Throughout the generations, compassion and love have played an important role in the dynamics of human interaction. While these two concepts are constant in a general sense, they become more dynamic when viewed through different religious and cultural perspectives. The Dalai Lama, Pope John Paul II, and Louis Jacobs all provide great examples of how compassion and love vary when looked at through a religious perspective. The Dalai Lama defines compassion as “the ability to enter into and share the suffering of others.” Coming out of the Buddhist perspective, not only is compassion a fundamental level of success, but it should evolve into an unconditional and universal part of one's person. He believes that a person's main goal in life is to achieve happiness because happiness is not only a sign of total contentment but also shows a lack of suffering. Happiness, he argues, comes when you take others into consideration and turn it into compassion, paving the way for happiness by improving your ethical practice and protecting yourself from factors that hinder those that foster compassion. However, the things that begin to bring us happiness can turn into suffering if what originally brought us happiness becomes too much. In Ethics for the New Millennium, the Dalai Lama gives the example of food: when we consume food it initially makes us happy but eating too much of it can cause immediate suffering (i.e. stomach ache) but also future suffering if we continue with the behavior (i.e. high cholesterol) . (Ethics for the New Millennium, 136). Since the Dalai Lama links happiness to compassion, compassion and suffering are also related. The Dalai Lama claims that to reach and obtain compassion and love, suffering must be eliminated...... middle of paper...... love and compassion for another person because one has the desire to doing so is the only way Jacobs considers it a moral act. Jacobs believes that ethics and love for others are self-justifying, deeming them autonomous from each other as well as autonomous from religion. The nature of compassion and love as well as moral principles are consistent with every religious and cultural view as there is a definite correlation between the concepts. However, when looked at from a different point of view, the ways in which they are related have different meanings and are constantly changing. Bibliography Gyatso, Tenzin. Ethics for the new millennium. New York: The Berkley Publishing Group, 1999. 1-231. Print.Jacobs, Louis. "The relationship between religion and ethics in Jewish thought". n. page. Web. 21 September 2011. Paolo, Giovanni. 2011.