Kenosis and Compassion

We are told in the Christian scriptures that the “self-emptying” (kenosis) of the Christ is the key to the restoration (salvation) of the world—to its ultimate completion. Kenosis is often interpreted as “self-denial,” giving up what one wants and acceptance of that which goes against one’s desires—a kind of severe and painful, but necessary asceticism.

This definition seems to me to be incomplete at best, and false to a deeper, better, clearer understanding. Wisdom does not teach a pious asceticism, but the path of deepest compassion. Compassion and love are predicated on the capacity to set aside the limited agenda one has for one’s own self (to let that go—or empty it out) in favor of something greater, more perfect, more complete.

There is in this act not a kind of painful punishment (not an ultimate agony—though we may indeed feel the immediate pain of personal loss), but an ultimate ecstasy—to lose the restrictive contractions of the self and fall into the divine fullness, which is ultimate joy. The liberty of loving beyond the selfish limitations of the ego (kenosis) is the foundational key to compassionate living.

We know from our own personal experience that identification with and attachment to our own limited ego diminishes our capacity for love. For the contracted self, immersed in the affairs of the ego, the slightest irritation is almost too much to bear. We cannot take on our own suffering, which is the definition for compassion (to suffer with), let alone deal with the suffering of others in a compassionate way. But to transcend the self—to let it go, not only expands the capacity for the true experience of compassion, it gives the soul the capacity to “suffer with” all things without becoming fragmented and “lost” in this experience.

To the degree that we realize this form of self-emptying from our egoic-natures and selfish agendas, just to that degree are we capable of becoming compassionate “hosts” for the illusory self-natures of others, and thus open to their varied experiences, and, yes, to their suffering which is the inevitable result of the painful illusion that the ego is truly real and not a necessary but passing epiphenomenon of our eternal Self. This, I believe, is the deeper meaning of the teaching that says kenosis is inseparable from compassion.