Compassion vs. "Idiot Compassion"

Steven Goodheart (Metta Refuge Blog), Pema Chodron, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living

Don’t impose the wrong notion of what harmony is, what compassion (karuna) is, what patience is, what generosity is. Don’t misinterpret what these things really are. There is compassion and there is idiot compassion; there is patience and there is idiot patience; there is generosity and there is idiot generosity. For example, trying to smooth everything out to avoid confrontation, not to rock the boat, is not what’s meant by compassion or patience.
  

It’s what is meant by control. Then you are not trying to step into unknown territory, to find yourself more naked with less protection and therefore more in contact with reality. Instead, you use the idiot forms of compassion and so forth just to get ground. When you open the door and invite in all sentient beings as your guests, you have to drop your agenda. Many different people come in. Just when you think you have a little scheme that is going to work, it doesn’t work. It was very beneficial to Juan, but when you tried it on Mortimer, he looked at you as if you were crazy, and when you try it on Juanita, she gets insulted. Coming up with a formula won’t work. More