P R E F A C E I
About this Book
Tania Singer
Dear readers, listeners, and viewers,
As you probably noticed already just by scrolling through this book, it is unlike most other books
you have come across. We offer you a multi-media, open-source book produced and sponsored by
the Max Planck Society to report on recent advances in compassion research and the application
of compassion training in the world. Our hope is that, in doing so, we will offer society as a whole a
useful tool to explore and learn about the theme of compassion. All of the scientists, contemplative
practitioners, clinicians, and artists who have contributed either through written chapters, sound
collages, art photography, or video work have freely given of their time and work in order to
support the production and distribution of this multi-media book.
You may be wondering how this book came about.
It originated out of a workshop titled, “How to Train Compassion” which I organized as director of
the
in Leipzig, Germany, in 2011. I have been working for many years on the psychological
and neuroscientific foundations of empathy and compassion. In 2008, I was awarded a European
Research Grant to support the investigation of the plasticity of the social brain, that is, the study of
whether we can train socio-affective skills such as empathy and compassion and whether such
mental training can alter our psychological and physical well-being, our social behavior, and our
brain and body responses. In this context, my team and I began to develop secular mental training
programs for the improvement of socio-affective skills such as empathy and compassion. Around
the same time, many other research groups, mostly based in the United States, had also begun to
design such programs for the cultivation of compassion. In 2011, I felt that the time was ripe for
bringing people together who were working in the emerging field of compassion sciences.
Together, we could exchange mutual experiences and ideas, discuss the struggles and difficulties
of this new research field, and begin to envision the future of work with and in compassion training.
While organizing this workshop and exploring possible venues for it, I met the artist Olafur Eliasson
at a conference and we engaged in a dialogue about the respective links between his artwork and
our scientific interests in the field of social and affective neurosciences. As you can read in more
detail in our
Olafur was very interested in the phenomena of joint feelings,
interdependence, and compassion. During one of our many conversations, he kindly offered to
host this workshop in his studio in Berlin, Germany. Through this fortunate coincidence and
Olafur’s generosity, the workshop thus took place in a wonderful art studio, the
in Berlin from July 20 – 24, 2011.
For everyone who was present at this workshop, these four days were unforgettable. The special
atmosphere of the art studio, including Olafur’s remarkable art pieces, imbued the workshop
participants with a sense of creativity. This, together with the interdisciplinary nature of the
workshop attendees, fostered a creative, intimate space for an intense dialogue and lively
exchange of ideas. As the goal of this workshop was to explore different ways to train compassion
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