in secular settings and included making these trainings amenable for scientific investigations, a mix
of people from a wide range of disciplines came together. For a list of program participants, please
see
How to train compassion? – was the title and the main question addressed in a workshop organized by the
Department of Social Neuroscience at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, directed by Prof. Dr. Tania Singer, taking
place in Berlin from the 21st to the 24th of July 2011
As the emphasis of the present workshop was on the practical aspects of compassion training
rather than on the science behind it, we also included practical meditation sessions at the
beginning and the end of each workshop day that were guided by our invited long-term meditation
practitioners. In Olafurs’ wonderful studio space, light spheres hung around our heads creating a
unique surrounding that supported and strengthened our experiences during these mental training
sessions.
We hope that the special atmosphere of this workshop will be transmitted to the reader via the
many sound collages, videos and pictures included throughout the book. The sound recordings are
based on Dirk Schwibbert’s recordings and are artistically collaged by
The video
materials were shot and cut by Thomas Lopatka during the workshop.
At the end of these inspirational four days, all of the participants felt that they wanted to somehow
offer the broader public some of the knowledge, wisdom, and insight that was exchanged and
developed in that time. The sound collage, “
, shares snippets of the end of the
workshop session in which we brainstormed how we could offer our insights to a broader
audience. We finally converged on the idea of a multi-media book as the format that seemed to
best represent the multi-disciplinary nature of the conference. We hope that we have captured the
creative spirit of the art studio and the intellectual energy of the convergence of scientists from the
fields of basic psychology, neuroscience, and the clinical sciences with contemplative scholars and
practitioners.
13
