How to Train the Heart
by Thupten Jinpa
January 2015 Shambhala Sun Issue
Pages 61 – 63
PEOPLE USUALLY THINK that compassion is something you’re born with or not. She is a caring person, he is not—it’s just who you are. But Buddhism (which recognizes no fixed identity anyway) views it differently, and Western science is beginning to as well.
Buddhism and cutting-edge science see compassion, empathy, and cooperation as an inherent part of he who we are as human beings—maybe who we really are. And scientists are discovering something Buddhists have known for thousands of years: that with the right techniques, our natural compassion can be cultivated, deepened, and expanded. None of us has a fixed allotment of love—in fact our love is unlimited.
No one has done more to promote the important truth that compassion is both natural and can be cultivated that the extraordinary Thupten Jinpa. Best known as the principal translator for His Holiness the Dalai Lama, he is a former monk with the highest philosophical degree in Tibetan Buddhism.
As chairman of the Mind and Life Institute, he is at the center of the rich conversation between Western science and Buddhism. In association with The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE), Thupten Jinpa developed Stanford Compassion Training, an eight-week program adapting traditional Buddhist techniques for the twenty-first century. It offers us all a path to a more compassionate life and world. – Melvin Mcleod
smile of compassion, buddhism
What is the traditional Buddhist approach to compassion?
Historically, cultivating compassion has been a major focus in the Buddhist tradition. Meditation as a mental training is common to all the Indian spiritual traditions. Where Buddhism is different is in its systematic techniques to cultivate our compassionate side.
In the Metta Sutta, the Buddha beautifully tells his disciples that just as a mother feels a natural, unconditional love for her child, so should we cultivate that sentiment toward all beings, without any exception, whether they are near or far, friends or enemies. That statement by the Buddha has served as the basis for a long tradition of cultivation compassion.
In Tibetan Buddhism, cultivating compassion is not done simply through closing our eyes and doing silent practice. The Tibetan tradition also uses the power of myth to inspire compassion.
Avalokiteshvara, the thousand-armed Buddha of Compassion, personifies the enlightened, perfected state of compassion. When compassion transcends all boundaries, when it is effortless, when it is one’s very mode of being, that is personified by the Buddha of Compassion. This kind of mythology speaks powerfully to the devout.
That is the idea. How, step by step, do we get there?
The first step is to have a deep conviction that compassion is a very important part of our nature. This is particularly important for people in the West today, who are conditioned to believe that the ultimate motivation driving all of our behaviour is self-interest.
Which is in fact celebrated in this culture.
Exactly. In the West we’re kind of going against the current when we talk about compassion. But on the other hand, science is increasingly telling us that while the pursuit of self-interest is a powerful drive, the instinct for nurturing, caring, and connection is equally powerful. From both a Buddhist and scientific point of view, we are complex creatures who have both of these powerful drives.
So the first step is to acknowledge and embrace the caring and compassionate part of our nature, and to celebrate it. Basically, the first step is telling a different story about who we are as human beings.
Once you have changed your perspective in this way, you begin to notice a lot more things that express the compassionate side of our nature.
You begin to see how often people are spontaneously kind, even toward strangers. You see how the sight of someone else doing a kind act inspires and elevates you.
Normally we don’t notice these things, and so becoming more aware of the power of kindness and compassion in our everyday lives is really the first step. Then you begin to appreciate the value of compassion at a visceral level, not just intellectually.
Once that kind of perspective arises, you can start working with yourself. Sometimes people coming from the Buddhist side tend to see meditation as the answer for everything, but silent sitting practice is just one part of what one could call a contemplative approach to life.
There is the other part, in which you bring this awareness into your day-to-day interaction with others and begin to reframe the way you relate to the world.
For example, if you normally relate to someone in a negative way, you try to see how you can reframe your relationship in a compassionate way. Normally, compassion arises only as a sentiment in reaction to situation—the sight of suffering, of someone in pain or crying.
What the Buddhist traditions suggests is that you could actually make compassion your standpoint, the perspective from which you relate to the world. Compassion becomes part of your intention of being in the world, and in this way you start making it real.
Tell us about the compassion training program you have developed at Stanford, which makes these principles available to everyone who wants more compassion in their lives, not just Buddhists.
The basic premise of Stanford Compassion Training is fairly simple. It is based on the premise that compassion is an important part of our fundamental nature. Then, by becoming more aware of and connecting with our inherent compassion, we can learn to relate to ourselves, others and the world around us from that side of our nature.
Which is basically the Buddhist approach you just described.
Exactly. Then the question was, how do we design a program that is truly universal, that does not presuppose a Buddhist metaphysic or cultural assumptions. That was the challenge.
What we came up with was an eight-week program with six steps. In the first week, we focus on the basic skills of calming the mind and learning to focus, because any form of contemplative practice requires the ability to calm, focus and apply the mind.
We want people to develop some ability to gather their thoughts, calm themselves down, deregulate from whatever emotional states they are experiencing, and learn to apply their mind to a chosen topic.
An important part of the practice at this initial stage is becoming more aware of our intention. How can we bring conscious intention into our life? This is taken from the Tibetan lojong, or mind training, tradition. We check our altruistic intention or motivation at the beginning, and dedicate the benefit to others at the end. These can frame our session, our day, or our life.
In the second week, we begin the actual compassion training. In the traditional sequence, we start with compassion for ourselves, and then extend that out to loved ones, and then to strangers, and enemies, and so on.
But in this training, we begin by focusing on our loved ones. One of the things that I have been quite surprised by is how challenging self-compassion is for the people in the West. So we switched the sequence and start with compassion for a loved one, because people find that easier than compassion for themselves.
The idea is that we all experience a natural feeling of affection for our loved ones—our children, our spouse, our friends, our aging parents, and even strangers who are in pain. We are all capable of that, because we are naturally empathetic creatures. The practice here is to pay conscious attention to this feeing, to evoke it, so it reminds us that this is a natural quality we possess. This is the second week.
In the third and fourth weeks, we focus on self-compassion. We felt we needed to devote two full weeks of the program to this. The first part focuses on self-acceptance, self-forgiveness, and being at ease with oneself—those kinds of things.
In the second week of self-compassion practice, we focus on learning to be comfortable with the aspiration for one’s own happiness, because a lot of people in the West have a problem with this. They don’t seem to be able to distinguish between genuine self-concern and narcissistic self-absorption, and this is a very critical distinction.
In subsequent weeks, we expand our compassion to include more and more people, and ultimately all beings. We recognize the interdependence of self and others and see how much our happiness is dependent on others—how many people contributed so we could enjoy a simple meal. We extend our compassion to all of them.
Finally, the participants train in what we call active compassion. This is drawn from the Buddhist practice of tonglen, in which we mentally take in others’ suffering and offer them our happiness. We are trying to prime ourselves so the sentiments we have cultivated can actually manifest in action.
Then, throughout the eight-week program, the students do a number of what we call informal practices.
These are drawn from the mind training principle that whatever you encounter in life, you can bring it into your practice. So whatever the focus happens to be for that particular week, we encourage the participants to use their everyday experience to bring it out.
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