Jul
17
Meditation for Compassion
We would all like to think that we are compassionate beings. Most likely compassion extends towards friends, family, co-workers, the people we come across daily and even with strangers. Does this same level of compassion extend to animals and the natural world and do we extend compassion toward ourselves?
In this short video, Shauna Shapiro Ph.D, a highly applauded mindfulness expert and researcher, talks about how meditation can change the brain to help us be more compassionate.
She highlights research that tells us that positive and negative emotions in the brain look different, and are quite distinguishable. Although this particular piece of research was conducted about a decade ago it is reinforced with advancements in the study of neuroplasticity. What is know is that the brain is an organ that learns and is changed by experiences.
So it would be fair to say that by being more compassionate we will be more compassionate. The question is how do we maintain compassion and kindness all the time, in everything we do? One way is through mindful attention and intention, yes that means through meditation.
Shapiro talks about applying the rule of “what we practice becomes stronger“, toward the cultivation of compassion and happiness. She says:
changing your interior environment through training the mind and heart and body in these practices, can actually shift our levels of happiness.
So the art of building compassion can be achieved by practicing meditation to strengthen the regions of the brain that help us develop more compassion, kindness and emotional intelligence.
Let it start with me
Another mantra that you may have heard is: compassion begins at home. Can we be compassionate toward others if we are not self-compassionate? Is it really okay to be compassionate toward others and self-critical and highly competitive with ourselves. According to the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, research is showing that “self-criticism makes us weaker in the face of failure, more emotional, and less likely to assimilate lessons from our failures.” In other words, lack of self-compassion makes us less resilient to future failures.
Meditation and mindfulness practice are ways of cultivating self-compassion first. We can use this cultivated compassion to be compassionate and kind toward others, other living things and our natural world. In other words, mindfulness meditation can help us to be more compassionate and kind toward our environment and how we interact with it.
Consider this quote from Albert Einstein and then share your ideas on meditation as a way of cultivating compassion.
A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. – Albert Einstein
