Compassion — the wish for all beings to be free from suffering, and the motivation to act to relieve it..
Compassion — the wish for all beings to be free from suffering, and the motivation to act to relieve it. The second of the four brahmavihāras, and (with wisdom) the defining motivation of the Mahāyāna bodhisattva.
Action-oriented goodwill rather than mere fellow-feeling: karuna aims at removing suffering, where metta gives happiness. In the tradition's vocabulary its opposite (the “far enemy”) is cruelty, while its counterfeit (the “near enemy”) is mawkish pity — wanting to ease another's pain for partly self-serving reasons. And unlike raw empathy, karuna is yoked to wisdom (paññā), so it acts with a steady hand instead of drowning in the other's distress.
“compassion, mercy” (not “pity”).
Sanskrit/Pali karuṇā “compassion.” A traditional account links it to a root meaning “to do/make” (compassion in action), though that derivation is a popular gloss rather than settled.
Canonical in the Pali Canon as a brahmavihāra; in Mahāyāna it is elevated to co-equal status with wisdom (prajñā) and embodied by the bodhisattva of compassion (Avalokiteśvara / Guan Yin / Kannon). Concept is stable.
Older dictionaries gloss it “pity,” but contemporary translators uniformly render it “compassion,” rejecting “pity” as misleading.