While beings, by nature, have always been awake,
Not knowing this, they wander in endless samsara.
For the unending struggles of sentient beings
May overwhelming compassion be born in my being.
Commentary
This first two lines capture the human condition. The second two lines describe the appropriate response, expressing it as a wish.
Are beings, human or otherwise, innately good or bad? If they are good, why is there so much pain and suffering? Where does evil come from? What hope is there for ordinary people like us?
Every religious tradition, every code of ethics, every country, every society, even every family has to find a way to answer these questions. Mahayana Buddhism’s answer is contained in the first two lines.
Are sentient beings innately good? Yes, in the sense that to be sentient means that you have the potential to wake up, to recognize that you are not a thing unto yourself, and thus find a way to live at peace in a life that is shaped by old age, illness, and death.
Does this mean that all beings will become buddhas? No. The power of karmic conditioning over lifetimes means that some beings may never recognize their true nature. The potential is there, but it is never realized. They continue their futile struggles life after life, visiting their pain and confusion on others.
Why is there so much pain and suffering? It is the nature of existence. Things change. How and when things change we can predict up to a point, but only up to a point. When things change, even if we expect them to, we experience loss and grief. And, when we are not consumed by pain, we also experience freedom and new possibilities
Pain is a sensation. It arises in our bodies, in our hearts, in our minds, when things change. About that, we can do little. All we can do is experience it as best we can without being more deeply conditioned by it. When we cannot accept and experience change, we suffer. We struggle to hold on to the past, to repair the past, to return to a world that is no longer. We can do something about that. We can develop the skills and capacities that make it possible for us to experience reactions and confusion in body, heart, and mind as groundless movements in mind, nothing more, nothing less. If we do not do that, struggle and suffering know no end.
When you have even the smallest insight or experience into this understanding, you know that no matter what the cause, what the circumstances, what the stakes, every sentient being struggles and suffers in exactly the same way you do. The particulars vary, but the process is the same. Your heart goes out to them, to all of them.
Hence the last line: May overwhelming compassion be born in my being.