Compassion Studies
Follow me on my journey to learn all about what compassion is, how to have it + who to have it for.
Since I read Siddhartha and the transcendentalists in high school, I’ve been interested in a simpler life.
After college, I was enthralled by the Eastern concept of bodhisattvas described by Jack Kerouac. In America, we’re taught to climb to the top, to strive to be special. Though compassion is celebrated, it’s taught out of us as we grow up and go out into the working world. Being compassionate takes presence, a leaning back from the rat race + opening to space where your compassion can arise.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
— Henry David Thoreau
Books about compassion
Read summaries of a growing list of books I’ve read + recommend in my quest. Broken down into adult, young adult, middle grade and picture books.
Compassion is…
I’ve pulled definitions from various resources for comparison.
My question to a master
Read an account of my interaction with Ven. Pomnyun Sunim, where I ask him why we should be compassionate.