By Gabrielle Bernstein — 2015
Our most negative encounters can sometimes offer us great spiritual guidance.
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CLEAR ALL
According to the dictionary, to forgive is to stop feeling angry or resentful toward yourself or others for some perceived offense, flaw, or mistake. Keeping that definition in mind, forgiveness becomes a form of compassion.
Knowing how environmental issues affect different groups of marginalized people in unique and often overlapping ways can help us build a more sustainable and equitable world.
Compassion gets a lot of attention in positive psychology, and for good reason – it’s a major concern of many religious and philosophical leaders, including the Dalai Lama and Pope Francis.
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Yes, we must radically transform policing in America. But we cannot stop there. We must transform the pervasive systems of economic and carceral injustice that are choking our common life.
In 1989, at one of the first international Buddhist teacher meetings, Western teachers brought up the enormous problem of unworthiness and self-criticism, shame and self-hatred that frequently they arise in Western students’ practice.
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At a weekend workshop I led, one of the participants, Marian, shared her story about the shame and guilt that had tortured her.
Through the acronym RAIN (Recognize-Allow-Investigate-Nurture) we can awaken the qualities of mature compassion—an embodied, mindful presence, active caring, and an all-inclusive heart.
Everybody gets bored now and then. But some people are less likely to experience boredom than others—and it may have something to do with how they treat themselves, say researchers.
Simply put: compassion is lovingkindness in action.
“When we are interconnected, when one of us heals, we all heal.”