By Paul Gilbert, Hannah Gilbert — 2020
Acting compassionately isn’t just about kindness, but about wanting to halt suffering. Right now, we must be wise—and set a template for the future.
Read on www.theguardian.com
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.
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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I’ve done a little bit of work with soldiers returning from Iraq and have worked with domestic violence shelter workers on issues of vicarious trauma.
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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.
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.
At its essence, compassion is a gift of the spirit—one with the power to change lives, reduce stress, and heal depression.
There are various developmental theories that go into the tool kit that parents and educators utilize to help mold caring and ethically intact people, including those of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget and American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg.