Amfortas and Parsival - Compassion

The habit of feeling one's own I as completely equal in worth to another I in the encounter, could widen itself to more vast thoughts and feelings that embrace not only one other person, but one's whole family, all one's friends, all one's colleagues ... all the human beings in the whole world.

The great story of Parsival, seeking for the Holy Grail and bringing cure for the wounded Grail-king Amfortas is an image for this process. Amfortas has to guard the Holy Grail, but he has made of it an intensely painful task. He was seduced by Klingsor, the man who longs for the Grail but who isn't able to become a knight of the Grail, because his soul isn't pure and he lacks the courage to go the long way to this purity. Instead of this purification he thinks it will suffice to castrate himself - but of course this is only a materialization of what in fact should be striven for. Thus Klingsor becomes the enemy of the Grail-knights and tries to seduce them to impure acts. Through the help of Kundry, Klingsor makes Amfortas fail and therefore he is wounded and waits for a young man from whom it is said that he is 'knowing through compassion, a pure fool'. This young man is Parsival.

We see in this saga a polarity. Amfortas is worldly wise, but he is not pure. He is the image for the human being who knows much about the world and about life, who is no longer naive, but his knowledge makes him critical out. He cannot be the Grail king, because he is not pure. Parsival is pure, but he doesn't know the world at all - therefore he is 'a fool'. His wisdom sleeps in his feeling life that is pure, he is wise from compassion.

The one side of this polarity is the human being who has a wide worldly knowledge, but isn’t capable of this knowledge through compassion; the other side is the human being who is capable of this knowledge of compassion, but who is unworldly, who is worldly innocent.

In the encounter between one I and another I we have the Parsival state, the Parsival who enters the Grails castle for the first time. We have forgotten all worldly knowledge, we have to. But still, this is an extreme. We will have to become the Parsival who became King of the Grail, who cured Amfortas by his compassion. We will have to learn to ask the question: What are your sufferings?

And then: merely hearing and understanding the answer will not be enough. The compassion will lead us to the profound feeling of bad faith that will last as long as our fellowman is in bad faith...

We will have to learn to drink from the same goblet. At first it will hurt intensely, but it will turn into a new kind of bliss, the Bliss of the Holy Grail, which is the Bliss of true brotherhood.


Compassion of Bernhard de ClairvauxAmfortas and Parsival - Compassion by Mieke Mosmuller