Week 6

Thank you for last night’s great beginning of Week 6! We are now moving from embracing common humanity to broadening our circle of compassion to all beings. As always, thank you for your courage, authenticity, and engagement in class. Let me know if you have any questions!

Week 6 Homework:

1. Formal Practice: Week 6- Cultivating Compassion for Others (See above for link)

2. Informal Daily Life Practices 

• Do the Writing Exercise About a Difficult Person to explore what comes up when you imagine extending compassion to a difficult person in your life. Share your insights from this writing exercise with your buddy. Ideally you pick a time this week to do this writing exercise together with your buddy(s).
• When it feels appropriate and comfortable, experiment with the quality of empathic care. See what it’s like to connect with someone who is experiencing some stress in their life that causes them to suffer, while INTERNALLY staying on your side of the tennis court. Intend to be fully present, attentive and authentically engaged. Explore what it’s like INTERNALLY to be with them, not for them. (You do NOT speak these words out loud to someone, only say the phrase internally to yourself when you notice you are starting to experience empathic distress). 
• Breathe in and breath out compassion: Direct compassion toward a stranger on the street (or in the grocery store, etc) and, if not too intrusive, look into the person’s eyes and wish that he or she be free from suffering.
• (Optional) Complete the Fears of Compassion Scale. Perhaps explore one fear you have around compassion and be willing to question it. Bring mindfulness to when this fear arises.

3. [Optional] Book Reading: A Fearless Heart by Thupten Jinpa Chapters for Week 6: Chapter 3: From Fear to Courage: Breaking through Our Resistance, page 47 – 66. Chapter 8,  “Expanding Our Circle of Care” 153 – 167.

Supplemental Resources:

VIDEOS:

Breaking the Wall between People @Falling Walls 2010 –Prof. Dr. Tania Singer from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences describes how social neuroscience can help us to understand how we are understood

Compassion-Focused Therapy 2013 – Paul Gilbert, PhD. presenting his talk, “Compassion-Focused Therapy,” at a Meng-Wu Lecture on February 28, 2013.

The Sandwich Man – Not even the bitter cold weather deters this man from his mission to help the hungry: Allan Law Handed out 520,000 Sandwiches on the Streets of Minneapolis Last Year.

ARTICLES:

The Roots of Moral Courage, Kristen Renwick Monroe (2010, Greater Good Article)

Why Intentionally Building Empathy Is More Important Now Than Ever, Katrina Schwartz (2019, KQED)

QUOTES/POEMS:

* “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

* “It is unconditional compassion for ourselves that leads naturally to unconditional compassion for others. If we are willing to stand fully in our own shoes and never give up on ourselves, then we will be able to put ourselves in the shoes of others and never give up on them. True compassion does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves but from realizing our kinship with all beings.” – Pema Chödrön

* “Compassion is not foolish. It doesn’t just go along with what others want so they don’t feel bad. There is a yes in compassion, and there is also a no, said with the same courage of heart. NO to abuse, no to racism, no to violence, both personal and worldwide. This is said not out of hate, but out of an unwavering care.” – Jack Kornfield

* “Compassion is realized when we know ourselves related to one another, a deep relatedness of our humanity despite our limitations. It goes beyond the differences that separate us and enters the shared space of created being. To enter this space is to have space within ourselves, to welcome into our lives the stranger, the outcast, and the poor. Compassion flourishes when we have nothing to protect and everything to share. It is the gravity of all living beings that binds together all that is weak and limited into a single ocean of love.   

We have the capacity to heal this earth of its divisions, its wars, its violence, and its hatreds. This capacity is the love within us to suffer with another and to love the other without reward. Love that transcends the ego is love that heals. When we lose ourselves for the sake of love, we shall find ourselves capable of real love.” – Ilia Delio

School Prayer
“In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,
I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.
In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons
of the firefly and the apple,
I will honor all life
—wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell—on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.”

    by Diane Ackerman