Dan Harris Quote

You have a quote that I love. You say, ‘Most of one’s own troubles, worries, and sadness come from self-cherishing, self-centeredness.’ But don’t we need to be somewhat self-centered in order to succeed in life? Self-cherishing, that’s by nature, he said (by which I assumed he meant it’s natural). Without that, we human beings become like robots, no feeling. But now, practice for development of concern for well-being of others, that actually is immense benefit to oneself. A light went off in my head. It seems like you’re saying that there is a self-interested, or selfish, case for being compassionate? Yes. Practice of compassion is ultimately benefit to you. So I usually describe: we are selfish, but be wise selfish rather than foolish selfish. This was an entirely new spin for me. Don’t be nice for the sake of it, he was saying. Do it because it would redound to your own benefit, that it would make you feel good by eroding the edges of the ego. Yoked to self-interest, the compassion thing suddenly became something I could relate to—maybe even something I could do.