Pedagogy of the Heart: Education for Compassion
Earthville founder Mark Moore discusses the power of contemplative experiential education and service learning to awaken compassion and help empower sensitive and effective agents of change.
Can compassion be learned?
Compassion is the very essence of our nature, and thus compassionate living is our most natural way of being. It’s the way of all of us would live if we were embraced and nurtured from birth without ever having encountered the kinds of selfishness and aggression that trigger our self-preservation instincts, causing us to seek (but never truly find) refuge in the fortified individual pursuit of our own desires, rather than living in our natural state of harmonious empathy and cooperation.
Fortunately, because compassion is in our nature, it can’t be damaged or lost and thus doesn’t need to be repaired or replaced. We need nothing else but simply to recognize it in ourselves again.
“Education needs not only to develop our intelligence, but also to support the basic human values of warm-heartedness and compassion.”
— The 14th Dalai Lama
So it follows that compassion can be learned through experiences that help us recognize the best qualities of our nature. The more we engage fully with such experiences — and reflect on them to glean all we can from them — the more we return home to our natural compassion, as gradually it becomes more the rule than the exception. Earthville Institute’s educational programs — and the supportive environment in which they take place — are designed to facilitate this process with caring attention to the unique experiences of each individual.
Developing three dimensions of compassion
The path of developing compassion and refining the practice of compassionate living can be viewed in three cumulative aspects.
1. Restoring our natural sensitivity and empathy
Compassion begins with opening the heart, learning to let ourselves feel in a safe and grounded way. With learning and practice over time, we become more able to feel both the fullness of our own experience and our natural empathy for others, and we gradually allow our natural sensitivity (which becomes diminished in a world in which desensitization is a universal mechanism to cope with stress, aggression and trauma) to be experienced in its full capacity. The more we feel what others feel, the more we automatically feel compassion for them (and likewise for ourselves). This restoration of our innate sensitivity and empathy gives us access to a wealth of internal resources from which we’d been cut off by our conditioning, and enables further development of the aspects below.
2. Cultivating informed and discerning compassion
The compassion of the heart becomes much more useful when paired with the clarity and discernment of a well-informed intellect. The better we understand the complex causes and conditions behind a given situation, the more our compassion is focused precisely where it belongs — on what’s actually happening rather than on what we might assume or imagine if less informed. This greater clarity with regard to causality in turn enables a sharper sense of exactly what needs to be addressed to improve the situation. Even the most caring doctor is more effective when able to make an accurate diagnosis that leads to an effective prescription.
3. Developing skill in applying compassion
Having connected with our innate compassion and illuminated it with awareness and discernment, the next step is application — putting compassion in action, hopefully with beneficial results. Even with the best of intentions and a good understanding of what needs to be done, there’s still the matter of how we actually do it. A surgeon needs mastery of her skills to achieve the best results for the patient, and the same goes for the work of engaged compassion. For developing such skill, there’s no substitute for experience: in the best cases, we improve continually through cycles of practice, reflection and feedback, again and again for refinement over time.
Earthville Institute provides a supportive environment to catalyze all three of these stages. All of these threads of sensitivity, insight and application weave together in Earthville Institute’s educational programs, facilitating richly integrated, deeply nourishing, supportively challenging and potentially life-changing learning experiences that help us flourish as individuals while we do our parts to help the world flourish as a harmonious whole.
Bringing these concepts to life: Contemplative service learning
For the purpose of bringing the lived experience of compassion alive in us, one of the most helpful catalysts is service. The act of putting our time, energy, and heart to work for the benefit of a greater good helps us transcend our habitual preoccupations with personal concerns and tap into the very best parts of ourselves. This is one of life’s greatest win-win propositions, as we discover the deepest happiness life has to offer while also helping to make the world a better place for others.
“All the suffering in the world comes from seeking happiness for oneself.
All the joy in the world comes from seeking happiness for others.”— Shantideva, 8th century CE
Earthville Institute’s contemplative service-learning programs provide unique opportunities for participants to gain precious experience putting compassion into action through real-world charitable activity in a caring community context. Our culture of compassionate and constructive communication offers useful feedback that increases our self-awareness, bolsters self-confidence, and aids refinement, while also providing inspiring companionship. And our contemplative approach helps to deepen the integration of heart and mind and of inner life and outer work, enhance learning through extensive reflection, and help ensure the best intentions lead to the best results.
Empowering changemakers as a force multiplier for good
Society is the sum of its individuals, so nurture the one to nurture the many.
Making a better world starts with each individual, so the first step is always to look at our own lives honestly and do our best to reduce the harm we cause, and keep refining our own practice of compassionate living. Societal ills and imbalances are interpersonal yet rooted in the intrapersonal, so collective well-being must begin with personal well-being, and then it naturally expands from there as personal empathy, awareness and empowerment give rise to action in harmony with the collective good. As we improve our own practice of applied compassion over time, we become better able to serve as a force for change, working with sensitivity, skill, and wisdom to help create a more compassionate world.
The residential learning community at Earthville Institute provides an optimal sandbox in which to learn through interaction with others in a safe environment that provides affirmative and constructive feedback and the incomparable inspiration of being a part of something greater than ourselves. Our focus on empowering changemakers fosters understanding of how change happens and how we can make a difference, and our experiential approach provides opportunities to develop wisdom and skill to make change more effectively. And again and again we see that graduates of our programs go on to do great work and inspire other compassionate changemakers.
Educational pathways for awakening compassion
True compassion can’t really be “taught” (at least not in the sense of being imparted through books or lectures) — but it definitely can be learned. In fact, it’s a joyful process of lifelong learning. The ideal of “compassionate living” may sound like a lofty goal, but it’s a more of a journey than a destination — and that’s where "education for compassionate living” comes in, as lamps to guide the journey.
In summary, insightfully crafted educational experiences can activate compassion in four stages:
Awaken one’s innate sensitivity and empathy through contemplative practice.
Cultivate deep and clear understanding of the experience of self and others, so one naturally feels greater compassion.
Put that informed compassion into action through service, thereby deepening compassion and gaining experience.
Develop the wisdom and skills of a sensitive and effective changemaker through experience combined with reflection.