is selfish. They think, “Isn’t it self-centered to worry about my needs and my pain?”
The answer is a resounding no. When you’re compassionate to yourself, you’re relieving your own suffering so that you can help others. If you’re not compassionate to yourself, you lack the proper foundation for being compassionate to others.
Consider how we often treat ourselves versus how we treat our friends:
When a friend experiences a breakup, we say, “Hey, it’s okay. You’ll find the right person who loves you for who you are.”
When we experience a breakup, we tell ourselves, “I’ll never be loved. I’m horrible. It’s terrible. I’m cursed.”
When a friend loses their job, we say, “You’re really good. You’ll get back out there.”
When we lose our job, we think, “I’m never going to get a job again.”
We tell ourselves things so harsh that even our worst enemies wouldn’t come up with them!
The Monkey and the Beehive: Learning from Pain
A Daoist master once observed a monkey repeatedly sticking its hand into a beehive, getting stung, and crying “Ouch!” — only to do it again and again. “That’s just like people’s thoughts,” he said. “You do something that doesn’t work and hurts, yet you do it over and over.”
Eventually, the monkey climbed down, and another monkey came to remove the stingers and provide care. “This is just like enlightened action,” the master observed. “Taking care of someone in a way that works and creates healing.”
This teaches us two important lessons:
Be aware of what you’re saying to yourself
Don’t repeat thoughts that hurt you and are dysfunctional
Instead, choose thoughts that are helpful, constructive, and promote healing.
Self-Care Is Not Optional
Sometimes we do things for others that we wouldn’t even do for ourselves. This imbalance leads to suffering.
I once visited a student who had helped his mother pack and move things to her garage. He felt great about being selfless and helping her. Yet in his own home, I noticed a box in the corner. When I asked about it, he admitted he hadn’t fully unpacked yet — after living there for four years!
You have to take care of yourself. You need to do things for yourself and others. If you’re only focused on compassion for others while neglecting yourself, you’ll become imbalanced and eventually suffer.
The Practice of Self-Compassion
For the coming month, I encourage you to practice Bodhicitta (compassion) for yourself after your meditation. Here’s a simple practice:
Sit up straight
Place your hands over your heart
Bring to mind an area of suffering or difficulty
Recognize that this is suffering for you
Don’t go into the story — just see that this is suffering
Recognize that others suffer in similar ways, sometimes worse
Practice Tonglen, “taking and sending” with your breath:
When you inhale, take away your suffering and see yourself free from it
When you exhale, give yourself light and enlightenment, seeing your Buddha nature
What Self-Compassion Is Not
It’s important to understand that Bodhicitta is not indulging in your pain. It’s not a fancy way of having a pity party. Self-compassion is about relieving suffering, not reinforcing it.
Buddha’s first noble truth was that there is suffering in life. When you suffer, realize “Buddha was right” — and that gives you momentum to follow the teachings beyond suffering. All Buddhas, all enlightened beings, have experienced the same difficulties, hardships, bad thoughts, and feelings. By following the teachings, they transcended these challenges.
The Power of Meditation in Self-Compassion
Meditation is a beautiful way to practice self-compassion. When your mind is filled with tormenting thoughts, meditation helps you slowly still your mind until there are no thoughts.
I remember when I first started meditating. Before meditation, I was consumed by negative thoughts and feelings. At least while trying to meditate, I felt a little better. I called meditation “damage control” for a long time. Although I felt I was bad at meditation initially, I eventually mastered it.
The same principle applies to other skills. I once struggled with computer programming, even flunking out of a boot camp. But I kept working at it and eventually became proficient enough to work on artificial intelligence systems on Wall Street.
Master Your Mind First
Buddha taught that if you want to help people, you must master your mind first. Once you master your mind, you naturally become a force of compassion and support for others. But when your mind is turbulent, your attempts to help might not actually be helpful.
I had a student who worked at a nonprofit dedicated to saving the world or feeding the hungry. He was passionate about the cause but miserable because of low pay, financial stress, and workplace difficulties. When he asked what to do, I told him, “Your problem is that you’re trying to save everybody else, but you’re not saving yourself.”
This is like the first rule of rescue: if you see someone drowning, you need to be a good swimmer to help them. If you’re not a strong swimmer and you try to help, they might grab you and you’ll both go down. You need to be strong yourself to be a force of compassion for others.
The Three Types of Compassion
Consider this story of three people who learned about Bodhicitta:
Walking through town, they came upon a poor, hungry, cold woman.
The first person looked at her and said, “Oh, poor woman,” then sat down next to her and just cried.
The second person started yelling at passersby, “Why won’t you help her? What’s wrong with humanity?” but did nothing himself.
The third person simply gave her food and a warm blanket.
Only the third person took constructive action. Compassion is always constructive — it’s not just feeling bad or blaming others.
Self-Compassion vs. Self-Esteem
Compassion is more than self-esteem or self-worth. Self-esteem is the way of the ego, while self-compassion is the way of selflessness.
Self-esteem has inherent problems:
It fluctuates with circumstances
It’s vulnerable to obstacles and limitations
It’s tied to winning and losing
Consider the story of Peter Castle, a wealthy English businessman who was friends with Prince Charles. After several business failures, his self-worth plummeted so dramatically that he threw himself in front of a train — despite still being a millionaire. He had tied his sense of self to his external successes.
Or Richard Dyson, inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner, who suffered through years of rejection before finding success in Japan. His self-worth fluctuated wildly with his external circumstances.
With self-compassion, you gain the personal power of self-esteem without its pitfalls. When bad things happen, we practice compassion. When good things happen, we practice compassion. We use obstacles and limitations as opportunities for compassionate practice.
Self-Compassionate Mindfulness
As you practice mindfulness, incorporate self-compassion. When you observe thoughts that make you suffer, have compassion for yourself.
Buddha realized that some thoughts make us feel good, some are neutral, and some make us feel bad. He decided to stop having thoughts that made him feel bad.
For us, the practice is to observe our thoughts and ask: “Does this thought make me suffer?” If so, have compassion for yourself. This creates space and freedom from the karma of your mind.
Letting Go of the Past and Future
To practice self-compassion effectively, we must detach from personal history. “The past is dust” — let it go. Thoughts of past pain hurt over and over again if you indulge in them.
Similarly, worrying about the future wastes energy and creates anxiety. When you start thinking anxiously about the future, bring yourself back to the present moment and give yourself compassion for that worry.
When your attention is caught in the past or future, you miss the present moment and its opportunities. You’re not aware of what’s happening now, leading to a comedy of errors rather than a mindful life.
Always Have Only a Joyful Mind
The 21st aphorism of the Pith teachings of Bodhicitta and Mind Training is: “Always have only a joyful mind.”
In a world with wars, politics, job stress, and mean people, how can you maintain a joyful mind? By fostering it intentionally. The truth is, even without external challenges, the untrained mind would still create misery. It’s not the world that’s crazy — it’s your mind that makes a misery out of any situation.
My teacher said, “Always be positive because beneath this thin surface of pleasure and pain, there’s endless ecstasy. Stop thought and you’ll see what I mean.”
When you face tough situations, practice taking and sending, and look at things positively. The Buddhist way is to do whatever you need to do, but do it joyfully.
I remember trekking in the Himalayas for six weeks — hiking 10 miles daily up and down mountains. It was exhausting work, but I approached each day with excitement: “Let’s go explore the Himalayas!” A joyful mind finds satisfaction even in difficulty.
Using Humor as Self-Compassion
One of my students practiced self-compassion through humor. Whenever something bad happened, he would consult a joke book to find humor related to his situation.
When he lost his job, he found a joke about a road worker who was fired for stealing — “all the signs were there.” When he walked into a glass door at the office, he found another joke to help him laugh at himself.
In today’s world, we have smartphones where we can immediately find humor to help us through difficult moments. Developing this sense of humor about your life is a powerful form of self-compassion.
Your Practice for the Month
For the coming month, I encourage you to:
Practice Bodhicitta (compassion) for yourself after meditation
Be mindful of thoughts that cause suffering and respond with self-compassion
Foster the practice of “always only keeping a joyful mind”
Remember, you have Buddha Nature. When you practice self-compassion, you’re not being selfish — you’re creating the foundation for true compassion toward all beings.
From a Satsang given by Ahjan Samvara on Self-Compassion in 2019
If you’d like to go deeper into these teachings, you’re welcome to take Ahjan Samvara’s course: Gratitude — the Buddhist Way out of Suffering.
In this 4-hour course, you’ll learn the power of gratitude and how you can use it to transform your pain into peace.
Learn more about the course: https://www.udemy.com/course/gratitude-the-buddhist-way-out-of-suffering-to-joy/
