If you can try to identify what it's like to be that person, it helps a lot. But we don't want to suffer with that person. This is the difference. The streets of Bangkok - every once in a while there's a beggar on the street and they're missing fingers. What is it like to miss fingers? Imagine what it is like. Imagine what it is like eating your food without fingers. Imagine wiping yourself on the toilet without fingers. Imagine wiping your eye - something is in your eye - without fingers. Imagine what it is like. But we don't want to do it in order to suffer with the other person, they have enough suffering, we don't want two people to suffer, but we want to imagine what it's like.
It's very difficult to find a totally black room, absolutely dark, no light coming in from somewhere. But I was very fortunate during one retreat that there was a bathroom that had no window and the door shut so tightly that no light shined in from the bottom. And usually the hallway was also dark as well. The minute I found that bathroom it was the only one I wanted to use. It was the only one I wanted to use because when I went into it I left the light off, I wanted to experience what it's like when you're blind. As simple as that. Trying to put myself into that person's eyes, behind their fingers, it's more fingers really, it's more fingers and ears when you're blind. But to actually imagine what it is like, very helpful to open the Compassion more and more for people who have difficulties that are different to yours.