Sunday Salon ~ compassion and carnage

Yesterday, I wrote about Carnage ~ word of the day; today I'll meet with Joy and Evelyn and Alyssa and Donna to discuss compassion.  As you can see in the screen-shot, Joy posted Am I More Compassionate? on her blog this morning.  We'll talk about what she said, including this:

"Compassion for myself pulls me away from fretting about things that are out of my control. Compassion for others pulls me toward actions that might make a difference while working with like-minded people."

I've been reading Willis Johnson's Holding Up Your Corner: Talking about Race in Your Community (2017).  It overlaps with our study of compassion, so today I'll suggest that we in my study group take a look at what Johnson is encouraging us to do.  The actions he suggests will make a difference, like Joy's actions while working with like-minded people.  First, we need to listen.

"People who are hurting need to be affirmed in their hurt; people who are angry need to be affirmed in their anger" (pp. 54, 60).

Bloggers gather in the Sunday Salon — at separate computers in different time zones — to talk about our lives and our reading.

Picking up Compassion again

Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life ~ by Karen Armstrong, 2010

Back in 2014, some of us started working our way through this book. We got all the way to August and the 8th step before the project dwindled down to only Shirley and me.  Here's what we wrote about each of the eight steps we did:

Overview ~ Practice Compassion

Preface ~ Wish for a Better World
The First Step ~ Learn About Compassion
The Second Step ~ Look at Your Own World
The Third Step ~ Compassion for Yourself
The Fourth Step ~ Empathy
The Fifth Step ~ Mindfulness
The Sixth Step ~ Action
The Seventh Step ~ How Little We Know
The Eighth Step ~ How Should We Speak to One Another?
The Ninth Step ~ Concern for Everybody
The Tenth Step ~ Knowledge
The Eleventh Step ~ Recognition
The Twelfth Step ~ Love Your Enemies

Joy @ Joy's Book Blog has set up Compassionate Sunday for a year of "a process for developing personal compassion to engage in compassionate community for a more compassionate world."  She has set up a link list for those willing to discuss their progress in blog posts.  "Or," she says, "you can join the discussion in the comments or on Facebook, where I’ll post a link to this post to anchor a discussion."  As of today, she's off and running with it.  Here's a link to her First Step: Learn about Compassion.

Monday Mindfulness ~ compassion for yourself

Today I'm thinking about compassion, specifically compassion for ourselves.  Here are some questions that arise from reading Karen Armstrong's Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life.  How would you answer any (or all) of these questions?

Questions

1. How has a lack of self-compassion affected your life?  When are you least compassionate toward yourself?  What traits do you most criticize yourself for?

2.  We are all imperfect.  We are all influenced by our reptilian brain that reacts instinctively to real or imagined threats and can cause us to behave badly.  We are all influenced by environmental factors that affect our behavior toward others.  And we all have a "dark side" (pp. 78-79).  How does knowing this help or hinder your ability to cultivate and practice compassion?

3.  Armstrong discusses how suffering is a part of life, yet "in the West we are often encouraged to think positively, brace up, stiffen our upper lip, and look determinedly on the bright side of life" (p. 81).  Think about your experience navigating a difficult or tragic time in your life.  What would have been most helpful to you at that time?  How important was having someone just listen to or be with you?  What is your experience offering help to others in difficult times?  What helps or hinders you from being fully present when those around you face difficulties?

4.  "When people attack us, they are probably experiencing a similar self-driven anxiety and frustration; they too are in pain.  In time, if we persevere, the people we fear or envy become less threatening, because the self that we are so anxious to protect and promote at their expense is a fantasy that is making us petty and smaller than we need to be" (p. 88).  What does it mean to remove yourself from the center of your world?

Actions

1. Make a list of your positive qualities, good deeds, talents, and achievements.

2.  Our own suffering often increases our compassion for others.  Acknowledge the difficulties and suffering you've endured and how you used or might use your experience to help others.  For instance, if you've experienced a serious illness or took care of someone who did, consider volunteering to help others navigate a similar circumstance.

3.  Practice the Buddha's meditation on the four immeasurable minds of love, on pages 84-85.

"...while he was working toward enlightenment, the Buddha devised a meditation that made him conscious of the positive emotions of friendship (maitri), compassion (karuna), joy (mudita), and 'even-mindedness' (upeksha) that lay dormant in his mind.  He then directed this 'immeasurable' love to the ends of the earth."

4.  Visit charterforcompassion.org and make a commitment to compassion — perhaps self-compassion.

Compassion ~ Karmapa and Karen Armstrong

His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa said,

"The absence of compassion is the greatest danger facing human beings today."  (Posted on Facebook on January 29, 2014.)

Karen Armstrong, who wrote the 2010 book Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, would probably agree with that.  I had never heard of Karmapa until yesterday, but I like what he says, including this:

"Being a Buddhist involves three things — giving up harming others, benefiting them, and taming one’s own mind.  If you possess these three, you are a Buddhist."  (Posted on Facebook on July 1, 2013.)

How would you define compassion?  I think it involves these three things he named:  not harming others, doing what's good for others or will benefit them, and taming my own mind so that I learn to "do unto others as I would want them to do unto me."  And I think it takes practice.  That's why I'm studying Armstrong's book with friends, so I get in the habit of right thinking about myself and others.  Let me know if you'd like to discuss the book with me.

Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life ~ by Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong won the 2008 TED Prize and with it her "wish to change the world."  Her goal was to create a Charter for Compassion.  You can view the video of her "TED Prize Wish" on the Charter for Compassion homepage (on the right side of the page).  Thousands of people contributed to the process and the Charter was unveiled around the world in November 2009.  I'm one of the original signers.  The organization has inspired community-based acts of compassion all over the world.

Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life ~ by Karen Armstrong, 2010

In this important and thought-provoking work, Karen Armstrong — one of the most original thinkers on the role of religion in the modern world — provides an impassioned and practical guide to helping us make the world a more compassionate place.  The twelve steps she suggests are listed below.  She shares concrete methods to help us cultivate and expand our capacity for compassion and provides a reading list to encourage us to “hear one another’s narratives.”  She teaches us that becoming a compassionate human being is a lifelong project and a journey filled with rewards.

The First Step ~ Learn About Compassion
The Second Step ~ Look at Your Own World
The Third Step ~ Compassion for Yourself
The Fourth Step ~ Empathy
The Fifth Step ~ Mindfulness
The Sixth Step ~ Action
The Seventh Step ~ How Little We Know
The Eighth Step ~ How Should We Speak to One Another?
The Ninth Step ~ Concern for Everybody
The Tenth Step ~ Knowledge
The Eleventh Step ~ Recognition
The Twelfth Step ~ Love Your Enemies

I have set up my Book Buddies blog to study this book by taking one step a month.  Each month, I'll post something about that chapter, and our discussion will be in the comments on that month's post.  Click to leave a comment on the Book Buddies post, if you want to study with us.  You are welcome to join us, even if you don't get the book, since this is an action-based study (see the next paragraph).  You will, of course, learn even more from reading the book.

The goal of this study is not to "learn about" compassion, but to PRACTICE compassion.  The Charter for Compassion has provided an organizer's guide which includes discussion questions, but also includes ACTIONS for each of the twelve sections.  In other words, we will practice being compassionate during the month we discuss each step.