its natural state and gain insight into our inner world. In CBCT, participants develop mindfulness by
focusing on the breath and learning to attend to it moment by moment as it enters and leaves the
body. Gradually they refine their attention through this process, like a scientist polishing and
focusing a microscope. Once their attention is a bit more refined, participants can use their minds
to engage in the types of meditations explained above, and they have a great tool for the
cultivation of compassion. Mindfulness is therefore foundational and essential for the cultivation of
compassion.
Conclusion: Teaching and Practicing CBCT
A full manual is available for instructors trained in CBCT, which presents further information on
each stage of the protocol, instructions for guided meditations, definitions of key concepts and
terms, and sample exercises for teaching the topics. Audio recordings of guided meditations for
each topic are also made available to practitioners. What is considered most important is that
instructors have a firm grounding in the key concepts of CBCT as outlined in this chapter, the
reason behind their sequence, and how they work together to create the necessary conditions for
the arising of genuine, unbiased compassion. Although the manual provides examples and
exercises that instructors can use, instructors who have a good understanding of CBCT may use
their own exercises and examples, as long as the content they are teaching remains the same.
Most important is the presentation of the concepts in ways that challenge established patterns of
thinking and reacting, and enable participants to begin to look at situations and relationships in a
critical way. The guided meditations then employ analytical meditation to examine such patterns
and beliefs critically within the meditation session itself. For example, a discussion on equanimity
and impartiality might involve an exercise where participants draw a scenario from a hat and then
stand along a line on the ground that symbolizes how much empathic care they feel towards the
person whose situation is described in the scenario. The scenario might be “A person who
assaulted one of your family members is released early from jail for good behavior”. Participants
then take their place on the line, indicating how much they can empathize with the person in
question, and are asked to volunteer explanations for their choices. The instructor may then ask
them, “What if the person released is your son or daughter?” Such additional information typically
involves some participants shifting their position on the line, prompting further discussion. In the
actual guided meditation following the general discussion, participants visualize a friend, a neutral
person, and a difficult person in their lives. They then imagine something good befalling each one
of these persons in turn. As they do so, they notice their own reactions and how uneven they are.
They then imagine something bad befalling each person, and notice how the empathic care and
compassion that arises tends to be uneven depending on whether the person is a friend, a stranger
or someone with whom they have difficulties. Then, remaining in the meditation, they are guided to
analyze their reactions and the unevenness of their feelings, inquiring whether such unevenness is
warranted or not; whether we value such bias when we see it in others; what the disadvantages of
bias and the advantages of impartiality are; and so on. Should they reach certain conclusions,
such as that they wish to cultivate more impartiality, they can then remain single-pointedly on that
conviction until it penetrates more deeply into their minds. This would be one example of: 1) using
an exercise to raise a topic of CBCT; 2) leading a discussion to explore it in more depth; and
engaging in 3) analytical meditation to investigate the topic further within the framework of a
meditation session; and then 4) non-analytical stabilizing meditation to deepen and reinforce the
change in perception and, eventually, behavior.
It is our hope that researchers will continue to investigate the use of CBCT and its potential in a
variety of clinical and educational settings. As a form of meditation that explicitly employs analytical
styles of meditation alongside non-analytical ones, we hope that research in CBCT leads to further
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