Reflecting the richness of the workshop and the emerging field of compassion sciences was a
challenging endeavor; the book ended up being quite large. It now contains more than 880 pages
and even includes summaries of concrete
, some of which are
published for the first time in this book.
How is this book structured?
The book has four main sections indicated by four different colors: experiences with compassion
(yellow), concepts of compassion (blue), science of compassion (orange), and compassion training
programs (green). The
visualizes the overall structure of the book including
the many sound and video files. Further, the summary tables of part
and
include chapter
titles, authors, and links to short biographies of each author. In addition to the written chapters, you
will encounter sound collages throughout the book that were created by Nathalie Singer. The
sound materials that comprise the collage were recorded during the workshop and refer to the
workshop’s main themes. In addition, you will be able to enjoy Olafur Eliasson’s artistic
photographs. Finally, the book also contains a
and a page about a
produced in the context of the workshop.
The four parts of the book aim to cover different aspects of compassion. The first section is
intended to be experiential and personal in nature and offers some first-hand experiences of what
it means to apply compassion training programs in schools with children or teachers, in clinical
settings with patients, or in end-of-life settings where care is provided for people who are severely
ill or dying. The second section is more conceptual in nature and gives an overview of different
models and approaches to the concept of compassion including evolutionary, psychological,
neuroscientific, and Buddhist perspectives on compassion. The third section summarizes scientific
empirical evidence that has recently started to emerge in the field of psychology and cognitive
neurosciences on the biological, hormonal, neuronal, subjective, and behavioral foundations of
compassion and compassion training. This scientific part covers topics related to compassion and
stress, burn-out, pain, the autonomic nervous system, difficult emotions, self-compassion and
subjective well-being. For the more scientifically minded reader, references to peer-reviewed
scientific journals can be found at the end of each chapter. In the last section of the book, the
reader will find information about many secular compassion training programs that have been
developed in the context of scientific research at leading universities and institutions such as
Emory University, Stanford University, University of Texas at Austin, the Max Planck Institute for
Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, the University of California at San Francisco, and many
others. As most of these programs have not yet been published elsewhere, I would like to take the
opportunity to thank the authors for their trust and generosity in making this precious material
available to the general public through this book. The development of secular training programs
often takes many years of in-depth and collaborative work. We would, therefore, ask that if you
intend to apply any of these training programs in the context of your own work that you
acknowledge and contact the respective authors.
The final sections offer references to other relevant books and access to a ca. 30-minute long
documentary titled, “Raising Compassion”. The documentary features a small group of meeting
participants conversing on relevant topics. Tomas Gislason and his team together with Olafur
Eliasson and his team produced and filmed the project.
We hope that this multi-media book will inspire and motivate you to integrate some of these ideas
and practices into your everyday life; without doing so, compassion is nothing but a cold concept.
With this book, we aspire to bring more attention to compassion in our society. We hope that this
work will continue to grow, becoming more elaborate and refined over time, so that it can support
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