Definitions: A Vocabulary for Deepening Our Dialogue about Compassion

Attachment/Bonding - During the first moments, months, and years of life, children form a very special bond with the adults who care for them. From the deeply intimate, responsive relationship between an infant and a caretaker, each of us first learns to live in a world of other people. The quality of early attachment has a tremendous power in shaping the quality of our relationships later in life. By paying particular attention to understanding and supporting this bonding process, we can enrich relationships throughout the life span.    

Compassion - Compassion can be thought of as empathy in action. It means that we deeply feel the pain of others, and we seek to reduce their suffering. Many of our religious wisdom traditions identify compassion as one of the most sacred yearnings of the human spirit. Scientists say that empathy is one of our core moral emotions. It emerges within the first years of life, and it is nurtured by a responsive, loving relationship with a caretaker. Two of the greatest barriers to compassion are judgment and tribalism. In the first we blame or criticize another for the hardships they experience. In the latter we simply draw a boundary between a group of people who merit our caring and others who don't. Both of these are barriers to compassion because they distance us from the experience of another person or persons. It is very difficult to be compassionate toward others if we are not compassionate and forgiving toward ourselves. 

Dalai Lama - As a political figure, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama is the head in exile of the Tibetan people. As a spiritual leader, he is widely sought around the world as someone who builds bridges and has been a tireless advocate for peace and compassion. Please visit http://www.dalailama.com.

Emotional Intelligence - For many years intelligence was thought of as the ability to remember, to reason, and to create. We now understand that some of the most important kinds of intelligence have to do with social situations—being able to process information about other people and to use this information wisely and well. Much social information comes to us in the form of intuitions and emotions. Each of us must learn to understand, honor, and manage these emotions so that they serve our well-being and the well-being of the world around us. 

Interfaith - Bridging religious traditions, interfaith dialogue seeks to deepen understanding and to find common ground.

Interspiritual - We come together from many wisdom traditions, seeking to elevate the value on compassionate action that is a part of our shared moral core. Interspiritual is broader than interfaith in that it recognizes that our hunger for morality and meaning is not bounded by our religious heritage though it is deeply manifest there. We cherish the deep spiritual struggle and insights that are present in many people who subscribe to a specific religious or philosophical tradition and in many who simply see themselves as members of a broadly human wisdom heritage.   

"Humanity stands at a crossroads between horror and hope. In choosing hope, we must seed a new consciousness, a radically fresh approach to life drawing its inspiration from perennial spiritual and moral insights, intuition and experience. We call this new awareness Interspiritual, implying not the homogenization of religion, but the recovering of the shared mystic heart beating in the center of the world's deepest spiritual traditions." - Wayne Teasdale

Mirroring - Specific neurons in the brain called mirror neurons cause us to share another person's experience when we see it. Their pain activates pain pathways in our own brains. Their joy activates paths related to happiness and delight. If we see them engage in even a simple movement, our brains respond, to some extent, as if we were making that movement ourselves. These mirror neurons are the basis for empathy, which allows us to develop compassion.

Moral Emotions - Certain emotions that emerge during infancy and early childhood subsequently govern our moral impulses and decisions. They are called the moral emotions. The three most prominent are empathy, shame, and guilt. Other emotions that help to guide moral behavior include indignation, disgust, gratitude, and elevation (honoring). These emotions are inborn, though not fully developed. Our childhood experiences help us to link the moral emotions to specific situations that are valued by our parents and peers. Depending on our experiences, each of these emotions grows stronger and more easily triggered, or weaker and harder to trigger, and specific behavioral impulses get linked to each kind of emotion. For example, when children are exposed repeatedly to violent images, their empathy and disgust in response to violence become diminished. If they see people hitting in response to anger, they are likely to hit in response to anger. On the other hand, when children who are experiencing pain or empathy see others modeling compassion, their emotion of empathy becomes paired with an impulse to relieve the suffering of others.   

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