Compunction

Compunction is rarely discussed in modern Buddhist circles, even though it appears in many of the Buddha’s lists of qualities to be developed along the path. He calls it a guardian of the world in that it keeps people from violating trust and behaving promiscuously.

In a simile where the Buddha compares different qualities needed on the path to features of a frontier fortress, compunction is a high and wide road encircling the fortress, to ward off unskillful qualities that would damage the skillful qualities–such as mindfulness and right effort–that inhabit the fortress. It’s also a treasure that thieves can’t steal, fire can’t burn, and floods can’t wash away.

In many of these lists, compunction is paired with a healthy sense of shame. Together, they make up your sense of conscience. Healthy shame–the opposite, not of self-esteem, but of shamelessness–is a disinclination to do wrong, motivated by your desire not to look bad in the eyes of people you admire. Compunction is more impersonal. You sense that, given the way causality works over the long run, you’re not immune to the consequences of your actions – and you care.

In this sense, compunction is the opposite of callousness – the attitude that you’ll do as you please, and you don’t give a damn about the consequences. It’s also the opposite of apathy, the defeatist attitude of not caring about anything at all. When you feel compunction, you actively care about your long-term well-being and will try your best not to jeopardize it.

This active quality of caring may be one of the reasons why compunction is also paired with ardency in descriptions of meditators wiping unskillful thoughts out of their minds.

…But compunction is not just a quality for beginners in the Dhamma or in meditation. It’s also listed as one of the strengths of a “learner,” someone who has attained at least the first noble attainment, the first taste of the deathless.

It’s a quality that will strengthen that person all along the path to total awakening.

This reflection by Ajaan Geoff is from the essay “Wise Enough to Care” in the book Along the Way (pp. 41-45).