Would You Burn for a Stranger?

Modern Compassion Through the Jataka Tales

Long before we built schools, social media studios, and corporate empathy workshops, we had stories. And the Jataka Tales weren’t written to entertain children falling asleep; they were written for adults who had already fallen asleep inside. These are not bedtime stories — they are alarms. They were the Buddha’s way of asking a very uncomfortable question:
Who are you when no one is watching?

I return to them not out of nostalgia but out of necessity. Because in a world obsessed with branding kindness, scoring virtue points, and outsourcing responsibility, these tales hold up a mirror I cannot escape. They don’t care about my job, my titles, or my “professional tone.” They care about the spine of my conscience.

And nothing challenges that spine like the story of the Selfless Hare.

The Fire That Wouldn’t Burn

Once, a starving traveler met a hare. The hare searched for food and found nothing. So he offered himself.
Not as poetry — as dinner.

He jumped into the fire.
The fire refused to burn him.
Because even flames can recognise sincerity we humans sometimes cannot.

The traveler turned out to be a god testing him. The hare was placed on the moon — not as a trophy, but as a warning:
Real compassion leaves light, not ashes.

Now look around.
We’ve rebranded compassion into campaigns, hashtags, slogans, and LinkedIn posts. We “support causes” by tapping a like button before we go back to torturing ourselves with emails. The hare would be confused — not shocked, just disappointed.

He didn’t perform goodness.
He embodied it.

Compassion Today Is an Extreme Sport

Let’s be honest — compassion in the modern world feels like volunteering to be inconvenienced.
It’s messy.
It slows you down.
It ruins your schedule.
It demands presence when the easier option is distraction.

And still, it is the only thing that makes you human.

One day, a new boy entered my classroom mid-term. He spoke no English. He carried that familiar silent panic children carry when everything safe has been snatched away. Words were useless with him — mine and his.

Then compassion arrived wearing tiny shoes and carrying two crayons.

A little girl walked up to him, handed him a crooked paper heart, placed her hand gently on his head, and started showing him a picture book. She spoke her language. He answered in his. It didn’t matter. They had already built a bridge — made entirely of feeling.

And I stood there, humbled, and embarrassingly aware that a four-year-old had just demonstrated more moral intelligence than most adults I know. Including me.

Compassion doesn’t always ask you to jump into the fire.
Sometimes it only asks you to notice someone else is already burning.

When Compassion Gets Inconvenient

The hare is not alone in this universe of uncomfortable goodness.

• When the Monkey King offered his own body as a bridge for his starving troop to escape, he wasn’t rewarded. He was exploited. Compassion is not fair.

• When the Elephant King refused to abandon a blind human lost in the forest, he didn’t check whether the man “deserved” help. Compassion is not conditional.

• When the Bodhisatta in the King of the Geese tale cared for an injured goose he could have left behind, he risked himself. Compassion is not practical.

None of them calculated ROI (Return on Investment).
None of them drafted “impact reports.”
They simply acted.

And here we are, adults with degrees and job titles, needing user manuals to remember how not to be emotionally dead inside.

Compassion Isn’t Soft. It’s a Counterattack.

We confuse exhaustion with virtue.
We confuse pity with empathy.
We confuse performative kindness with conscience.

True compassion is not a warm glow.
It’s a confrontation — with your ego, your laziness, your excuses.

Choosing presence when everything in you wants to shut down is hard. Walking away is easier, yet staying matters more. Sometimes, compassion means lending courage when theirs has run out.

The hare didn’t transform because he survived the fire.
He transformed because he was willing to enter it.

The traveler didn’t get a meal.
He got a mirror.

The Real Question

So tonight, when you look at the moon — between your alarms, deadlines, and digital noise — don’t ask yourself how kind you seem.

Ask yourself something far more humiliating and far more honest:

Would you notice a stranger is starving
before the fire even begins?