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Culture of Empathy Builder:  Shantigarbha
 

 

I Will Meet You There
A Practical Guide to Empathy, Mindfulness
and Communication.

Shantigarbha

Shantigarbha is an experienced teacher of both Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and Buddhism; he is also a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order. Shantigarbha is an international NVC trainer, certified with the International Centre for Nonviolent  Communication. He teaches on CNVC's International Intensive Trainings (IITs), is a CNVC Assessor-in-training, and serves on the Social Change and Peacemaking working group. He was given the name Shantigarbha, which means "seed of peace". He is author of,  I'll Meet You There: A Practical Guide to Empathy, Mindfulness and Communication.

 

Empathy is an intuitive body-sense rather that an intellectual understanding of other people's psychology.

 

Empathy is appreciating and valuing what is fundamental to the other person, their deep motivations, their physical needs, their hopes and dreams. It involved imagining how the other person might feel in their situation and what is
 important to them.


Links

 

 

YouTube: A Culture of Empathy:  Will Meet You There - Shantigarbha & Edwin Rutsch
(on Facebook)

 

 

I’ll Meet You There: A Practical Guide to Empathy, Mindfulness and Communication (Paperback Amazon) Shantigarbha

Shantigarbha shows how we connect with each other in the space that opens up when we let go of our ideas of good and bad, right and wrong. When we feel safe and connected to ourselves, we don’t need to use these labels, and we are also connected to the people around us with a sense of compassionate presence, intense closeness, and empathy. To empathize with others, we need to learn how to empathize with ourselves, so that when we reach out, we do so from the inside out. To support this, in each chapter there are practical exercises for individual or group study. Shantigarbha also shows how through this empathy we can find a way to stay connected to our humanity, and contribute to a more peaceful world.


 

Contents
 

Part One:  A brief history of empathy

  • Chapter 1:  The evolution of empathy

  • Chapter 2:  The Buddha and Jesus

  • Chapter 3:  The origins of the word 'empathy'

Part Two:  Empathy and Nonviolent Communications (NVC)

  • Chapter 4:  Marshall and the Palestinians

  • Chapter 5:  How not to empathize

  • Chapter 6:  Intention, presence, and focus

  • Chapter 7:  Timing and sustaining empathy

  • Chapter 8:  Empathy archery

Part Three:   A Buddhist perspective

  • Chapter 9:     Empathy and mindfulness

  • Chapter 10:  The ethics of empathy

  • Chapter 11:  The empathic Buddha

  • Chapter 12:  The moon at the window

Part Four:   Drawing the threads together

  • Chapter 13:   Empathy in children

  • Chapter 14:   Empathy and compassion

Conclusion

  • Appendix A:  Human needs

  • Appendix B:  List of feelings

 

Quotes:

"Empathy is an intuitive body-sense rather that an intellectual understanding of other people's psychology. " - Shantigarbha

 

Vimeo: Shantigarbha on his book I’ll Meet You There

 

Empathy Archery session by Shantigarbha
 

 


Empathy: what, why and how'
"Empathy is a compassionate understanding of another's experience. It's the basis of ethics and compassion. We develop it by expanding our 'natural' empathy through practise." A talk given at Buddhafield 2011 in the Dharma Parlour on 15 July 2011 


Empathy: what, why and how?
A talk given at the Buddhafield Festival, UK, July 2011
Context

  • I’m a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order and a Nonviolent Communication (NVC) trainer. Empathy and honesty are the key components of both.

  • Through NVC I’ve understood the ‘Bodhisattva ideal’ (Enlightenment for the benefit of all beings) teachings of Buddhism more deeply.

  •  Marshall Rosenberg, who developed NVC, said “Whatever humans do, they are trying to fulfil their needs. Needs are the resources life requires to sustain itself.

  • This was how I imagined a ‘Bodhisattva’ would relate to other human beings: as continuously trying to enrich their lives.

  • Gave me a glimpse of how I could serve myself and others.

 

What is empathy?

 

An empathic vision

  • Immediately after his Enlightenment the Buddha faced a dilemma: he realized that it was going to be difficult for him to communicate Enlightenment to others. He decided not to teach.

  • A great god called Brahma Sahampati begged the Buddha to teach: ‘There are some who will understand. They won’t fulfil their potential if they don’t hear you teach.’

  • The Buddha looked out on beings in compassion, and saw them as lotuses at different stages of development in a pond. He saw them in terms of their spiritual potential – an empathic vision. He decided to teach what he had learned.

Anukampa

  • A traditional description of the Buddha says that he comes into the world out of compassion ‘anukampa’ for the world. Anukampa means ‘trembling with’, even ‘resonating with’. So the Buddha trembles with, resonates with all beings.

So what is empathy?

  • Empathy is the anukampa aspect of compassion.

  • It is external mindfulness.

  • It is the reflective aspect of the Four Brahmaviharas: Loving Kindness, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy and Equanimity.

  • In a sentence: “Empathy is a compassionate understanding of other’s experience.”

 

Empathy is not the same as agreeing

  • I can still empathize with a ‘suicide bomber’, even if I don’t agree with their methods or worldview.

 

Empathy is one of a number of choices we have to embody our compassion

  • It’s not the only choice we have: we could choose to embody our compassionate intention by choosing to stay connected to ourselves, by choosing to express ourselves, or by acting in some other way.


Why is empathy important?

 

Compassionate connection

  • Empathy is important because it helps create compassionate connection.

Where else is empathy regarded as important?

1.  Supporting connection, cooperation and social responsibility.

2.  Emotional Intelligence.

3.  The basis of a moral sense – the ‘Ethics of Empathy’.

4.  External mindfulness.

5.  Basis of self-compassion.

6.  Basis of compassion.

7.  Therapeutically healing.

8.  Healthy.

9.  Mediation, conflict resolution and restorative justice.

 

Empathy as the basis for ethics and compassion

  • Story: King Pasenadi and Queen Mallikaa, from the Buddhist scriptures (the Pali Canon). King Pasenadi and Queen Mallikaa: “No-one is dearer to me than myself.” The Buddha echoes this, ‘If you love yourself, and realise that all of us hold ourselves dear, you will also love others and avoid harming them.’

 

The ethics of empathy

  • My Buddhist teacher, Urgyen Sangharakshita, argues that empathy is the basis of ethics and compassion: ethics is really to do with feeling solidarity with all life.

  • It involves connection and imagination. We need to feel a connection with those whom our actions may affect i.e. care about the impact of our actions, and be able to imagine the impact of our actions on them.

  • The Dalai Lama echoes this in his book Ancient Wisdom, Modern World: Ethics for the new Millennium.

  • Modern moral theory also places the imaginative ability to empathize at the heart of moral motivation.

 

Empathy: how?

 

How did it develop?

  • Empathy probably goes back as far as the first mammals.

  • According to modern neuroscience, our brains make use of special ‘Mirror neurons’ to create maps of the intentions of others, and to resonate emotionally with them.

 

Practical tips for developing empathy

  • Developing empathy is a matter of expanding our ‘natural’ empathy

  • Not “Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes” – this will likely cause distress, which blocks empathy. Rather than putting yourself in their shoes, can you imagine/sense what it’s like for them to have them on?         

 

What empathy isn’t

  • Story: an unempathic conversation.

Things that may not be heard as empathy:

1.   Giving advice/Fixing it

2.   Explaining it away

3.   Correcting it

4.   Consoling

5.   Telling a story

6.   “Don’t Feel…”

7.   Sympathizing

8.   Colluding

9.   Pitying

10. Investigating/interrogating

11. Evaluating

12. Educating

13. One-Up

 

Elements of empathy

  • Intention: focus on your intention to connect compassionately.

  • Presence: empathy is about ‘being with’ that person, giving our attention, our presence.

  • Focus: on what is alive in the other person right now: their vedana (feelings) and their cetana (deeper motivations/ needs).

  • Timing: We might use words when we want to check if we really are present, and/or if we imagine that the speaker would like some reassurance that we are with them:

    • Sense what’s important to the speaker, and voice your guess:

      • “Seems as if you wish...?”

      • “Were you wanting...?”

      • “Are you hoping...?”

      • “Are you feeling x, and is that because you need y?”

  • Sustaining: If I have space to connect with myself, I have space to connect with others.

 

Story: prison dialogue

  • Visit to New England prison.

  • Mourning as a need: mourning for lost dreams and lost lives. Moment of shared humanity.

  • Empathizing with the prisoners.

 

Empathizing with ‘terrorists’?

  • Empathy is an aspect of compassion. Compassion by its nature extends even to our enemies.

  • London 7/7 bombings. What are the needs on both sides?

  • Personal connection with this incident. Self-empathy first.

  • Guessing the needs of the ‘terrorist’: he deeply wants to be understood. He seems to want understanding for the depth of his motivation.

  • I regain a sense of connection with humanity. If we can do this with someone we regard as ‘inhuman’, and label as ‘terrorist’ and ‘suicide bomber’, could we do it with anyone, and indeed, all life?

 

Summary

  • What? “Empathy is a compassionate understanding of another’s experience.”

  • Why? It’s the basis of ethics and compassion. It creates compassionate connection.

  • How? Expanding our ‘natural’ empathy through practise.