by Lisa Jones | September, 2017 | compassion, Lisa Jones
Three steps to compassion; reinventing the Serenity Prayer This blog will explore what we mean by compassion, and see how it might be applied to the well known ‘serenity prayer’. By understanding compassion in this way we can start to see that compassion isn’t one emotion or thought, but we will be able to see the different attributes that make up compassion. Defining compassion Despite it forming part of the Buddhist teachings, the West is only now starting to make sense of what it means to show compassion. It is not the intention of this blog to discuss the varied research on compassion, but to offer one view of what it might mean. The following definition, for me, sums up compassion. Developed by Paul Gilbert (2017) he defines compassion as: “a sensitivity to suffering in self and others with a commitment to try and alleviate and prevent it“. You can see that compassion in this definition isn’t a passive emotion but is made up of being aware of and feeling empathy towards suffering, and critically includes a call to arms to take action. This is different to empathy alone, as empathy is feeling someone’s pain but not acting. (We can also consider other similar feelings. Sympathy is more akin to noticing suffering but feeling helpless to do anything, and pity is recognising another’s suffering and feeling a sense of superiority over them. These then are passive and do not create human connections.) Feeling compassion Take a look at the image of the dog at the top of this blog. What do you see? Sadness?...
