Within Chan Buddhism, compassion is understood as an intrinsic expression of awakening rather than a separate virtue to be laboriously added on. Rooted in the Mahāyāna vision of bodhicitta and Buddha-nature, it is described as a quality that naturally manifests when delusion and the sense of a fixed, separate self fall away. When the insight into emptiness and interconnectedness becomes direct and lived, the sharp boundary between “self” and “other” softens, and care for all beings arises without contrivance. In this sense, compassion is not sentimental feeling but the functioning of enlightened mind itself, grounded in non-dual awareness.

Because of this, Chan consistently presents compassion and wisdom as inseparable. Genuine wisdom (prajñā) is said to reveal the emptiness of all phenomena, and from that vision flows a form of concern for others that is free from clinging and self-image. Conversely, compassion that does not rest on such insight is seen as incomplete, easily entangled in attachment or the need to confirm a “compassionate” identity. Thus, compassion in Chan is often described as operating without fixation on giver, receiver, or gift, acting responsively while not grasping at outcomes.

This understanding is closely tied to the bodhisattva ideal that Chan inherits from the wider Mahāyāna tradition. The aspiration to awaken for the benefit of all beings is taken as the natural orientation of a mind that recognizes Buddha-nature in everyone. In practice, this appears less as grand gestures and more as ethical conduct, service, and attentiveness in the ordinary activities of communal life. Chan literature often treats such everyday responsiveness as the true field in which compassion is enacted.

The teaching methods of Chan masters are also framed as expressions of compassion, though they may appear unconventional or even harsh. Shouts, blows, paradoxical kōans, and other forms of “skillful means” are understood as attempts to cut through deeply rooted habits and reveal the student’s inherent clarity. From this perspective, the measure of compassion is not gentleness but its liberating effect, its capacity to point directly to mind-nature. In all of this, compassion remains inseparable from the realization that there is no solid self to defend and no separate other to save, only the free functioning of Buddha-nature responding to circumstances.