(Part One) The Urgency of Compassion

Compassion is a Necessity, Not a Luxury

His Holiness the Dalai Lama says compassion is a necessity, not a luxury, without which humanity cannot survive. It has become very clear that as social beings living in groups, we have to work together. Our world today has become even smaller, and we occupy spaces with people from multiple backgrounds, racial backgrounds, religious backgrounds, socioeconomic backgrounds, and so forth. So, compassion is a necessity today, because at its heart, compassion has to do with a sense of meaningful connection, a warm-hearted, tender connection with each other. That sense of connection is so crucial for us because it is that warm-hearted connection that provides us with a sense of safety, a sense of security.

If we are around people with whom we feel a certain sense of connection and warmth, it’s that warm-hearted feeling towards them that is at the heart of cooperation. We respond to other’s needs; we see their needs differently. When we feel tenderly towards others, this warm-hearted feeling promotes cooperation and trust. These are very fundamental values that we need in our society today. In the modern world that we live in today these values are often missing, despite the tremendous progress that we have made in the material world and with all the conveniences that many people in this world enjoy, including good health and medical advances that increase our longevity and cure many illnesses.

What Is Missing?

Compassion for Ourselves and Others

A lot of people today, particularly in the more advanced world, the materially advanced cultures with high-achieving populations, a lot of people struggle with a sense of inadequacy, self-blame, and self-criticism. This takes its toll on people. We need compassion for ourselves and compassion for others, for our personal well-being but also our interpersonal well-being, I think this compassion is so important. 

I think it comes down to our sense of fulfillment, happiness, and satisfaction. It has to do with our internal worldview and perspectives. Seeking happiness solely based on external achievement has its limitations, because first of all, when you seek an inner sense of fulfillment and happiness through only external material accomplishments such as fame and name and so forth, without a certain degree of inner contentment, the goal post will keep moving. No matter how much you accomplish, if you are always comparing yourself with others or with your own expectations and with meeting unrealistic goals, then you will always feel that you are falling short, and that is what creates an inner frustration. 

On one hand, this can lead to a nasty sense of competition, which in turn can ruin our relationships and our own well-being. On the other hand, we feel that despite our efforts we are not achieving, we are not getting where we want to be, our lives are not perfect. Then, we turn inwards with that self-blame and the feeling “I’m not good enough,” and really hurting our self-esteem and self-worth. That’s why I think that self-compassion is an inner work, that we see the worth in our being human, that nobody is perfect. We are not exceptions to that. But at the same time, we’re not only mistakes or certain failures. Life is much more than a few mistakes and failure. There is so much to appreciate in life.

The Inner Work of Self-Compassion 

It reminds me of a conversation that His Holiness the Dalai Lama had with Dr. Aaron Beck, the founder of cognitive behavioral psychology. In that conversation, Dr. Beck, picked up on His Holiness’ insight that when we are dealing with our own emotional problems, that we need to bring in this broader perspective. Dr. Beck mentioned that once he had a physicist come to his therapy session, who had expected that he would win the Nobel Prize in physics that year. But for some reason, he did not get it and he was devastated, just really crushed and depressed.

So, he showed up at his therapy session with Dr. Beck. Beck said that when he asked this physicist how important winning the Nobel Prize was for him, he said that it was “one hundred percent” important to him. It was all that mattered to him. You can imagine that if something is one hundred percent important and you don’t have that, then you would feel like a loser. In that emotional state, as its vision narrows, then what is left is the feeling that “I’m a failure,” that “I’m no good, I’m a failure .” We reduce ourselves to a failure, to some shortcoming. 

But Dr. Beck, with his brilliant skills, he asked the physicist, “What else do you have in your life? How important is your wife?” As he thought about it, he realized that she’s important, perhaps twenty percent. Then Beck asked, “What about your children, do you have any children?” The physicist says, “I have three children.” “So, how important are they?” Dr. Beck asked. At first the physicist said forty percent, but then he thought a little bit more about it, and he realized how precious they were to him. Maybe he will have more time to spend with them now! He realized that his children were actually eighty to eighty-five percent important to him.

Appreciating Our Strengths

Dr. Beck says that the physicist left that session not being depressed anymore, because he realized that his life was so much more than the Nobel Prize he did not get. There was so much already in his life. So, by making visible the things that we already have and appreciating our strengths and seeing all the things that are going well for us, we can have more of a holistic sense of ourselves as human beings.

CBCT or Cognitively-Based Compassion Training is a tool that we can use to get in touch with the innate capacity that we as human beings have for compassion. CBCT was developed from a blend of traditional Tibetan Buddhist mind training and western-based cognitive practices. The Buddhist mind training tradition of Tibet, known as “lojong,” actually evolved in ancient India and this form of Buddhism came to Tibet from India. So, in Tibet, for the last thirteen hundred years or so, up until 1959 before the invasion of Tibet by the Communist Chinese, Tibet really was a place where this ancient Indian knowledge flourished.

Hundreds of texts were translated and many great masters from India such as Kamalashila, Shantarakshita, Atisha and so forth, many of these masters went to Tibet to disseminate these teachings. Tibetans translated all this material into Tibetan and big monastic universities were founded there. This spiritual culture from India really flourished and was sustained for millennia in Tibet. It had evolved in India since the time of the Buddha twenty-five hundred years ago.

Mind Training

The heart of “lojong” or mind training has to do with understanding our mind and emotions and how to transform those aspects of our mind and emotions that are unhealthy and that can be detrimental. Of course, all these emotions have their place in our evolution, like fear, anger, sadness, and so forth. But some of these emotions, if they are drawn out of proportion, if they become maladaptive, that’s how they take a toll on our health, our physical, mental, and emotional health as well as our relationships and our work and how productive we are.

From this perspective, if you consider the heart of mind training, it’s actually very scientific. You hear today about the “cognitive regulation of emotions,” and there are cognitive psychologists who try to understand emotions by using what is called the “process model of emotions” and look at what conditions are conducive to certain emotions such as the environment and other factors. What kinds of conditions give rise to emotions like fear, anger, anxiety, agitation, and so forth? Then attempting to understand how emotions gain strength and what impact they have on health.