Karuna (Compassion) Together Foundation

Mission: Even out the Playing Field Objectives:

 

1. To provide equal educational opportunities to all. Specifically to underprivileged children regardless of the nationality or religion.

2. To maintain and sustain the Buddha Sasana as an educational facility to all without any boundaries.

 

Karuṇā (in both Sanskrit and Pali) is generally translated as compassion and self-compassion. It is part of the spiritual path of both Buddhism and Jainism. This is the understanding of, and the desire to help remove, harm and suffering from others. Metta is loving-kindness. The Buddha taught that Buddhists should cultivate it through meditation. In English, Compassion is a feeling of pity, sympathy, and understanding for people who are suffering or charity for everyone. Webster’s dictionary defines compassion as the sympathetic consciousness of an other’s distress together with a desire to alleviate it.

I don’t consider the work I have been doing as a charity and I never undertake any projects out of pity. For me Karuna is calming one’s passions, calming one’s hatred, greed and delusions, which we all have in common. Of course, abandoning our defilements is very difficult to do. But in those same moments, when we do practice Karuna, we can see what needs to be done, and how to do what needs to be done, and how to carry that out in the right way. Then there is just the doing without all the posturing and self-congratulating. As another western Buddhist once explained this to me: If someone is hungry then give them some food, if they are sick then give them some medicine, if they need a place to sleep then give them some shelter and bed, etc.

 

 

There is no sense in this use the word Karuna of being in any way superior to the person or the group of people we are assisting. It all comes under the heading of abandoning unwholesome states of mind and developing wholesome states. That’s Karuna (Compassion) Together… And I invite you to join and open your heart with me…….. Merit should go to both Venerable AdhiCitta Thero, New Jersey USA and Venerable Panadure Chandaratana Thero for all the advice/guidance given for the right path. Also sharing merits with my mother, sister Hemali and her husband Sujeewa and my dear friend Hemantha for all the support, guidance and still sticking with me

With Metta – Rukmal Waharaka

Karuna (Compassion) Together Foundation - Projects