WALLOWING IN OUR COMMUNAL HELPLESSNESS

I've been bitter about this book from the very beginning. Perhaps it's because I don't agree with some of Dass' fundamental concepts - that helping others is an innate human quality, that it makes us feel good, that it is the truth of the human condition.

Is this kind of compassion truly innate?
source: http://www.worldproutassembly.org/images/poverty_india11.jpg

Now I may be taking too much of what Dass says at face value - his rhetoric is filled with abstractions and contradictions, so I can really only respond to what I feel are the points he's trying to make through a somewhat subjective analysis of the words he's actually using. I understand the merit of trying to free ourselves from barriers to compassion, but I believe there are some barriers that must stay intact. We can't grant everyone our full attention all the time, we can't sacrifice so much of our ego - our sense of self - that there is nothing left to identify with besides the effect that sacrifice has had on those to whom it was delivered. And what if there is no effect? What if despite all of our openness, our earnest caring and understanding, our constant sacrifice of selfishness - there is no beneficial result?

Is that the equivalent of what Dass calls helplessness? Is this the point at which, "having surrendered into helplessness we can now get on with help (Dass p. 146)?"

I think the contradiction here is obvious. When we get to the point where

we are overwhelmed by the seeming fruitlessness of our labors, when we have spent all we can spend on our own happiness and another's, should we really call ourselves helpless? We have been helping this whole time, to our greatest ability, and yet nothing comes of it. This is not our own helplessness, but rather the inability, the unwillingness, of others to be helped. This is not the time to pick up another's burden once more - to toil on someone else's fallow land.

We should not be expected to
continue to toil on someone else's
fallowed land.
source: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/07/01/images/2006070108860401.jpg

These are the times that remind me, that have reminded me throughout my life, that I am primarily responsible for myself. Dass has warned me of "false facades of courage or self-sufficiency (Dass p. 136)," the things limiting my ultimate acceptance of helplessness and selflessness. But it is exactly those things - courage and self-sufficiency - that make up a large part of who I am, and give me the competence and opportunity to truly help others, if they are willing to accept it, in meaningful and lasting ways. And if that is merely a "false facade", well, I'm going to need a lot more help than anyone outside of myself can give me.