Compassion Beyond Concept: Embracing Your Daily "Thorns"

I recently guided a meditation retreat in Colombia, and during the retreat, a question from one of the participants deeply resonated with me. It’s a question that has stayed with me and sparked reflections that I’ve been sharing lately. This participant, a long-time meditator and Buddhist practitioner, expressed struggling with how to evoke compassion and loving-kindness as a felt experience. For them, these qualities were more conceptual—things they understood intellectually but couldn’t fully embody due to some kind of internal block or obstacle.

Before diving deeper, I want to acknowledge that some of us might already know how to feel compassion and loving-kindness but may be searching for a “wow” experience. It’s important to remember that it’s okay to simply be content with whatever arises in the moment during a meditation or in daily life. It’s also okay if these qualities feel conceptual at times. Even in their conceptual form, they can guide us toward deeper reflection on what compassion and loving-kindness mean to us, how to enact them in daily life, and how to live and abide in them.

This question is personal for me because I’ve struggled with it myself—and, honestly, I still do. How do we bring ideas from the conceptual level into a rooted, embodied experience? Compassion and loving-kindness, while shared with other spiritual traditions, can hold distinct meanings within Buddhism. Even the words we use—compassion and loving-kindness—are Western terms that may not fully capture the nuances of their Buddhist counterparts.

In response to the participant’s question, I shared a metaphor that draws from Western religious imagery, particularly Christianity. Before I continue, I want to offer a caveat: for those of you who are Christian or Catholic, I’m not trying to reinterpret your religion or tell you what to believe. For those who feel uneasy about religious iconography due to past experiences, I invite you to approach this metaphor with a fresh perspective. Personally, I find some Christian imagery deeply moving when viewed through a Buddhist lens, and this approach has brought profound meaning to my own practice.

The metaphor I shared is the image of the crown of thorns often associated with Christ’s crucifixion. Compassion, I explained, is not merely an idea or something we do mechanically. It’s a response—a natural, heartfelt reaction to pain, whether it’s our own or that of others. In Buddhism, we cultivate compassion by connecting with our pain. This can be incredibly challenging, as none of us enjoys being in pain. However, the more we open ourselves to it and stop rejecting it—whether it’s minor discomforts or profound suffering—the more we can move out of our heads and into our hearts.

I encouraged the participant to find their “thorn,” or perhaps several thorns, present in their daily life. These thorns could be anything: a physical ache, feeling tired, or even moments of irritability. Rather than seeking out additional pain, the practice is about acknowledging and being present with the discomforts that already exist. When we meet our thorns with awareness, we create space for acceptance. This simple act of recognition can serve as a doorway to genuine, embodied compassion.

Returning to the crown of thorns, this image resonates with me because it symbolizes someone—Christ—who fully embraced not only their own suffering but also the suffering of others. In Mahayana Buddhism, this mirrors the ideal of the bodhisattva: one who works for the benefit of all beings. A bodhisattva transcends self-interest and embodies wisdom and compassion, responding to the pain of the world with an open heart. The crown, in this metaphor, represents the ability to live from a place of deep compassion, not by fixing every thorn in existence (which is impossible) but by cultivating an open-hearted response to life’s difficulties.

This practice doesn’t require us to focus only on the most significant global issues. Instead, I suggest starting with the small, personal thorns in our daily life—those minor discomforts and pains we often ignore. When we avoid addressing our own pain and shift our attention entirely to external problems, we risk falling into anxiety and catastrophizing, which can diminish our ability to be truly present and helpful to others. By first working with our thorns, we develop the capacity to respond compassionately to the larger challenges around us.