Expanding Compassion

Compassion is a pathway to well-being, both for you and others.

Compassion is grounded in perspective—our ability to view things in their true nature, to recognize the suffering involved, and be moved to take action. Compassion is greater than empathy. When you feel empathy, you are attempting to place yourself in someone else’s shoes and relate to their experience. Empathy enables you to better sense another person’s emotions and imagine what they might be thinking and feeling. Compassion expands empathy—not only do you recognize pain and suffering, but you deliberately taking action to relieve the pain and suffering you empathize with.

Pity and sympathy, are narrower than compassion. When you take pity you recognize someone’s suffering from an emotional distance—it can even be condescending or dehumanizing. It is not the kind of perspective taking that promotes well-being. When you have sympathy, it too is from an emotional distance, even though you take action to help someone that is suffering. When you learn to practice compassion it enables you to better move through the kind of challenges you—and everyone else— face each day. It enables a broader kind of perspective taking that allows you to see the complexity of a situation in all its richness, and makes you feel better through the action you take, having understood this complexity.

In Forum, you’ll learn the ways in which you can cultivate compassion in your life so that you have a richer experience of well-being. You’ll learn tools to build a practice of compassion for others, and for your self.