Must you first suffer in the same way to truly understand someone else's pain?

Similar experiences can indeed make it easier to understand how much someone is suffering. But not everyone must endure the same hardship before being qualified to help. It is all right if you have not experienced it. What matters is whether you can truly understand the person and direct your compassion toward their present needs.

When starting my business in my early years, I faced financial pressure, as well as difficulties in love and marriage. Having lived through those days, I could better understand how such pressure affects daily life when I later met people with similar problems. These experiences gave me a more personal understanding of others.

If you have never lacked money but casually tell someone struggling financially not to worry because life will go on, they may not be able to take your words in. The suffering they are experiencing needs to be truly understood. When helping, you cannot simply offer a few comforting words from a distance and assume you understand.

I have also used this perspective when discussing stories of Guanyin Bodhisattva and Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva. Being willing to draw close to living beings helps those who suffer feel less distant from you. This does not mean Buddhas cannot deliver living beings; I have explicitly said that Buddhas also do so. What we need to learn is to set aside an elevated status and approach the other person, so that our help truly reaches their heart.

It is like drinking bubble tea: every shop has its own flavor. Hearing someone say one is sweet and another is mild still feels different from tasting them yourself. Reading scriptures and hearing teachings can give you knowledge, while actually living through something brings another layer of understanding. When helping people, do not stop at being good at explaining principles. Understand what they are going through.

I place such value on experience partly because I learned my way from not knowing how and having no spiritual perceptions to eventually being able to help others. Setbacks in my career and marriage, disappointment in friends, and feelings of betrayal later became part of how I understood people. When discussing this, I have used strong language, saying that going through hardship myself enabled me to become a very good teacher. But I have also said that not experiencing hardship does not mean someone cannot become a good teacher; their path of learning and understanding is simply different. Both sides need to be considered together. Suffering cannot be treated as a qualifying test everyone must pass first.

So if a spiritual teacher has not experienced the kind of pressure someone faces, they should not lightly claim to understand completely. Unless they can genuinely feel the person's pain deeply, merely saying they understand will offer little sense of strength. The point is whether you are willing to approach their difficulties, not that everyone must first go and suffer.