Rob Burbea:
compassion is this movement of the heart in response to the suffering in the world, and when the heart that is open and moved by compassion encounters suffering in the world, it trembles with that suffering. The open heart, the empathic heart, is touched by the suffering in the world and wants to respond, wants to move out, to heal, to alleviate the suffering. And that, the totality of that, is what we call compassion – this empathy, this trembling, and this wanting to heal, wanting to soothe suffering.