If you want to be unhappy,

think of yourself.

If you want to be happy,

think of others. — S a kyo n g M I p h a M R I n p o c h e

5 Baby Steps to KindnessJudy Lief’s tips to develop more compassion

Everyone Is Your GuestHow to be a bodhisattva

No BoundaryWhy love and emptiness work together

Radical Compassion4 activists working for a better world

CompassionChanges Everything

shambhala sunB u d d h i s t w i s d o m f o r o u r t i m e j a n u a r y 2 0 1 5

Ello’s Paul Budnitz • Brooklyn zEn • 5 Buddhist slogans for thE officE • Buddha’s Birds

“The first step is to acknowledge the compassionate side of our nature.

It’s telling a different story about who we are as human beings.”

ThupTen Jinpa, the developer of Stanford Compassion Training,

on proven techniques to help us deepen and expand our natural kindness.

Pe o p l e u s ua l ly t h i n k that compassion is something you’re born with or

not. She is a caring person, he is not—it’s just who you are. But Buddhism (which

recognizes no fixed identity anyway) views it differently, and Western science is

beginning to as well.

Buddhism and cutting-edge science see compassion, empathy, and cooperation as an

inherent part of who we are as human beings—maybe who we really are. And scientists

are discovering something Buddhists have known for thousands of years: that with the

right techniques, our natural compassion can be cultivated, deepened, and expanded.

None of us has a fixed allotment of love—in fact our love is unlimited.

No one has done more to promote the important truth that compassion is both natural

and can be cultivated than the extraordinary Thupten Jinpa. Best known as the principal

translator for His Holiness the Dalai Lama, he is a former monk with the highest philo-

sophical degree in Tibetan Buddhism. As chairman of the Mind and Life Institute, he is at

the center of the rich conversation between Western science and Buddhism. In association

with The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE),

Thupten Jinpa developed Stanford Compassion Training, an eight-week program adapt-

ing traditional Buddhist techniques for the twenty-first century. It offers us all a path to

a more compassionate life and world. — M e lv i n M c l e o d

What is the traditional Buddhist approach to compassion?Historically, cultivating compassion has been a major focus in the Buddhist tradition.

Meditation as a mental training is common to all the Indian spiritual traditions. Where

Buddhism is different is in its systematic techniques to cultivate our compassionate side.

In the Metta Sutta, the Buddha beautifully tells his disciples that just as a mother feels a

natural, unconditional love for her child, so should we cultivate that sentiment toward all

beings without any exception, whether they are near or far, friends or enemies. That state-

ment by the Buddha has served as the basis for a long tradition of cultivating compassion.

In Tibetan Buddhism, cultivating compassion is not done simply through closing your

eyes and doing silent practice. The Tibetan tradition also uses the power of myth to

inspire compassion. Avalokiteshvara, the thousand-armed Buddha of Compassion, per-

sonifies the enlightened, perfected state of compassion. When compassion transcends all

boundaries, when it is effortless, when it is one’s very mode of being, that is personified by

the Buddha of Compassion. This kind of mythology speaks powerfully to the devout.

How to Train the Heart

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That is the ideal. How, step by step, do we get there?The first step is to have a deep conviction that compassion is a

very important part of our nature. This is particularly important

for people in the West today, who are conditioned to believe that

the ultimate motivation driving all of our behavior is self-interest.

Which is in fact celebrated in this culture.Exactly. In the West we’re kind of going against the current

when we talk about compassion. But on the other hand, science

is increasingly telling us that while the pursuit of self-interest is

a powerful drive, the instinct for nurturing, caring, and connec-

tion is equally powerful. From both a Buddhist and scientific

point of view, we are complex creatures who have both of these

powerful drives.

So the first step is to acknowledge and embrace the caring and

compassionate part of our nature, and to celebrate it. Basically,

the first step is telling a different story about who we are as hu-

man beings.

once you have changed your perspective in this way, you begin

to notice a lot more things that express the compassionate side

of our nature. You begin to see how often people are sponta-

neously kind, even toward strangers. You see how the sight of

someone else doing a kind act inspires and elevates you.

Normally we don’t notice these things, and so becoming more

aware of the power of kindness and compassion in our every-

day lives is really the first step. Then you begin to appreciate the

value of compassion at a visceral level, not just intellectually.

once that kind of perspective arises, you can start working

with yourself. Sometimes people coming from the Buddhist

side tend to see meditation as the answer for everything, but

silent sitting practice is just one part of what one could call a

contemplative approach to life. There is the other part, in which

you bring this awareness into your day-to-day interaction with

others and begin to reframe the way you relate to the world.

For example, if you normally relate to someone in a negative

way, you try to see how you can reframe your relationship in

a compassionate way. Normally, compassion arises only as a

sentiment in reaction to a situation—the sight of suffering, of

someone in pain or crying. What the Buddhist tradition sug-

gests is that you could actually make compassion your stand-

point, the perspective from which you relate to the world. Com-

passion becomes part of your intention of being in the world,

and in this way you start making it real.

Tell us about the compassion training program you have de-veloped at Stanford, which makes these principles available to everyone who wants more compassion in their lives, not just Buddhists.The basic premise of Stanford Compassion Training is fairly

simple. It is based on the premise that compassion is an impor-

tant part of our fundamental nature. Then, by becoming more

aware of and connecting with our inherent compassion, we can

learn to relate to ourselves, others, and the world around us

from that side of our nature.

Which is basically the Buddhist approach you just described.Exactly. Then the question was, how do we design a program

that it is truly universal, that does not presuppose a Buddhist

metaphysic or cultural assumptions. That was the challenge.

What we came up with was an eight-week program with six

steps. In the first week, we focus on the basic skills of calming

the mind and learning to focus, because any form of contem-

plative practice requires the ability to calm, focus, and apply the

mind. We want people to develop some ability to gather their

thoughts, calm themselves down, deregulate from whatever

emotional states they are experiencing, and learn to apply their

mind to a chosen topic.

An important part of the practice at this initial stage is becom-

ing more aware of our intention. How can we bring conscious

intention into our life? This is taken from the Tibetan lojong, or

mind training, tradition. We check our altruistic intention or

motivation at the beginning, and dedicate the benefit to others

at the end. These can frame our session, our day, or our life.

In the second week, we begin the actual compassion

training. In the traditional sequence, we start with

compassion for ourselves, and then extend that out to

loved ones, and then to strangers, and enemies, and so

on. But in this training, we begin by focusing on our

loved ones. one of the things that I have been quite

surprised by is how challenging self-compassion is for

people in the West. So we switched the sequence and

start with compassion for a loved one, because people

find that easier than compassion for themselves.

The idea is that we all experience a natural feeling

of affection for our loved ones—our children, our

spouse, our friends, our aging parents, and even

strangers who are in pain. We are all capable of that,

because we are naturally empathetic creatures. The

practice here is to pay conscious attention to this

feeling, to evoke it, so it reminds us that this is a

natural quality we possess. This is the second week.

In the third and fourth weeks, we focus on self-

compassion. We felt we needed to devote two full

weeks of the program to this. The first part focuses

on self-acceptance, self-forgiveness, and being at ease

with oneself—those kinds of things. In the second

week of self-compassion practice, we focus on learning

to be comfortable with the aspiration for one’s own

happiness, because a lot of people in the West have a

problem with this. They don’t seem to be able to dis-

tinguish between genuine self-concern and narcissistic

self-absorption, and this is a very critical distinction.

In subsequent weeks, we expand our compassion

to include more and more people, and ultimately all

beings. We recognize the interdependence of self and

others and see how much our happiness is dependent

on others—how many people contributed so we

could enjoy a simple meal. We extend our compassion

to all of them.

Finally, the participants train in what we call active

compassion. This is drawn from the Buddhist practice

of tonglen, in which we mentally take in others’ suf-

fering and offer them our happiness. We are trying to

prime ourselves so the sentiments we have cultivated

can actually manifest in action.

Then, throughout the eight-week program, the stu-

dents do a number of what we call informal practices.

These are drawn from the mind training principle that

whatever you encounter in life, you can bring it into

your practice. So whatever the focus happens to be for

that particular week, we encourage the participants to

use their everyday experience to bring it out. ♦

t h e p r i n c i p l e o f c o M pa s s i o n lies at the heart of all

religious, ethical, and spiritual traditions, calling us always to

treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion

impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the

suffering of our fellow creatures, to

dethrone ourselves from the center of our

world and put another there, and to

honor the inviolable sanctity of every sin-

gle human being, treating everybody,

without exception, with absolute justice,

equity, and respect.

It is also necessary in both public and

private life to refrain consistently and

empathically from inflicting pain. To act

or speak violently out of spite, chauvin-

ism, or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic

rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating

others—even our enemies—is a denial of our common

humanity. We acknowledge that we have failed to live com-

passionately and that some have even increased the sum of

human misery in the name of religion.

We therefore call upon all men and women to restore

compassion to the center of morality and religion; to return

to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture

that breeds violence, hatred, or disdain is illegitimate; to

ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful infor-

mation about other traditions, religions, and cultures; to

encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious

diversity; and to cultivate an informed empathy with the suf-

fering of all human beings—even those regarded as enemies.

We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous,

and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a

principled determination to transcend selfishness, compas-

sion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological, and

religious boundaries. Born of our deep interdependence,

compassion is essential to human relationships and to a ful-

filled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indis-

pensable to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful

global community. ♦

To join the more than 100,000 people who have signed the Charter for Com-passion, go to www.charterforcompassion.org.

The Charter for Compassionka r e n a r M s t ro n g ’s inspiring call for a more compassionate global community

Thupten Jinpa: Buddhist scholar, translator for the Dalai Lama, and scientist of the heart and mind.

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