Week 8
Thank you for last night’s beautiful completion. Even though we are not meeting anymore on Zoom, week 8 still is part of the program so please make sure you still engage for this upcoming week, so you’ll receive the most benefit from the Braveheart course. Week 8 is about moving from active compassion practice to integrating compassion into all aspects of our life.
We highly encourage you to continue with these practices and your meditation. These are a beautiful exercise for your brain to help you continue to deepen into compassion- giving compassion for others, receiving compassion, and giving ourselves compassion.
If you have any questions, let us know!
Much care and compassion,
Britta & Lee
Class Google Folder with all slides
Link to COR’s calendar:
COR Calendar: https://corexperience.com/calendar/ This is for you to know what COR offers ongoingly. Please do come back and participate in or staff any of our life changing programs!
Week 8 Homework:
1. Formal Practice: Week 8- Integration Compassion Practice
- The link to access the CCT Guided Meditations see above
- Remember you have access to these meditations for the rest of your life!
- Continue to use them, tailor your practice to what you need, and see how your own practice deepens as you continue with the meditations.
2. Informal Daily Life Practices
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- Please feel free to use any and all the practices I gave you in the previous weeks. They are all powerful at different times in your daily lives.
- Look for ways you can engage in compassionate action, be it donating to a food bank, offering toilet paper to a neighbor, doing Tonglen, or reaching out to a friend to see how they are doing.
- Look for others who are stepping up in compassion! As Mr. Rogers said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
3. [Optional] Book Reading: A Fearless Heart by Thupten Jinpa Chapters for Week 8: Chapter 4: “From Compassion to Action” pages 69-87.
Supplemental Resources:
AUDIO:
VIDEO:
If We Could See Inside Other People’s Hearts
ARTICLES:
Smile at Fear: Pema Chodron on Bravery, Open Heart & Basic Goodness. By Pema Chödrön. In this article, Pema discusses how if you want to pitch in and help solve the world’s problems, you’ve got to start with yourself. This article lists her advice for making transformative power of this.
A wandering mind is a less caring mind: Daily experience sampling during compassion meditation training. Hooria Jazaieri, Ihno A. Lee, Kelly McGonigal, Thupten Jinpa, James R. Doty, James J. Gross, Philippe R. Goldin (2015).
Altering the Trajectory of Affect and Affect Regulation: the Impact of Compassion Training. Hooria Jazaieri, Kelly McGonigal, Ihno A. Lee, Thupten Jinpa, James R. Doty, James J. Gross, & Philippe R. Goldin (2017)
The effects of Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT) on health‐care workers. Janina Scarlet, Nathanael Altmeyer, Susan Knier, R. Edward Harpin (2017).
How Compassion Could Be The Cure for Chronic Stress. Current research led by James Doty, MD, suggests that the intersection of stress, mindfulness, and compassion has major implications not only for individual and relationship health but for the broader health of our communities. This article is a Q&A about the importance of compassion with James Doty.
QUOTES/POEMS:
“We can let the circumstances of our life harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice…. An analogy for bodhichitta (open heart and mind) is the rawness of a broken heart. Sometimes this broken heart gives birth to anxiety and panic, sometimes to anger, resentment, and blame. But under the hardness of that armor there is the tenderness of genuine sadness. This is our link with all those who have ever loved. This genuine heart of sadness can teach us great compassion. It can humble us when we’re arrogant and soften us when we are unkind. It awakens us when we prefer to sleep and pierces through our indifference. This continual ache of the heart is a blessing that when accepted fully can be shared with all.”
― Pema Chödrön
*“We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy. (10)”
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heartfelt Advice for Hard Times
*“May I be a guard for those who need protection,
A guide for those on the path,
A boat, a raft, a bridge for those who wish to cross the flood.
May I be a lamp in the darkness,
A resting place for the weary,
A healing medicine for all who are sick,
A vase of plenty, a tree of miracles;
And for the boundless multitudes of living beings,
May I bring sustenance and awakening,
Enduring like the earth and sky
Until all beings are freed from sorrow,
And all are awakened.”
From “The Way of the Bodhisattva” by Shantideva