Is it necessry to feel pain in order to have empathy?

To have empathy one usually identifies with the individual, and feels they can relate to the emotional suffering that person is going through. But to feel empathy does not mean one actually feels physical or emotional pain. I will quot from my dictionary, "the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensive to, and vigariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objective explicit manner, also the capacity for this."

The word empathy comes from the Greek and means "passion".. also pathos, sympathetic pity, or suffering emotions.

Empathy is either a natural trait or experience based knowledge ie you've been through the same thing. You can't choose to be empathetic and you can't acquire it by reading about it either. Empathy is the stirring that arises I you when you see or hear something good or bad.