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Thank you for posting this Jim. This is a topic I have been asking a lot of questions about and have been following the work of Karen Armstrong and the Charter for Compassion. Although it prompts you, here is a link as well to her related talk.
I like Tippett's formulation that, aside from the surface associations with idealism and pity, the essence of compassion is made up of three elements, merely: Kindness, Curiosity (without assumptions) and Presence.
Creating spaces that encourage individuals to explore their passions and develop their own voices in collaboration is compassion at work.
From talks with Jim, and I may be getting some of this wrong, but I have been learning how to reformulate my ideas of what science is. I think this talk on compassion does something that many of us hailing from the world of the humanities and art tend to do, and that is to think that works that deal with understanding the human heart and mind are not connected to science. Yet science is not just the exploration of galaxies and the breakdown of the physical laws of our material world, but it is related with understanding WHAT IS after considering what the world first presents to us . Compassion, art, literature, philosophy are all flimsy if not coming first from a desire to find truth in relation to the world and ask questions about why it is the way it is and how it could be made better. By opening ourselves to questions about another human being through presence and kindness, compassion is not a flimsy concept or righteous ideal, but the breaking down of barriers and walls that keep us thinking we are separate - which opens us to knowledge that helps alleviate the human condition and solve many of the problems we have. These are discoveries, and though they are not scientific in the traditional sense (by giving us objective knowledge or facts to work from and apply universally) compassion has similar roots, that start by looking at what is first. So since the two are related in this deep way, I don't think it is helpful to keep formulating them as separate areas of human life and knowledge, i.e. by praising a scientist like Einstein for being compassionate as well (though it is helpful to look at this side of his work). Or to think somehow that Gandhi or MLK brought new truths and practices to the world that were disconnected or outside of an understanding of the reality of the world, or what is.
Thank you for posting this Jim. This is a topic I have been asking a lot of questions about and have been following the work of Karen Armstrong and the Charter for Compassion. Although it prompts you, here is a link as well to her related talk.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ted.com/talks/karen_armstrong_makes_her_ted_prize_wish_the_charter_for_compassion.html
I like Tippett's formulation that, aside from the surface associations with idealism and pity, the essence of compassion is made up of three elements, merely: Kindness, Curiosity (without assumptions) and Presence.
Creating spaces that encourage individuals to explore their passions and develop their own voices in collaboration is compassion at work.
From talks with Jim, and I may be getting some of this wrong, but I have been learning how to reformulate my ideas of what science is. I think this talk on compassion does something that many of us hailing from the world of the humanities and art tend to do, and that is to think that works that deal with understanding the human heart and mind are not connected to science. Yet science is not just the exploration of galaxies and the breakdown of the physical laws of our material world, but it is related with understanding WHAT IS after considering what the world first presents to us . Compassion, art, literature, philosophy are all flimsy if not coming first from a desire to find truth in relation to the world and ask questions about why it is the way it is and how it could be made better. By opening ourselves to questions about another human being through presence and kindness, compassion is not a flimsy concept or righteous ideal, but the breaking down of barriers and walls that keep us thinking we are separate - which opens us to knowledge that helps alleviate the human condition and solve many of the problems we have. These are discoveries, and though they are not scientific in the traditional sense (by giving us objective knowledge or facts to work from and apply universally) compassion has similar roots, that start by looking at what is first. So since the two are related in this deep way, I don't think it is helpful to keep formulating them as separate areas of human life and knowledge, i.e. by praising a scientist like Einstein for being compassionate as well (though it is helpful to look at this side of his work). Or to think somehow that Gandhi or MLK brought new truths and practices to the world that were disconnected or outside of an understanding of the reality of the world, or what is.