To develop and expand compassion, the basis of liberation from suffering, one needs to know how to preserve and harness the substance of compassion (שמן, bodhichitta). This has three essential practical actions:

1. Transmutation
2. Transformation
3. Transubstantiation

These three acts develop the fire (ש) of compassion.

"If someone is near me [Christ], he will burn. I [Christ] am the fire (ש) that blazes. Whoever is near me is near fire; whoever is far from me is far from life." —Gospel of the Savior

"Now therefore if any one hath received the mysteries of Baptism (Transmutation), those mysteries become a great fire (ש), exceeding strong, and wise, so as to burn up all the sins: and the Fire [ש] entereth into the soul secretly, so that it may consume within it all the sins which the counterfeit of the spirit hath printed there." —Pistis Sophia