“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.
Buddha put it quite simply: ‘You can search the whole tenfold universe and not find a single being more worthy of love and compassion than the one seated here — yourself.’ Self-compassion and self-forgiveness are not weaknesses, but the roots of our courage and magnanimity.
Sometimes compassion for ourselves and others seems hard to find. But even if you lose touch with these feelings during your most intense suffering, compassion is an essential part of our true nature. In fact, it is in this self-compassion and self-love that you find the strength to carry a lamp through your darkest nights.
And it is by first practicing self-compassion that you find not only a way to hold your own struggles and sorrows in your heart — but through them you learn how to connect with the sufferings and sorrows of all those around.”
A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life, Jack Kornfield, P. 215.
