resolved. Rather than attempt to analytically work through the feelings of anger, we encourage
participants to experience the feelings of anger in their bodies – to notice the experiential changes
that occur naturally – and then to see if they can refocus on that which is lovable in the person.
This does not involve denial of the conflict, it is, rather, exerting the choice to focus for the moment
on feelings of love and concern. If this is not possible, it is often advisable to find an easier “target”
and move back to this person at a later time.
Another option when dealing with difficult emotions such as fear, sadness, anger or grief is that we
can begin to really attend to the sensations in the body rather than the story of people and places
that elicited them. Sometimes, when we just sit with those feelings, we can experience them more
as energetic changes in the body, ones with limitless possibilities for transformation. When people
start working with active compassion practices such as Tonglen, they learn how to transform
emotional energy into a compassionate motivation to heal.
Love. For all the emotional difficulties in compassion cultivation, there are boundless benefits.
Many of those involve the expansive quality of the love one can grow for others – the warm glow
and energy of sharing. Feelings previously reserved for one’s inner circle emanate outward, and
once one realizes the potential for growth and sharing with others, the process becomes
reinforcing – growing love grows itself. It just feels good! This is to be celebrated and to be used for
one’s own and others’ well-being. So what is the task here for the teacher? For one, it is to help
the student notice the beginning of these feelings when they first appear, and to sit with the
subtleties of the feelings, so as to better be acquainted with them when they arise next time. This is
important, as these pleasant feelings may be dominated early in compassion training by the less
pleasant feelings of emotions such as sadness and fear. Students must also be cautioned against
having expectations for these glorious feelings always to arise. If one practices compassion only to
experience these pleasant feelings, the compassion will necessarily be limited.
The task is to experience all of it: both to appreciate the rich texture of our connectedness to
others and also to learn from these varied emotional responses. Emotions are very clear indicators
of what is important to us
Feeling fear? Then you may have found something threatening.
Feeling sad? Then perhaps you experienced a kind of loss. Emotions are full of information, and
we can bring that right into our practice.
General Strategies for Working with Emotions in Compassion Training
Compassion is a natural response of the open heart, yet over the course of development we learn
defensive strategies for closing down the heart. Our goal in compassion teaching is to bring people
back into contact with that natural capacity to care and to build on that with the growth of a more
inclusive circle of compassion.
Moistening the Heart. An early strategy in our efforts to train compassion is to make the heart more
receptive to others, to enable a dry, blocked or closed heart to soften and open, becoming more
responsive not only to one’s own condition, but to the full predicament of others.
We employ many tools in CCT to make people more receptive to compassion: traditional
meditations, poetry, stories and videos. Indeed, we have found that the less traditional tools are
often the best ones. Consider, for example, a wonderful story about empathic helping from the NY
Times by Justin Horner (
. This piece never fails to move us as teachers reading it to the
group (in spite of having read it dozens of times already, Erika cries each time she finishes sharing
it!)
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