One thing to understand with this, if you sit on a pillow or in your daily life and you try to have compassion for these people, you are changing yourself but you are not changing other people. Other people may be very cruel, harmful, terrible people, how do we raise compassion for them? Aren't they sick?
How on earth can an intelligent sane being be cruel to other people? Sixty years ago in Germany we had one of the cruellest people in the history of mankind. He wasn't a healthy person, he was totally sick, and the people who supported him and were all around him, they were sick, too. How can someone drop liquid in a child's eye, trying to change the colour of the eye unless they are sick? How can they cut open children's brains in order to play with them and do something with them unless they are sick? These are sick human beings.
When we think of them as being sick, we can open our heart for their sickness. It doesn't mean we like the action, it doesn't mean we enjoy watching it, we try to stop the action if we can. But we open with compassion because the person is a sick human being.
You walk around the streets in Bangkok, in certain parts of town you see lepers on the streets, poor people, no fingers, no feet. Here in Germany we saw some poor people on the streets, pretty beaten up, they are alcoholics, drug addicts, whatever. Don't they have a sickness? Can we open our hearts for the outward results of this inner sickness? Yeah, it's usually easier when we see the outward form.
We visited my mother in the retirement village, 2000 people who are on average about 83 years old. Aging, decaying, sick, ill. Go to a nursing home here in Germany, you see lots of people aging, decaying on the outside. Do you have Compassion when you see the outside? They were once young like you.
Now, we see somebody who is healthy, rich, wealthy, whether it was Hitler or Saddam Hussein, you might say, "Why should we have Compassion for a person who was so cruel when they are well off?" No, no, we don't want to focus only on the outward form, this is only a façade, it's only a form surrounding a huge sickness inside which is even worse than the leper on the street.
Interesting enough, one of the friendliest men I ever met in Thailand, happy, each time I met him, he was always happy. The first time I met him in Surat Thani, he started talking to me in Thai, he had no idea whether I could speak Thai or not, he started telling me, "Hey, the boat's down there to Koh Samui, you go down the road and the boat's right there. Leaves in the morning and leaves in the evening." He was very chirpy, very happy when I saw him that time.
Yet, he sat on the corner of a street, he was missing one leg and missing some fingers. He sat there day after day. This was one of the happiest guys I have met in Thailand. Interesting. I can have Compassion for him because he is missing his fingers and one of his legs but his brain works a lot better than many other people's with a healthy body.
When we know of someone who is committing awful cruelties in the world, open your heart to the sickness inside.