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Comment by varispeed | Hacker News Reader

> Living & acting out of compassion (boddhicitta): if your main focus is other not yourself, a huge relief of worries is gone, and meaning arises naturally. Of course here articial part.

You'll easily become a victim of people who exploit "caretakers". You'll become an unpaid servant. People need to look after themselves first.

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This is Western attitude right down to the implication that you have some sort of insight that invalidates what the parent is saying.

A society of people acting as isolated islands because they all think that they’re out to get eachother is how society crumbles.

You can put others first with boundaries. You can put others first and remain vigilant. The “look after yourself first”. It’s all a false dichotomy, and the basis for an attitude that especially on this website tends to just be privileged tech workers justifying their own ambivalence toward one ethical issue or another.

> This is Western attitude right down to the implication that you have some sort of insight that invalidates what the parent is saying.

This is my experience and it is true. Getting people to apply philosophy of other cultures without taking into account the context, it's a recipe for disaster. You can't blindly follow the advice of the OP in the western society - at least no without awareness and being vigilant that there are always people ready to exploit something that they perceive as weakness.

This is an overly paranoid response to someone suggesting to have compassion for others as a form of self-care. The idea is that worrying exessively about yourself can be harmful in itself, not "allow yourself to be exploited".

It's more in the vein of advice you get on the plane - when oxygen masks drop you need to put the mask first before putting another over the face of someone you care for.

In that analogy, compassion and love are the oxygen. If you hold on to anger and defensiveness in order to "fend for yourself" it's like failing to put on your oxygen mask because you hold on to your valuables, thinking someone is going to steal them in the middle of a plane crash.

Well you could've stated it that way from the get go. As it stands your comment reads like a strong denial of helping others in favor of helping yourself.

This is a somewhat cynical attitude that assumes compassion must come conjoined with suspension of good judgement. I'm a naturally analytical and anxious individual who has, as of late, found a measure of stress relief by directing some of my mental energy toward the wellbeing of others. Beyond basic necessities and financial security, obsessing over your own wellbeing/financials can be its own torture. Sometimes, something as simple as feeding a stray dog or buying someone meds can relieve stress. Interestingly, writing checks or transferring funds online, does not have the same effect.

This is overly dualistic. (that's a word Buddhism likes to use to mean "wrong")

Another way to think of it is to consider them and you as a single thing (a mandala) and improve that.

And of course Buddhists are not necessarily going to see being victimized as bad anyway. What's that to a monk?

Buddhism is meant to tailor teachings in accordance with sentient beings' cravings and faculty so there's no right or wrong methods. You can mediate, count breath, contemplate about emptiness or chant the pure land sutras. It doesn't matter as long as there's practice under proper guidance.

The first step in looking after yourself is getting to know your own mind.

Not necessarily. You can be compasionate to a narcicist manipulator while being perfectly aware that he is trying to manipulate you and not playing hus game. Being compasionate does not means doing everything someone asks for, but trying to understand where they come from, see their actions as their (likely unskillfull) attempt at avoiding discomfort/suffering (dukkha), and orient your actions based on that understanding.

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