Set up in 2006 the Foundation aims to promote wellbeing through the scientific understanding and application of compassion. We aim to do this by a number of different means
- Research - Supervision - Dissemination
This website is the Foundation's window on the world and as such we hope that it will provide both useful information and a forum for discussion. "Promoting Wellbeing Through the Scientific Understanding & Application of Compassion"
Compassion Day 2011 is coming to a radio station near you. Each year approximately 40 radio stations from across the nation will speak out on behalf of mothers and babies living in extreme poverty. This year in a first for Compassion Day; listeners will be given the unique opportunity to join the fight for child survival
(Fayetteville, AR) -- Hundreds of people filled Bud Walton Arena, sitting rapt with attention as His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama offered words of wisdom to a Northwest Arkansas audience.
The Dalai Lama's mission was one of sharing thoughts of compassion, care and tolerance, saying "compassion, love and kindness. A genuine concern for your enemy."
Maybe the Dalai Lama is on to something. Compassion helps buffer women against the physical consequences of emotional stress, research suggests.
Compassion for others is a pathway to health and happiness. While that basic tenet of Buddhism may seem paradoxical to self-involved Westerners, newly published research suggests it has an actual physiological basis.
After the standing ovation from a near-sellout crowd at Mariucci Arena died down, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama urged the thousands in attendance Sunday afternoon to incorporate more compassion into their lives, for the benefit of themselves and of others....
"Compassion is the key factor for good health... It is not money or materialistic concerns, it is compassion and also education," he said. "If you do bad things for people, you get negative consequences. But if you do good things for people, you get good consequences."
As a human being, Bin Laden may have deserved compassion and even forgiveness, the Dalai Lama said in answer to a question about the assassination of the Al Qaeda leader. But, he said, "Forgiveness doesn't mean forget what happened. ... If something is serious and it is necessary to take counter-measures, you have to take counter-measures."
In her new book, Self Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind, Kristin Neff of Elgin writes that being kinder to oneself is a crucial ingredient to living a happier life.
Neff, who is speaking on self-compassion and signing books Tuesday at 8 p.m. at BookPeople, is a pioneering researcher on the subject. She is an associate professor at the University of Texas in human development and culture and has studied self-compassion for nearly a decade.
May 15, 2011 has been named International Day of Compassion by Bloggers Unite. Bloggers are asked to participate through their blogs.
Compassion seems to be largely missing from our daily lives. Not many people are willing to put themselves in another’s shoes and to understand their plight. We are all human and as humans we need to care about our fellow man, regardless of how he or she got themselves into the situation they find themselves in. Events like this may us get some of that compassion back.
Compassion is deep empathy for another who is suffering or living with misfortune. It is understanding and caring, and a strong desire to ease their distress. Compassion flows freely from our hearts when we let go of judgments and seek to understand. Our compassionate presence helps people to know they are not alone. Sometimes they don’t need us to fix anything. They only need to be heard with compassion, so that they can connect to their own inner wisdom. We need our own compassion as much as others do. Whether a silent prayer or a gentle touch, compassion is a priceless gift.
Here's something to think about: If you had a blank canvas in front of you, how would you paint the word "compassion"?
In Appleton, more than 10,000 students have taken on that task, and their work will soon be featured at the Trout Museum of Art.
Compassion is something that seems to get lost at times, but at the Trout Museum on West College Avenue you can't miss it.
"We suggested to challenge our students and teachers in the community to visualize compassion and figure out what compassion might look like," museum executive director Tim Riley said.
That afternoon, I started to try and treat situations with mercy and compassion, and when I saw the results of my experiment, it changed everything.
After that initial experiment, I decided to make compassion a real practice for every day. I went back to the very basics of a natural parenting philosophy. I treated every interaction with a perspective of empathy.
I also realized that I could have compassion for myself
Here is the ultimate explanation of the brain for everyone who thinks: a guide to how the brain works, how our brains came to operate the way they do, and, most important, how to use your precious gray matter to its full capacity.
The brain, according to current research, is not some kind of automatic machine that works independently of its user. In fact, the circuitry of the brain actually changes according to how one uses it. Our brains are continuously developing new capacities and refinements—or losing them, depending upon how we use them. Gerald Hüther takes us on a fascinating tour of the brain's development—from one-celled organisms to worms, moles, apes, and on to us humans—showing how we truly are what we think: our behavior directly affects our brain capacity. And the behavior that promotes the fullest development of the brain is behavior that balances emotion and intellect, dependence and autonomy, openness and focus, and ultimately expresses itself in such virtues as truthfulness, considerateness, sincerity, humility, and love.
The problems that lead to misestimating a person's capacity for compassion stem from the erroneous assumption that the pain we feel for others derives from two dissociable factors: the nature of their victimization and the character of the person observing it. We like to believe that bigger problems on the part of a victim necessarily lead to more compassion.
Similarly, we assume that if one person helps an individual suffering a specific adversity but a second person does not, that the first person must simply have a more compassionate nature. But, on further examination, neither of these predictions appears to hold. David DeSteno
As the philosopher Mel Brooks once remarked, it’s good to be king. But does being king make you good? Two new studies suggest power tends to make people less compassionate — with the exception of one specific situation.
Power may or may not corrupt, but it definitely dulls our emotional response to other people’s suffering. That’s the conclusion of a paper published in the December issue of the journal Psychological Science.
Nearly everyone agrees that women, on the whole, are more compassionate than men. In a 2008 Pew research poll, 80 percent of Americans expressed that view.
Is this a sexist stereotype? Apparently not. Newly published brain-imaging research suggests that in this case, conventional wisdom is correct.
It finds women’s brains process compassion differently than men’s, apparently due to the distinctive way our respective neural systems evolved..
Compassion is one of the most positive and fulfilling emotions we can experience. Various studies have shown that people who are the most altruistic also appear to be the happiest. There is always, deep within ourselves, a potential for loving kindness, compassion and inner peace.
This potential needs to be actualized and matured in order to achieve altruism as a way of being. This retreat explores how we can develop skills to develop compassion. Practices are taught and there are presentations on the latest research on altruism, empathy and compassion.
Casting that aside, I pricked up my ears a week or so ago to the programme when The Revd Lucy Winkett, Rector of St James's, Piccadilly, was speaking - "Human well being," she said, "relies upon reclaiming empathy and compassion." And religious sensibility has a role to play, she continued, in creating the Good Society.
Precisely! Regular readers of my blog will know that I also believe empathy and compassion to be at the heart of any attempts to heal our broken world, and I explore this in much more detail in Healing This Wounded Earth - with Compassion, Spirit and the Power of Hope.
For the past year as disaster after disaster have unfolded across the world, a message has been flashing across my mind saying. “WARNING: You are now running on reserve empathy power. Please connect your heart to a power source. If you do not, you will stop caring in a few minutes to preserve your sanity”.
All of my talents and passions are worthless if there isn’t empathy in my heart. It is empathy that will give me the power to continue on. There appears to be no power outlet in sight to recharge my fatigued heart.
A Public Symposium with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama will be held on May 2, 2011 at UCLA.
The USC US-China Institute enhances understanding of the multidimensional US-China relationship through cutting-edge social science research, innovative graduate and undergraduate training, extensive and influential public events, and professional development efforts.
Deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it.
Sorrow for the sufferings or trouble of another or others, accompanied by an urge to help; deep sympathy; pity
Origin: Middle English compassioun, from Late Latin compassiō, compassiōn-, from compassus, past participle of compatī, to sympathize: Latin com-, com- + Latin patī, to suffer; see pē(i)- in Indo-European roots.
When people are less focused on self and the problems of the self, there is a kind of alleviation of stress. There’s nothing like reaching out and contributing to the lives of others to give a person, first of all a sense of significance and purpose. The idea of the helper’s high has been around since the early 1990’s. Allen Lukes, a psychologist, had individuals going out and helping others in various ways, at low thresholds, a couple of hours of activity at a soup kitchen or helping down the block or whatever it might be.
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