This note on how to cultivate empathy draws on the teachings of Brian Yosef Schacter-Books. As you will discover, he too, like Marshall Rosenberg of Non Violent Communication fame, describes empathy as requiring full presence and attention to the other’s feelings and needs.
What follows are the words of Schacter-Brooks with some minor editing by me:
“Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sasov was known for his extreme empathy. He said that he had learned this from a conversation he overheard between two peasants, while staying at an inn. They were drinking in silence, when one turned to the other and said, “Do you love me?”
“Of course I love you!” his companion replied.
“You say that you love me,” said the first peasant, “but you don’t know what I need. If you truly loved me, you would know.”
The second peasant was silent, not knowing what to say, but Rabbi Moshe knew. From that time onward he would say, “To truly love someone is to bear the burden of their sorrow.”
This teaching is not about a supernatural ability to read minds, but the power of sustained presence in relation to others; it is a teaching about relationship. This practice of sustained Presence, of staying present with other beings over time, is what allows the gradual blossoming of knowledge of the other, and from that knowledge, empathy. The process requires both patience and attention, a willingness to be with others as they are, not imposing judgement or angling for them to change, but also not fleeing from them in fear or disgust or disinterest.
It is a balance between these extremes, a state which we could call “hovering,” like an eagle who hovers over its young, neither landing on them – which would crush and kill them – nor fleeing from them – which would leave them helpless and starving, and would also kill them. Rather, the eagle feeds the eaglets from above, connected but not imposing, giving space but not abandoning.
It thus represents inclusion, saying “yes and” to whomever appears before us. It is a coming close, an affirming of the other, a building of relationship. And it includes the severing attachment: the desire to control or manipulate our experience by controlling and manipulating others. Between these two extremes, between affirming and letting go, is the path of empathy as hovering stillness.
This is a transformative path. In staying present with others, a connection is forged. We begin by beholding someone that may seem alien and strange, but over time, we can come to understand them from the inside; we can come to feel what they feel. This is the cultivation of a love that is not a given, not something we are born into; it is a going beyond our boundaries of comfort and opening a wider space in the heart.
It is through remembering how we have felt alienated, through remembering our own pain, that we can access the power of patience and empathy. This is the redemption of pain, the way that our own suffering becomes useful toward greater consciousness and connection with others.
But there is also a danger in this closeness, the potential for a kind of “codependency,” for our conception of the other becoming trapped in a narrative of distress, of neediness, and victimhood. That’s why we also need the severing of attachment.”
In summary, we can say that empathy is the sustained presence that allows us to discover what another is feeling and needing without attachment.