Activity of the Armless Mother: Applications of Compassion and Skillful Means from Indo-Tibetan Buddhism

This paper explores the link between compassion and skillful means in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist textual and commentarial traditions, with the purpose of providing new perspectives on the relationship between compassion meditation and effective action, especially with regard to secular compassion training and research.

A review of previous studies on skillful means in western scholarship identifies the rarity of compassion and skillful means treatments, especially in Indo-Tibetan traditions. The paper then surveys Mahāyāna sūtras and commentaries for dimensions of the relationship between compassion and skillful means, identifying themes for discussion. Problematizing a narrowly monastic or Buddhist interpretation, the study analyzes a classic image from nineteenth-century Tibet, the distress of the armless mother trying to save her child from drowning.

The resulting analysis derives a five-element contemporary provisional paradigm for compassionate activity that can be used to develop secular compassion training curriculum, shaped by Indo-Tibetan sources while differing from them in specific ways.

Indo-Tibetan Buddhist traditions provide rich resources for fuller understanding of the active dimensions of compassion as skillful means, providing additional perspective for secular compassion training interventions as well as for research into compassionate responses to suffering.