The Compassion Renaissance

The Compassion Renaissance and the Return of the Prodigal Church Richard K. Stephens - December 29, 2021   Rembrandt van Rijn, Return of the Prodigal Son, 1636, etching (detail) (Wikipedia commons) This article is a distillation of an illustrated long-form article on the applied neuroscience of compassion, “ The Compassion Renaissance: Science, Mind & Spirit .” 1) Exactly What is Compassion? First off, let’s define our subject. What does it mean to have compassion? The component of action is what separates compassion from empathy, sympathy, pity, concern, condolence, sensitivity, tenderness, commiseration or any other compassion synonym. Compassion gets involved. When others keep their distance from those who are suffering, compassion prompts us to act on their behalf. [ Compassion International , website, n. d.] Compassion is both proximate and practical. 2) The Current Church Crisis In one of his famous BBC radio broadcasts given Marc...

The Compassion Renaissance: Science, Mind & Spirit Richard K. Stephens December 17, 2021 (11,000 words / 36.7 minutes) ***   1) The Compassion Renaissance Compassion is our subject – specifically the art of cultivating compassion as an enduring trait that is rooted in neuroscientific research on the brains of mental discipline practitioners who have achieved a high capacity for the compassion trait. In the past 15 years, or so, of a new field of study called Contemplative Science, America has seen a proliferation of secularized compassion cultivation trainings, based on neuroscientific findings of research of traditional Buddhist meditation practices, come forth and gain widespread attention and an increasing adoption. We are in the midst of a rapidly developing Compassion Renaissance. Concurrent with the development of formal neuro-science-informed secular compassion trainings, a Christian practice making use of the same scientific findings but based specifical...