According to Osho, the words aren’t synonymous: nonviolence (ahimsa) is merely not harming—self-concerned, negative restraint. Love is affirmative: actively bringing joy, even at one’s own cost. Compassion shares and feels the world’s suffering, sensing one’s participation in it—a tender wound. Pity notices another’s pain yet blames them, gives from above, and subtly insults. Thus, choose love’s creativity and compassion’s participation over the ego of pity and the passivity of nonviolence.
Not hurting is just avoiding harm; love goes out to make others happy; compassion feels others’ pain as also ours; pity looks down on people and “helps” in a hurtful, superior way.