Empathy Movement Magazine

Compassion is a gift that keeps on giving. When you develop a sense of connection and genuine concern for others, you not only help them with your presence and actions, you also give yourself a gift. How? By engaging in each moment with an open mind and heart, you learn not to run from any experience. As such, you become increasingly able to handle whatever life throws your way. Opening the heart develops strength, not weakness.

One can practice compassion both on and off the cushion. Here I offer a simple sitting meditation practice as well as 10 informal exercises for bringing compassion into your daily life. Pretty soon, the distinction between these modes of practice loses meaning. All of life becomes practice.

by Erika Rosenberg

I’ve long advocated what I call “diffuse empathy”. People tend to take more of an interest in the sufferings of others when they can relate to an individual’s story, and see how much they have in common with that person. This can happen through personal acquaintance, through art, or even the news media. For example, movies such as “Schindler’s List” help us feel the abstract horror of genocide acutely by taking us into the lives of particular victims. The problem is that this makes our compassion contingent on the particular stories that happen to reach us. Thus, while it’s important to keep the awful history of the Holocaust in memory, tragedies going on right now – such as in Palestine, Yemen, - rarely seem to gain Hollywood’s attention....

If empathy can be likened to light, a diffuse glow extending everywhere is far better than a powerful but narrow beam focused on a select few, while leaving the rest of the world in darkness.

by Jon Reinsch

Haycox says that liberals, of course, understand the problems with this approach and that "a rising tide cannot lift the boats that are tethered to the pilings." The professor concludes by lamenting the lack of "compassionate" conservatives. Perhaps he is longing for the return of George Bush, but I think not.... 

The professor suggests that conservatives lack compassion. I've heard others say they are selfish and uncaring. Conservatives are used to this because most critics lack ideas and facts to back up their positions, so they just demagogue and question the other side's morality. Most conservatives assume liberals' intentions are good, however misguided.

Inequality's roots deep in U.S. history
Professor Steve Haycox 

http://www.adn.com/2012/05/03/2451327/inequalitys-roots-deep-in-us-history.html ;

What liberals understand is that too many inequalities in society are consciously created, are self-serving and are incompatible with real democracy. A conservatism truly compassionate would act on this same understanding.

Psychologists now believe fledgling psychopaths can be identified as early as kindergarten. The hope is to teach these children empathy before it’s too late...

For the past 10 years, Waschbusch has been studying “callous-unemotional” children — those who exhibit a distinctive lack of affect, remorse or empathy — and who are considered at risk of becoming psychopaths as adults...

 Researchers hope, for example, that the capacity for empathy, which is controlled by specific parts of the brain, might still exist weakly in callous-unemotional children, and could be strengthened.

...we worry about hurting others, because we feel empathy. Or we worry about other people not liking us. Or we worry about getting caught. When you start to take away those inhibitors, I think that’s when you end up with psychopathy.”

by Jennifer Kahn

New research from the U.K.suggests certain types of group music-making can help kids develop empathy...

Music education produces myriad benefits, strengthening kids’ abilities in reading, math, and verbal intelligence. New British research suggests it may also teach something less tangible, but arguably just as important:
The ability to empathize.

In a year-long program focused on group music-making, 8- to 11-year old children became markedly more compassionate, according to a just-published study from the University of Cambridge. The finding suggests kids who make music together aren’t just having fun: they’re absorbing a key component of emotional intelligence.

By Tom Jacobs

Reasearch by Tal-Chen Rabinowitch  
Darwin College, Cambridge

http://www.mus.cam.ac.uk/CMS/people/tcnr2/

His Holiness the Dalai Lama sat down with Arianna Huffington at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London to celebrate his Templeton Prize, and discuss the importance of a productive conversation between spirituality and science.

Barack Obama’s decision to support gay marriage was a rare act of empathy in this presidential election.

..the thing Obama does at his best: He listens. My oracle at Facebook tells me that many of us think that is also precisely the thing Obama does worst—he compromises, triangulates, and negotiates. But perhaps we could at least stipulate that listening to and—yup, I’m saying it—empathizing with people who are very different from you, and rejiggering your views to accommodate them, is a quality we have seen almost none of in this presidential campaign, from either side.

We need to listen to the experiences of others before dismissing them as dangerous, immoral, and wrong. Obama wrote in The Audacity of Hope, that his whole moral code was conditioned on the idea that to be able to empathize with people richer and poorer, more liberal and more conservative, is to be "forced beyond our limited vision.”

By Dahlia Lithwick

http://bit.ly/J6IqPi