COMPASSION
What is compassion?
Compassion is the ability to stay present with suffering and feel the wish to relieve that suffering. Staying present with suffering isn’t easy and we have many strategies for turning away, including pity, aversion and overwhelm. It is important to distinguish the wish to relieve suffering from the act of relieving suffering because compassion is possible even when action is not. One simple definition for compassion is the meeting of unconditional love with suffering.
My Work
In 2009 I was invited by Thupten Jinpa, primary translator for His Holiness the Dalai Lama, to collaborate on the development of the Cultivation Compassion Training (CCT) at the Center for Altruism, Research and Education at the Stanford University Medical School.
From 2009 to 2022 I worked as one of five founding faculty, teaching courses for the public, refining the curriculum, teaching for specialized leadership groups, and developing and leading teacher trainings. In 2017 I helped to launch the first Spanish-speaking CCT teacher training in Spain.
In 2017, I created Compassion Corps (CC), designed to bring compassion trainings to underserved communities around the world. CC was launched through the Compassion Institute and has now found a home at the Global Compassion Coalition. This program gives grants to certified teachers of evidence-based compassion trainings to offer programs free of charge to groups around the world who could benefit from this type of support, including: incarcerated individuals, parents of children with autism, providers who work with the homeless, providers who work with victims of human trafficking, special educators and many more.
In 2020 I co-developed a one-day intensive version of CCT which I launched in person with Thupten Jinpa (pre-pandemic).
21 Minute Guided Compassion Practice