Compassion

• In life's journey,learned and disregard unpleasant memories,instead create,stores and retains the good ones.Because in our golden years,it is the pleasant ,happy memories that will make our life worth living.

Emotions linked to our moral sense awaken slowly in the mind, according to a new study from a neuroscience group led by corresponding author Antonio Damasio, director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California.

The finding, contained in one of the first brain studies of inspirational emotions in a field dominated by a focus on fear and pain, suggests that digital media culture may be better suited to some mental processes than others.

"For some kinds of thought, especially moral decision-making about other people's social and psychological situations, we need to allow for adequate time and reflection," said first author Mary Helen Immordino-Yang.

Humans can sort information very quickly and can respond in fractions of seconds to signs of physical pain in others.

Admiration and compassion—two of the social emotions that define humanity—take much longer, Damasio's group found.

Their study will appear next week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition.

"Damasio's study has extraordinary implications for the human perception of events in a digital communication environment," said media scholar Manuel Castells, holder of the Wallis Annenberg Chair of Communication Technology and Society at USC. "Lasting compassion in relationship to psychological suffering requires a level of persistent, emotional attention."

The study's authors used compelling, real-life stories to induce admiration for virtue or skill, or compassion for physical or social pain, in 13 volunteers (the emotion felt was verified through a careful protocol of pre- and post-imaging interviews).

Brain imaging showed that the volunteers needed six to eight seconds to fully respond to stories of virtue or social pain.

However, once awakened, the responses lasted far longer than the volunteers' reactions to stories focused on physical pain.

The study raises questions about the emotional cost—particularly for the developing brain—of heavy reliance on a rapid stream of news snippets.

"If things are happening too fast, you may not ever fully experience emotions about other people's psychological states and that would have implications for your morality," Immordino- Yang said.

As a former public junior high school teacher who pioneered a doctoral thesis track on learning and the brain at Harvard University, and who holds a joint appointment in the Rossier School of Education along with her assistant professorship in the institute (part of the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences), Immordino-Yang stressed the study's relevance to teaching.

"Educators are charged with the role of producing moral citizens who can think in ethical ways, who feel responsible to help others less fortunate, who can use their knowledge to make the world a better place," she said.

"And so we need to understand how social experience shapes interactions between the body and mind, to produce citizens with a strong moral compass."

Clearly, normal life events will always provide opportunities for humans to feel admiration and compassion.

But fast-paced digital media tools may direct some heavy users away from traditional avenues for learning about humanity, such as engagement with literature or face-to-face social interactions.

Immordino-Yang did not blame digital media. "It's not about what tools you have, it's about how you use those tools," she said.

Castells said he was less concerned about online social spaces, some of which can provide opportunities for reflection, than about "fast-moving television or virtual games."

"In a media culture in which violence and suffering becomes an endless show, be it in fiction or in infotainment, indifference to the vision of human suffering gradually sets in," he said.

Damasio agreed: "What I'm more worried about is what is happening in the (abrupt) juxtapositions that you find, for example, in the news.

"When it comes to emotion, because these systems are inherently slow, perhaps all we can say is, not so fast."

The study, titled "Neural Correlates of Admiration and Compassion," takes a positive tack in research on emotion and the brain.

Damasio called the study "the first to investigate the neural bases of admiration and one of the first to deal with compassion in a context broader than physical pain. To say that admiration has been neglected is an understatement."

Many previous studies have focused on negative emotions such as fear. By studying admiration, Damasio's group is focusing on those impulses that bring out the best in humanity.

Admiration, Damasio said, "gives us a yardstick for what to reward in a culture, and for what to look for and try to inspire."

He and Hanna Damasio, co-director of the institute and director of the Dornsife Imaging Center in the USC College, chose the study of admiration as one of the institute's founding projects.

From Presidents Obama and Clinton to foster kids down the block, stories abound of individuals who have transcended their situations because of admiration for a key person in their lives.

"We actually separate the good from the bad in great part thanks to the feeling of admiration," Damasio said. "It's a deep physiological reaction that's very important to define our humanity."

It is also deeply rooted in the brain and the sense of the body, the study found, engaging primal neural systems that regulate blood chemistry, the digestive system and other parts of the body.

Damasio called it evidence, pending replication of this study by other groups, that social emotions have deep evolutionary roots.

"People generally don't think of emotions like admiration and compassion as having forerunners in evolution," he noted.

"We reveal that these emotions engage the basic systems of our physiology."

For Immordino-Yang, who focused on literature as an undergraduate, the study presented an intriguing test of the ancient poetic trope that compares deep emotion to physical injury—a "broken heart" being the obvious example.

"The poets had it right all along," she said. "This isn't merely metaphor. Our study shows that we use the feeling of our own body as a platform for knowing how to respond to other people's social and psychological situations.

"These emotions are visceral, in the most literal sense—they are the biological expression of 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' "

Finally, the study showed that physical and social pain engage the posteromedial cortex, a central hub in the brain related to the sense of self and consciousness.

In keeping with that finding, volunteers reported a heightened sense of self-awareness after hearing the stories. Many expressed a desire to lead better lives. Some even refused the customary payment for participation, Immordino-Yang said.

Intriguingly, the posteromedial cortex appears to use different areas for responding to physical or social pain.

"The brain is honoring a distinction between things that have to do with physicality and things that have to do with the mind," Damasio said.

The National Institutes on Health, the Mathers Foundation and the institute's endowment funded the study.

The mission of the Brain and Creativity Institute is to study the neurological roots of human emotions, memory and communication and to apply the findings to problems in the biomedical and sociocultural arenas.

The institute brings together technology and the social sciences in a novel interdisciplinary setting. For more information, visit www.usc.edu/schools/college/bci/index.html

Compassion is empathy, caring, love, and morality. Compassion is feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, caring for the poor. Compassion is all the little tasks you do for ones you love like picking up the toys that Little One leaves in a trail, or comforting Sister after an argument, encouraging Friend in an endevor, or just making sure that all your loved ones know how much you care.

Compassion is reaching out to those you know, and strangers. It is imagining your feelings in someone else's situation and acting to make them feel better.

I see compassion in the tent city that the church across the street has established. I see compassion in the canned food drives that our school supports and watching as the days go by and the boxes of goods overflow. I see compassion in how my sister treats all the little critters she finds around the house and yard, the way she nutures her plants and watches over the pets.

And the most compassionate thing I think one can offer, is to give up something you want knowing that others will appreciate it more or hoping it will give them joy when that is scarce in their lives.

Dear Malia and Sasha,

I know that you've both had a lot of fun these last two years on the campaign trail, going to picnics and parades and state fairs, eating all sorts of junk food your mother and I probably shouldn't have let you have. But I also know that it hasn't always been easy for you and Mom, and that as excited as you both are about that new puppy, it doesn't make up for all the time we've been apart. I know how much I've missed these past two years, and today I want to tell you a little more about why I decided to take our family on this journey.

When I was a young man, I thought life was all about me—about how I'd make my way in the world, become successful, and get the things I want. But then the two of you came into my world with all your curiosity and mischief and those smiles that never fail to fill my heart and light up my day. And suddenly, all my big plans for myself didn't seem so important anymore. I soon found that the greatest joy in my life was the joy I saw in yours. And I realized that my own life wouldn't count for much unless I was able to ensure that you had every opportunity for happiness and fulfillment in yours. In the end, girls, that's why I ran for President: because of what I want for you and for every child in this nation.

I want all our children to go to schools worthy of their potential—schools that challenge them, inspire them, and instill in them a sense of wonder about the world around them. I want them to have the chance to go to college—even if their parents aren't rich. And I want them to get good jobs: jobs that pay well and give them benefits like health care, jobs that let them spend time with their own kids and retire with dignity.

I want us to push the boundaries of discovery so that you'll live to see new technologies and inventions that improve our lives and make our planet cleaner and safer. And I want us to push our own human boundaries to reach beyond the divides of race and region, gender and religion that keep us from seeing the best in each other.

Sometimes we have to send our young men and women into war and other dangerous situations to protect our country—but when we do, I want to make sure that it is only for a very good reason, that we try our best to settle our differences with others peacefully, and that we do everything possible to keep our servicemen and women safe. And I want every child to understand that the blessings these brave Americans fight for are not free—that with the great privilege of being a citizen of this nation comes great responsibility.
That was the lesson your grandmother tried to teach me when I was your age, reading me the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence and telling me about the men and women who marched for equality because they believed those words put to paper two centuries ago should mean something.

She helped me understand that America is great not because it is perfect but because it can always be made better—and that the unfinished work of perfecting our union falls to each of us. It's a charge we pass on to our children, coming closer with each new generation to what we know America should be.

I hope both of you will take up that work, righting the wrongs that you see and working to give others the chances you've had. Not just because you have an obligation to give something back to this country that has given our family so much—although you do have that obligation. But because you have an obligation to yourself. Because it is only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential.

These are the things I want for you—to grow up in a world with no limits on your dreams and no achievements beyond your reach, and to grow into compassionate, committed women who will help build that world. And I want every child to have the same chances to learn and dream and grow and thrive that you girls have. That's why I've taken our family on this great adventure.

I am so proud of both of you. I love you more than you can ever know. And I am grateful every day for your patience, poise, grace, and humor as we prepare to start our new life together in the White House.

Love, Dad

In a laboratory setting, macaques were fed if they were willing to pull a chain and electrically shock an unrelated macaque whose agony was in plain view through a one-way mirror. Otherwise, they starved. After learning the ropes, the monkeys frequently refused to pull the chain; in one experiment only 13% would do so - 87% preferred to go hungry. One macaque went without food for nearly two weeks rather than hurt its fellow. Macaques who had themselves been shocked in previous experiments were even less willing to pull the chain. The relative social status or gender of the macaques had little bearing on their reluctance to hurt others.

"If the circumstances were reversed, and captive humans were offered the same deal by macaque scientists, would we do as well? (Especially when there is an authority figure urging us to administer the electric shocks, we humans are disturbingly willing to cause pain - and for a reward much more paltry than food is for a starving macaque [cf. Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental Overview].)

This essay was published in the Voices in Wartime Anthology.

From my grandfather, Dr. John R. Rice, I learned about story-telling, poetry, and the importance of expressing love, grief, and joy. He was an old-fashioned, fundamentalist, fire-and-brimstone, country preacher from Texas, and he was the son, himself, of several generations of Baptist preachers. My grandfather's religion was no academic religion, no intellectual exercise in theology or disputation—though he was a theologian who engaged in many polemics about dogma, faith, and belief. His was a religion of the heart and the soul, a religion of the poor and the humble, the brokenhearted and the lost. And he was a preacher because he loved his fellow humans.

As I was growing up, I heard my grandfather preach hundreds of sermons, and each of them was a string of stories—one story or parable or illustration after another. As he preached, he recited poetry, recited long passages of scripture, sang scraps of hymns, and talked to people alive and dead, from his wife sitting in the front pew to his own long-gone mother looking down on him from heaven. In every sermon, he broke into tears a half dozen times as he spoke of his passion for winning lost souls to Jesus.

For my grandfather, his religion, his faith and the core of his motivation as a pastor, teacher, counselor and evangelist were all about telling stories and hearing stories and exchanging stories. What I learned from him was that we all make meaning out of the heartache and struggles of our lives, and we do so by constructing a narrative that can contain the sense of what we have seen and experienced. We convey our grief and suffering through storytelling, we communicate our happiness and rejoicing through storytelling, and we teach some of what we have learned from our lives and from each other through storytelling.

But I also learned from my grandfather an absolute, black-and-white morality. He believed that all of us are sinners and doomed to an eternal hell, literally a lake of fire in which we will experience the torments and agony of the damned forever unless we have accepted Jesus into our hearts. For the living, my grandfather had a very strict set of moral categories. Either you were an agent of God and living for the Lord, or you were an agent of the Devil and living for yourself. As humans, we could do evil, or we could do good, but there was little in between. And his own very literal interpretation of the Bible determined to which category you belonged.

This has a particular relevance to the subject of war and to the human response to war. Violent conflict is perhaps the most extreme and intense collective human activity. As many veterans of combat have said, it is hard to go back to an ordinary life, working in an ordinary job and living in an ordinary house behind a white picket fence and a patch of green lawn when you've lived at the very edge of human existence in the course of a war, under conditions of duress and danger, terror and exhilaration, and in the company of comrades who have shared that experience with you. Combat provides a peculiar and deadly thrill, even as it rewires the brain and unleashes the nightmares.

As a young man and a civilian during the most tragic and terrible years of the Vietnam War, I understood little or nothing about the experience of the combat veteran. I was deeply opposed to the war and horrified by what I saw on the television evening news and the daily newspaper. I hated the politicians who launched the war and the generals who led the war and the officers and soldiers who participated in the war. And I hated my grandfather who justified the war in the name of God, and who was enraged by those who opposed the war. He thought of them as hippies, communists, apostates and agents of the Devil. When I joined the ranks of the peaceniks, I was tarred with their brush. And I proclaimed my own absolute and self-righteous opposition to the pro-war politics of my grandfather.

I would have made any sacrifice during the Vietnam War if I thought it would help to end that war, and I devoted myself completely to the peace movement. I gave up college, forgot about a career and an ordinary life, was arrested several times, and devoted myself to being an activist against the war and then an activist for civil rights and social justice generally in the years that followed the war.

It is interesting to me now to look back on those days and understand that I shared my grandfather's absolute morality and his sense of self righteousness. I believed that US soldiers were engaged in an immoral enterprise—the war in Vietnam—and thus were available for my condemnation. I had little compassion for the suffering of the soldiers themselves, and I failed to understand that they were themselves victims of the war. I refused to look at their motivations, and resisted looking at their sufferings and sorrows, because I thought they had made moral choices that were worthy of my own sanctified disapproval.

I have a history as a fool, and an arrogant one. My foolishness was not to oppose the war, but to oppose the warrior. My arrogance was to imagine that I had a lock on truth, justice, and morality, and that my motives were clean and pure, while those of my opponents were racist, violent and morally contaminated.

I have learned lessons in the making of the film Voices in Wartime. Compassion for the warrior, even as we search for alternatives to the practice of war itself. Regard for the long-term costs borne by the civilian victims of war, and their need for healing, support, and opportunity. Respect and gratitude for the soldier who volunteers to give his life for the health and safety of his community, even as we might decry the policies that thrust him into danger. Love and support for the families of those soldiers, who suffer from their absence and pray for their safe return. Finally, an appreciation for the role of art in general and storytelling in particular in healing the wounds of war and rebuilding the community.

In the end, all we have are the human bonds of love and care that connect us. Those bonds are forged through the telling of our common tale, across the gaps of history, culture and language, through the poems, stories, images and chaos of our common dilemma – how to listen to each other and work for healing when every instinct tells us to hoard our suspicions and launch preemptive strikes on our enemies.

In the end, the memory of my grandfather that lingers is the one that reveals him most as my kindred soul. In one of his sermons, he told the story of the death of his mother, Sarah LaPrade Rice, when he was a little boy of five:

"I remember the November day when we lay her body away. My father knelt beside the open grave. There was no white muslin to hide the raw dirt of the grave – like a wound in the earth. No fake, manmade carpet of grass was thrown over the clods. My father put one arm around his two little orphan girls and one around his two little boys, and watched as they lowered the precious body in its dark casket into the bosom of Mother Earth. The rain beat down upon us, and a friendly neighbor held an umbrella over our heads."

In that paragraph is the core of the grief that remained with him throughout his life, and that fueled his passion to win souls to Jesus. It was an impulse toward redemption, sacrifice, and love, and what he thought of as Heaven itself, in the most literal sense.In the grief of my grandfather, and in his love and sense of loss, is the seed of compassion that we will all need to heal this damaged world. From Baghdad to Baltimore, from Fallujah to Birmingham, from Jerusalem to Seattle, we connect with each other through what is missing from our lives. We evolve by means of the stories we pass from one to the other, around the circle, close to the fire.

We hear a lot about how important it is to be compassionate toward others, and it is very important. The problem is that you may not be able to really feel compassion toward others until you are able to feel compassionate toward yourself.

In the years that I’ve been counseling, I’ve discovered that the most common underlying cause of anxiety, depression, addictive behavior and relationship problems is self-judgment. The most prevalent self-judgment is:

“I’m not good enough.”

There are many variations to this core shame belief:

“I’m not lovable.”
“I’m unworthy.”
“I’m flawed.”
“I’m not important.”
“I’m bad.”
“I’m a failure.”
“I’m stupid.”
“I’m not okay.”
“I’m not enough.”

However you phrase it, it is saying the same thing. It is a profound judgment against who you really are. And it is the opposite of self- compassion.

The moment we judge ourselves, we are telling ourselves that we have no good reasons for our feelings and behavior – that we are just not good enough. Yet our feelings and behavior always come from our belief system. When we are feeling badly and behaving in unloving ways toward ourselves and others, it is always because we are operating from false beliefs about ourselves and others.

If, instead of judging ourselves for our feelings and behavior, we were to move into compassion for ourselves, we would open the door to learning about the beliefs that are causing our pain.

What is your first response when someone blames you for something? Do you judge yourself or judge the other person, or both? What happens when you judge yourself or the other person? The chances are that the interaction is not a healthy one.

What would happen if, when someone blames you for something, you opened to compassion for your feelings of being blamed?

Let’s take an example of how different an interaction would be with self- compassion rather than self-judgment. In the following interaction, John attacks Mary for being over-drawn in their checking account. In the first example, Mary goes into self-judgment. In the second example, Mary goes into self-compassion.

John: Mary, we are overdrawn in our account again because you forgot to enter some of the checks. What is the matter with you? Are you stupid?

Mary: (thinks to herself, “I’m stupid. I can never do anything right.” Then she defends herself and attacks John). I just forgot. What’s the big deal? I’ve been too busy taking care of your stuff. If you would do more around the house, I wouldn’t forget things like that.

John and Mary end up in a fight.

John: Mary, we are overdrawn in our account again because you forgot to enter some of the checks. What is the matter with you? Are you stupid?

Mary: (Mary tunes into how badly it feels to be attacked by John. She has compassion for her own feelings of sadness and loneliness at being attacked by someone whose love is important to her). John, this feels awful inside. My stomach hurts when you attack me like this. I’m willing to talk with you about the checkbook, but not when you are attacking me. Please let me know when you are ready to talk with me about this without blaming me.

Because Mary moved into compassion for her own feelings, she was able to respond to John in a way that was loving to herself and to him.

Moving out of self-judgment and into self-compassion takes much practice. Most of us have been practicing self-judgment for so long that it has become our automatic way of being. It takes much consciousness to move into self-compassion, but with practice you can move out of your automatic judgmental thought and into a conscious compassionate thought.

This one change in your thinking will create huge positive changes in your life!

The focus of Seeds of Compassion is to instill a spirit of tolerance awareness and mutual understanding at an early age through the work of families, spiritual/religious/community leaders, teachers, and all other social institutions and/or individuals who have an impact on the formation of young minds and hearts.

I am sure that many brilliant and dedicated efforts will emerge as a direct consequence of the awareness, wisdom and dialogues produced by this world-wide event.

There is plenty of merit, of course, in every project which is associated with compassion, mutual understanding and tolerance.

We would be deluded to think that by constructing activities which promote the abstract idea of universal compassion we can resolve the deeper problems posed by mutually exclusive or keenly tribal metaphysical interpretations of what we lovingly (albeit sometimes naively) label as a common spiritual goal.

More specifically, it would be not so significant if we managed to get children to participate in a particular ‘compassion awareness' project whilst his or her religious/ethnical/cultural beliefs implicitly or explicitly point to separatist behaviors (chauvinism, justification of violence, arrogance, judgment, tribalism, etc.). It would be like fixing a worn out pair of shoes by wrapping them in glittering paper.

The point is that Universal Ethics need to be the foundation upon which we can build all these projects. Otherwise it is very possible that the solid tree which many community leaders will help to grow with the Seeds of Compassion and other efforts will collapse when the first storm arrives, since the roots have not been suitably cared for and given fertile enough soil.

This is not a new realization, of course. Something very similar to the development Universal Ethics (although in an entirely different context) was tried in 2002 by the late Pope John Paul II in Assisi, where leaders of all the most important religions assembled to produce the unfortunately not so famous Decalogue of Assisi, which was sent to all world leaders in the form of a letter signed by JPII.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama wrote a pivotal book on the subject called Ethics for the New Millennium. I have read it several times and have found it to be an invaluable resource for understanding what Universal Ethics would be like.

Let me be clear: I am not proposing here that we should somehow use the aforementioned book as a blueprint for the development of Universal Ethics. It is obvious that a diversity of religious and spiritual leaders is necessary to provide maximum credibility and coverage.

Finally I want to point out that the development and application of Universal Ethics will also be able to capture the spirit and the inclination of many secular individuals. I am talking about the increasing number of independent thinkers and humanists who are very resistant to the idea of blindly embracing any given existing faith, but feel strongly about upholding universal moral principles. These people (very much like myself) have no support whatsoever. Some of the best examples of already existing universal secular values (although not formally universalized) are concerns about the violations of human rights, concerns about the health of our environment, overpopulation, and, of course, the recognition of equality of all human beings: this, I believe, must be stressed because it is the very precondition for developing compassion.

At the core is what holds the world together.  Psychology or the study of the human mind, with all its intricacies and complexities is in the very center of my library. The human brain and its function is the basis of what generates all the other thoughts that one has.  The grey matter that these books discuss dreams, analyzes, creates, and considers a vast array of possibilities.  The human psychology is what keeps all the rest of the inhabitants of this world together and helps it strive to better itself by sharing everything that exists on this special planet and updating the information within the covers constantly.

Below the core is fiction and non-fiction. Jackie Collins mixes it up with John Jakes as their two worlds meet and join as one as though the past and the current meet sharing their common bonds.  Eric Segal shares his Love Story with everyone and Sidney Sheldon's Rage of Angels meet peacefully within the same world along with the non-superstitious Psychologist in the center and the Humanists above it, without any diagnosis or criticism.

Across from the raging angels is a futuristic world of Star Trek and Babylon 5 that join with a race of telepathic humanoid cats and vampires.  Mixed with all these strange and unusual people are Gene Roddenberry, the Star Trek Creator, and Nichelle Nichols's biographies, not to mention books on caring for cats.  The Vulcans and the Klingons cohabitate together in this vast world of ideas and passions without any logic or violence and the telepathic cats are not without good health care and grooming tips in this large world that my library collection has become.  The Ferengi also wheel and deal with their Rules of Acquisition, so Quark is not without some sort of gain on this wonderful planet.  He just has to deal with Worf, Kira, and Odo on occasion.

Once again the future meets the past because sitting near Gene and Nichelle are two more great people from the past; John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. These people are supported not only with Psychology concerning race relations, but also a knowledge of the history that unites them in this wonderful world. The Antebellum and the Civil War eras tell their ancestors' story as a memory, but one that should not be forgotten, less it repeat itself as they study the vast regions of space with various astronomy books.

These people are not alone without any rule or government, for Princess Di is near by with her royal beauty and grace showing her great humanitarianism to everyone and along with her she brings not only the Anglican Church, but a fine bishop named John Shelby Spong, who is still living and trying to change religious beliefs to a more reasonable, peaceful, and loving ideology by Rescuing the Bible from the Fundamentalism.  Even Billy Graham, surprisingly, can be found discussing Angels as God's Secret Agents without condemning those who do not agree with him in this world nor is he criticized for believing in supernatural undercover angels playing spies.  One can also find a rabbi talking about When Bad Things Happen to Good People without reliving the horrors of the holocaust because he is a Jew and Robert Price drives reason into this great society's life. Karen Armstrong tells A History of God while Richard Dawkins attempts to remove delusions and Christopher Hitchens complains "God Is Not Great!" To which Victor J. Stenger suddenly asks, "Has Science Found God?"

Along with their ideas are the Humanists, Gnostics, Pagans, Hindus, Atheists, and great philosophers all living peacefully together without fighting over their religious differences.  The Native American is not pushed off this planet either for they share their culture and religion too within this large world. No one is being charged with heresy and burned at the stake or even sentenced to death for lack of conforming beliefs in this world for it is truly about the human and the ultimate goals in life.  They are living together in harmony and sharing their ideas about the past, present, and future, as well as their beliefs without fear of persecution.

If things do get a bit out of hand, Sam Harris just shouts, "Alright!  That's it!  If you guys can't play nice we'll just have The End of Faith now!" and Hemant Mehta cries in response, "But I'm the Friendly Atheist!  After all, I Sold My Soul on eBay, didn't I?" and Earl Doherty replies, "But I want to finish The Jesus Puzzle!" To which Robert Price grumbles and shrugs, "Eh, he's just the Incredible Shrinking Son of Man.; Let's just get back to The Reason Driven Life again and be done with it." They then settle down and get back to their little "Jesus Seminar".

Near all this philosophical thought and religion are the mythical gods and goddesses of the past.  Zeus, Prometheus, Mithra, Horus, Apollo, all exist together with Yahweh and Jesus. In this world Jesus does not mind sharing with the Greek, Roman, Babylonian, or Egyptian gods. In fact, he has a great time with them as they share their common stories as dying and rising gods. The women goddesses share in equality too and are hardly neglected by the gods; much less they are not hated by Mary Magdalene. They all sit at the table together sharing food and drink as they laugh and joke with each other and sometimes the various people of this great society join them without fear of being zapped by a lightening bolt if they say the wrong thing to the gods, for these gods do not sit in the sky judging the inhabitants. No, they co-exist with everyone and enjoy life to its fullest.

The key to developing compassion in your life is to make it a daily practice.

Meditate upon it in the morning (you can do it while checking email), think about it when you interact with others, and reflect on it at night. In this way, it becomes a part of your life. . . .

Compassionate acts are generally considered those which take into account the suffering of others and attempt to alleviate that suffering as if it were one's own. In this sense, the various forms of the Golden Rule are clearly based on the concept of compassion.

Compassion differs from other forms of helpful or humane behavior in that its focus is primarily on the alleviation of suffering.

Benefits
Why develop compassion in your life? Well, there are scientific studies that suggest there are physical benefits to practicing compassion - people who practice it produce 100 percent more DHEA, which is a hormone that counteracts the aging process, and 23 percent less cortisol - the "stress hormone."

But there are other benefits as well, and these are emotional and spiritual. The main benefit is that it helps you to be more happy, and brings others around you to be more happy. If we agree that it is a common aim of each of us to strive to be happy, then compassion is one of the main tools for achieving that happiness. It is therefore of utmost importance that we cultivate compassion in our lives and practice compassion every day.

How do we do that? This guide contains 7 different practices that you can try out and perhaps incorporate into your every day life.

7 Compassion Practices:

1. Morning ritual. Greet each morning with a ritual. Try this one, suggest by the Dalai Lama: "Today I am fortunate to have woken up, I am alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others, I am going to benefit others as much as I can." Then, when you've done this, try one of the practices below.

2. Empathy Practice. The first step in cultivating compassion is to develop empathy for your fellow human beings. Many of us believe that we have empathy, and on some level nearly all of us do. But many times we are centered on ourselves (I'm no exception) and we let our sense of empathy get rusty. Try this practice: Imagine that a loved one is suffering. Something terrible has happened to him or her. Now try to imagine the pain they are going through. Imagine the suffering in as much detail as possible. After doing this practice for a couple of weeks, you should try moving on to imagining the suffering of others you know, not just those who are close to you.

3. Commonalities practice. Instead of recognizing the differences between yourself and others, try to recognize what you have in common. At the root of it all, we are all human beings. We need food, and shelter, and love. We crave attention, and recognition, and affection, and above all, happiness. Reflect on these commonalities you have with every other human being, and ignore the differences. One of the best exercises comes from a great article from Ode Magazine - it's a five-step exercise to try when you meet friends and strangers. Do it discreetly and try to do all the steps with the same person. With your attention geared to the other person, tell yourself:

- Step 1: "Just like me, this person is seeking happiness in his/her life."
- Step 2: "Just like me, this person is trying to avoid suffering in his/her life."
- Step 3: "Just like me, this person has known sadness, loneliness and despair."
- Step 4: "Just like me, this person is seeking to fill his/her needs."
- Step 5: "Just like me, this person is learning about life."

4. Relief of suffering practice. Once you can empathize with another person, and understand his humanity and suffering, the next step is to want that person to be free from suffering. This is the heart of compassion - actually the definition of it. Try this exercise: Imagine the suffering of a human being you've met recently. Now imagine that you are the one going through that suffering. Reflect on how much you would like that suffering to end. Reflect on how happy you would be if another human being desired your suffering to end, and acted upon it. Open your heart to that human being and if you feel even a little that you'd want their suffering to end, reflect on that feeling. That's the feeling that you want to develop. With constant practice, that feeling can be grown and nurtured.

5. Act of kindness practice. Now that you've gotten good at the 4th practice, take the exercise a step further. Imagine again the suffering of someone you know or met recently. Imagine again that you are that person, and are going through that suffering. Now imagine that another human being would like your suffering to end - perhaps your mother or another loved one. What would you like for that person to do to end your suffering? Now reverse roles: you are the person who desires for the other person's suffering to end. Imagine that you do something to help ease the suffering, or end it completely. Once you get good at this stage, practice doing something small each day to help end the suffering of others, even in a tiny way. Even a smile, or a kind word, or doing an errand or chore, or just talking about a problem with another person. Practice doing something kind to help ease the suffering of others. When you are good at this, find a way to make it a daily practice, and eventually a throughout-the-day practice.

6. Those who mistreat us practice. The final stage in these compassion practices is to not only want to ease the suffering of those we love and meet, but even those who mistreat us. When we encounter someone who mistreats us, instead of acting in anger, withdraw. Later, when you are calm and more detached, reflect on that person who mistreated you. Try to imagine the background of that person. Try to imagine what that person was taught as a child. Try to imagine the day or week that person was going through, and what kind of bad things had happened to that person. Try to imagine the mood and state of mind that person was in - the suffering that person must have been going through to mistreat you that way. And understand that their action was not about you, but about what they were going through. Now think some more about the suffering of that poor person, and see if you can imagine trying to stop the suffering of that person. And then reflect that if you mistreated someone, and they acted with kindness and compassion toward you, whether that would make you less likely to mistreat that person the next time, and more likely to be kind to that person. Once you have mastered this practice of reflection, try acting with compassion and understanding the next time a person treats you. Do it in little doses, until you are good at it. Practice makes perfect.

7. Evening routine. I highly recommend that you take a few minutes before you go to bed to reflect upon your day. Think about the people you met and talked to, and how you treated each other. Think about your goal that you stated this morning, to act with compassion towards others. How well did you do? What could you do better? What did you learn from your experiences today? And if you have time, try one of the above practices and exercises.

These compassionate practices can be done anywhere, any time: At work, at home, on the road, while traveling, while at a store, while at the home of a friend or family member. By sandwiching your day with a morning and evening ritual, you can frame your day properly, in an attitude of trying to practice compassion and develop it within yourself. And with practice, you can begin to do it throughout the day, and throughout your lifetime.

This, above all, with bring happiness to your life and to those around you."