True Compassion

— Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

To help others you must first perfect yourself, and to perfect yourself you first have to cut these three ties: obeying important people, getting entangled in futile attempts to help others, and listening to what people say.

Trying to gratify important people only leads to emotional upheavals. Trying to help people with the things of this life only fuels the fires of samsara. At best, whatever satisfaction you may bring about in these ways will only be temporary; it won’t help anyone at the moment of death. These, in fact, are mistaken notions of compassion. True compassion is to establish beings in the deathless bliss of perfect Buddhahood.