Nobody would see sad movies if sympathy and empathy were the same thing. Highly sympathetic people avoid those who suffer because they don’t want to experience that. Empathy enables moving towards suffering because compassion is a positive experience.
It sounds like you’ve got the same thing going on that the book is talking about, and I’m either labeling a different thing “compassion” in my head than you and the Dalai Lama are talking about or something else is going on.
Nobody would see sad movies if sympathy and empathy were the same thing. Highly sympathetic people avoid those who suffer because they don’t want to experience that. Empathy enables moving towards suffering because compassion is a positive experience.
It sounds like you’ve got the same thing going on that the book is talking about, and I’m either labeling a different thing “compassion” in my head than you and the Dalai Lama are talking about or something else is going on.