"Idiot compassion" is a term coined by the late Chogyam Trungpa, who said,
"Idiot compassion is the highly conceptualized idea that you want to do good to somebody. At this point, good is purely related with pleasure. Idiot compassion also stems from not have enough courage to say no."
Trungpa's student Pema Chodron elaborated,
"It refers to something we all do a lot of and call it compassion. In some ways, it's whats called enabling. It's the general tendency to give people what they want because you can't bear to see them suffering. Basically, you're not giving them what they need. You're trying to get away from your feeling of I can't bear to see them suffering. In other words, you're doing it for yourself. You're not really doing it for them."
I've said before that merely being "nice" to people isn't the same thing as being compassionate. Most niceness is just social convention; we are "nice" because it is what's expected of us, and we hope others will reciprocate. Behaving in a socially correct manner tends to reinforce our feelings of self-worth.
Most of the time there is nothing wrong with that, but it isn't the same thing as compassion. In fact, sometimes the urge to be "nice" is about maintaining a polite and pleasant facade over a situation we don't want to confront.
For example, we've had a few situations in western Buddhism in which a teacher was taking sexual advantage of students. And sometimes the situation was allowed to continue for some time, even after it became common knowledge, mostly because the other students thought they shouldn't be judgmental.
I came across an essay by Zen teacher Barry Dogo Graham that says this sort of anti-judgmentalism "combines intellectual laziness with moral cowardice, and is the quintessence of what Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche called 'idiot compassion' -- a superficial egalitarianism that is not compassionate at all."
Here in Buddhist Blog World, people who speak bluntly sometimes are accused of not being compassionate or not practicing Right Speech. But sometimes issues need to be addressed, and saying the "safe" or "socially correct" thing so you can be part of the crowd is very far from Right Speech.
Dogo Sensei also says,
"When you take a moment to examine it, the dogma of not making judgments collapses under the weight of its own hypocrisy, because it is in itself based upon a judgment - that we should not make judgments. It is a view that denies hierarchy, that denies right and wrong, while stating that those who hold this view are right and that those who don't are wrong."
I ran into this awhile back after writing about the scandal-ridden but not yet former Zen teacher Dennis Genpo Merzel. Merzel is living proof that you can receive dharma transmission and still be a jerk. Yes, I said that. After damaging a series of students with his sexual predation and treating the dharma center he leads as his personal cash cow, Merzel struck back at other Zen teachers who called for him to resign.
How? He accused them of "judgmental mudslinging." Classic.
And after I wrote about this, one of Merzel's students accused me of being "vindictive" and "self-righteous" and suggested I "try a little humanity." Speaking plainly about a sexual predator wasn't being "humane," apparently. And if that's not "idiot compassion," I don't know what is.
I could offer several more examples, from this blog and many others, about anti-judgmentalists who got quite nasty and abusive toward the person they were accusing of judgmentalism. It seems to be a syndrome.
Dogo Sensei makes a distinction between "judgmentalism" that tears other people down to build ourselves up, and making a qualitative judgment about a situation or behavior. If "Right Speech" means we're supposed to stand by smiling while someone kicks a dog or endangers a child, you can have it. Fortunately, that isn't what it means.
A lot of us are well conditioned to keep our noses out of other peoples' sexual activities, and it can be really uncomfortable to speak up, especially when the alleged perpetrator is a respected teacher. It's so much easier to shrug things off, avert your eyes, and tell yourself you are not being judgmental.
But those are the times when you really aren't being judgmental, because it's not your ego telling you to speak up. If your guts are telling you to something needs to be addressed, but you fear doing so because of how other people will react, then it's your ego telling you to stay quiet. It's protecting itself.
If you have to club your way through a internal wall of conditioning and fear of social censure to speak up, very probably you really need to speak up. And everyone else needs it, too.
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