realization that all beings on some level wish to be free of suffering and want happiness. A final
feature in the cognitive domain that is important is that there be no attachment to an outcome. Of
course, compassion entails the aspiration to transform or end suffering. At the same time, the
attachment to a particular outcome can be a cause of suffering. These two valences of 1) not
having an unrealistic expectation for an outcome and 2) the dedication to supporting a beneficial
outcome in relation to the experience of suffering can be viewed as the “two sides of the same
coin” of intention. A clinician strives diligently to alleviate disease, pain and suffering, for example,
but, at the same time, she or he has, in the best circumstances, “therapeutic humility”, which leads
the clinician to realize that he or she must accept the eventual course of events that may be
swayed by influences beyond one’s control. In sum, the I/I Axis, which has a cognitive base that is
interrelated with the attentional and affective domains, has two valences: intention and insight.
These interdependent valences produce mental pliancy and discernment, and can prime context-
sensitive, principled compassion.
E/E Axis and Ethical Engagement and Embodiment
The E/E Axis is comprised of the somatic process associated with embodiment and engagement.
The E/E Axis gives rise to three key features: ethike (moral virtue), equanimity and eudaemonia.
The E/E axis is based on an enactive process where mind, body and the environment are contexts
for each other and become the means for the generation of the embodied dimension of the inter-
subjective, mutual, grounded and interactive processes associated with compassion. Embodiment
can be said to be the source of the felt sense of another’s suffering through the experience of
inter-subjective resonance, wherein another’s experience feels as if it is happening in the subject’s
own body. Embodiment is viewed as forming a fundamental base for the compassionate,
interactive, enacted, engaged life. The enactive experience reveals directly and indirectly how the
mind, body and environment are inter-related in a dynamic co-emergent process. Here,
perception, cognition, and action or engagement give rise to the subjective experience of one’s
embeddedness in the world.
Engagement with and Response to Suffering
The E/E Axis is also associated with the experience of the body having a dispositional readiness
for action in the environment. Here, one’s bodily being and the environment are contexts for each
other and the interactive basis for the generation of compassion. Compassion in action is
relational, mutual, reciprocal and asymmetrical. This axis grounds inter-subjectivity in bodily action
and interaction. From the base of the embodied mind, engagement with the world arises. In the
case of compassion, the mind is in a state of readiness to meet the world in response to suffering.
Without the world priming the mind, compassion would not arise as a non-linear, interdependent,
adaptive and sense-making process. One of the mental features that arises when all these axes
are activated is equanimity. Equanimity is characterized by a calm, even, balanced state of mind; it
is also supported by the realization of the truth of impermanence and holding things in equal
regard. This mental faculty is accompanied by eudaemonia, translated as human flourishing or
happiness, another potential outcome of compassion. For the Greeks, eudaemonia correlates with
the highest human good and the exercise of goodness and morality, what Buddhists call “basic
goodness”. A third valence is “ethike”, or moral virtue, which is also present in principled
compassion and reflects the outcome of intention and insight in action. Principled compassion is
compassion that does no harm to self or other. Compassion is an emergent process arising out of
the interaction of a number of interdependent attentional, affective, cognitive and embodied or
somatic processes, all of which themselves can be trained in. There is no compassion without
attentional and affective balance. Compassion is not possible without prosocial intention and
insight, including insight about the distinction between self and other. And compassion is an
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