The Unbounded Heart: Exploring Universal Compassion in the Mahāyāna Tradition
The Dharma is a vast landscape to navigate. Recently, as part of my Dharma teacher training webinar on compassion, I was tasked with researching compassion within the Mahāyāna tradition. What began as a personal exploration ended up illuminating a deeply personal experience of non-dual warmth and universal connection. During the time of this research I saw clearly into dynamics that were playing out in my home as wider family dynamic.
The Historical Roots of Mahāyāna
Mahāyāna Buddhism emerged in India between the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE, roughly 400 years after the passing of the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. Rather than being founded by a single reformer, Mahāyāna developed as a gradual movement—a rich collection of new texts, philosophies, and devotional practices evolving within existing monastic communities across northern and southern India.
By the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, Mahāyāna traveled along Silk Road trade routes into Central Asia and China. Translators such as Lokakṣema and Kumārajīva rendered Sanskrit sūtras into Chinese, laying the foundation for East Asian traditions, including Chan (Zen), Pure Land, Tiantai, and Huayan—which later spread to Korea, Vietnam, and Japan.
Buddhism reached Tibet much later, developing into a distinct, highly systematic tradition known as Vajrayāna ("The Diamond Vehicle"). While rooted firmly in Mahāyāna philosophy, Tibet’s geography and unique historical trajectory created a synthesis of Indian monastic scholarship, esoteric tantric practice, and indigenous culture.
Trungpa Rinpoche on Emptiness, Awareness, and Warmth
Early in my Dharma journey, I read extensively from Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, particularly his landmark three-volume work, The Profound Treasury of the Ocean of Dharma.
In Volume Two, The Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion, Trungpa Rinpoche emphasises that emptiness is a crucial experience on the Bodhisattva path. In the chapter "Emptiness and Compassion" (p. 130), he writes:
"The Mahāyāna path brings together awareness, compassion, and non-reference point."
Emptiness is not a grim denial of existence; rather, it is a positive state of vibrant creativity. It is "empty" only of fixed reference points, self-clinging, and defence mechanisms. In truth, emptiness is the very reason life can happen. If there is nothingness, there is room for everything.
Trungpa Rinpoche teaches that if we give up the self-centered concepts of "me" or "mine," we find ourselves in an unarmored, open space. He notes that doing good simply because "it is good" can become a form of conceptual mental gymnastics, the issue isn't the practice itself, but our rigid attitude toward it.
Usually, we hold a fierce allegiance to "this" (the notion of me) and "that" (the rest of the phenomenal world). True emptiness breaks down these rigid reference points until "this" and "that" merge. In actual non-dual experience, fixed discrimination dissolves.
Non-reference point arises naturally from openness, friendliness, and warmth. Compassion is necessary for these states, and compassion springs directly from awareness. As Trungpa Rinpoche notes:
"In order to have warmth, you have to have awareness of thisness, and the nonexistence of thisness, and an awareness of thatness and the nonexistence of thatness."
These concepts can be challenging to grasp on a purely cognitive level. Yet, through sustained meditation practice, they transform from abstract philosophy into direct experience.
Roshi Joan Halifax and the Three Faces of Compassion
In Standing at the Edge: Finding Courage Where Fear and Courage Meet, Roshi Joan Halifax explores the "Three Faces of Compassion," drawing on the writings of the 14th-century Zen master Musō Soseki (Dialogues in a Dream):
Referential Compassion: The familiar form of compassion, directed toward a specific object or person in need.
Insight-Based Compassion: A conceptual compassion rooted in an understanding of impermanence, interdependence, and dependent co-arising. From a caregiver's perspective, it reflects a moral imperative—recognising that ignoring suffering harms self, other, and society alike.
Non-Referential Compassion: An unbiased, universal compassion that has no fixed object. It is non-referential, spontaneous, and boundless.
Roshi Joan describes experiencing non-referential compassion following a severe accident. Transported in an ambulance in excruciating pain with dangerously low blood pressure, she watched the paramedic struggle through six failed attempts to find a vein for morphine. Instead of focusing on her own pain, her heart opened completely to his distress. In that instant of shared vulnerability, her physical body softened, her vein opened, and the needle slipped in smoothly.
Later in the hospital, sensing an unspoken weight on the paramedic, she touched his knee and asked if he was alright. With tears in his eyes, he shared that his wife was dying of breast cancer. In that moment, all boundary between self and other dissolved, there was only shared human suffering and an inexplicable, radiant warmth.
A Personal Encounter with Universal Compassion
I was recently reflecting on universal compassion and was reminded of an experience in January 2026, when my elderly father fell off a ladder and was airlifted to the ICU at The Alfred. My relationship with Dad had always been challenging; he was mostly absent from my life and a self-described "man’s man," typical of his generation. Despite this, I had tried to stay connected with him throughout my life.
There he lay in the ICU, helpless, unconscious, with a breathing tube and attached to several machines keeping him alive. After a week of trying to reduce his sedation without him instinctively struggling against the life-support tube, the medical team informed us that it was nearing the point where they could no longer ethically maintain treatment. They explained they would be removing the tube, warning us that he might be nearing the end of his life.
The family was called in, and my daughter and I went into the room to spend time with him, knowing it might be the last time we saw him alive. I was deeply aware during that time of how two decades of meditation practice served as an invaluable support. Despite our distant relationship, I felt a profound, universal compassion open up within my heart, body, and mind for all the suffering in the world. It flooded me with a warm glow and a tenderness that seemed to radiate outward, knowing no bounds. The only other time I had truly experienced this depth was during intense meditation on retreat.
In that state, I witnessed the appearance of my grandmother in his facial expression and a noticeable softening in his body. I sensed an effortless letting go and a profound immersion in the universality of the human experience that transcended linear time and place. I saw deeply into the struggle and raw anxiety of family members, the concern and compassion of the medical staff, and the precious, fleeting nature of human life. This afterglow and clear seeing stayed with me for a long time, granting me the grace to continue navigating the human condition with an open heart and mind.
The Moon Cannot Be Stolen
Universal compassion offers a non-dual insight into our unbounded capacity to care for one another and our world. If more of us could access this state, our culture might become less discriminating and more humanising, our politics less polarising and oppressive. We might step outside our narrow positions, looking beyond "this" and "that" to see through the eyes of another.
This boundless orientation toward life is beautifully captured in a classic story from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (compiled by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki):
The Moon Cannot Be Stolen Ryōkan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing there to steal.Ryōkan returned and caught him. "You may have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler, "and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift."
The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away.
Ryōkan sat naked, watching the moon. "Poor fellow," he mused, "I wish I could give him this beautiful moon."
Like Ryōkan gazing at the night sky, universal compassion recognises a beauty and warmth that can neither be hoarded nor stolen. When we drop our defences and let go of fixed reference points, we realise that the boundless warmth we seek to give, and receive, has been here all along.
References
Halifax, Joan. Standing at the Edge: Finding Courage Where Fear and Courage Meet. Flatiron Books, 2018.
Reps, Paul, and Nyogen Senzaki, compilers. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings. Tuttle Publishing.
Trungpa, Chögyam. The Profound Treasury of the Ocean of Dharma, Volume Two: The Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion. Shambhala Publications, 2013 (p. 130).
