Use code SUMMERPRACTICE for a 25% discount on all On Demand Courses through August 31.

Search Sangha Live

Nourishing Compassion

With Roshi Joan Halifax recorded on January 9, 2022.

Found our teachings useful? Help us continue our work and support your teachers with a donation. Here’s how.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama has shared that compassion is not a luxury but a necessity for human beings to survive. There is no more important time to understand and strengthen compassion than right now.

During this session we’ll explore the geography of compassion, and how to cultivate compassion through rich practices from various Buddhist traditions. We will also explore the edge states of altruism, empathy, integrity, respect, and engagement, and how compassion can transform the shadow of these states into their healthy forms. Finally, we will look through the lens of Bernie Glassman’s Three Tenets of Not Knowing, Bearing Witness, and Compassionate Action as a way to meet the world with courage, care, and wisdom.

Listen to the audio version below, or click here to download the mp3.

Tags: compassion wisdom

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Pamela Weiss

    What Does it Mean to be Free?

    Recorded : December 14, 2025

    Awakening, freedom, liberation … these are the premise and promise of the Buddhist Path. This session will explore the theme of awakening and liberation, and reflect on how practice can support us to find freedom right where we are.

    Read More

  •

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Milla Gregor – Week of April 22, 2024

    This week’s theme is “Breath, Body, Connection and Reflection”. Breath, body and connection are areas of practice that come up again and again in Buddhist teaching. We’ll explore them in different combinations, and reflect on how they can support your meditation practice and your wider life, with all their opportunities for relationship, engagement and embodied presence.

    Read More

  •

    The Happiness of Emptiness

    Recorded : January 21, 2024

    Exploration of ultimate teachings requires listening, reflection/meditation rather than sitting to wait for an experience. Emptiness does not require experiences. The ultimate reveals the emptiness of self, ego, I and my – including self interest, self help and self compassion. This session will explore the contractions forming self and the way our minds have become…

    Read More

  • James Baraz

    The Choice is Ours: Wise Relationship to Our Experience

    Recorded : January 17, 2021

    These pandemic times with isolation, suffering, social and political divisiveness and an uncertain future our lives are filled with even more challenges than usual. At the same time many hearts are opening with increased compassion, connection and possibilities on the horizon. The mind can easily get contracted by the stress or grasping at hope. But…

    Read More

  •

    Mindfulness Approaches to Working with Anxiety

    Recorded : September 16, 2018

    Who is not anxious these days? Whether faced with the daily stresses of finances, jobs, responsibilities, parenting, family, or the ongoing anxiety of political events and ecological crisis, most of us are anxious. In the US, anxiety rates have risen to 18% of the population, and 25% in Europe for those struggling with depression and…

    Read More

  • Nina la Rosa

    Dismantling Racism in Our Minds and Hearts

    Recorded : July 15, 2017

    If one lives as a human on this earth one is affected by racism. Power and privilege have been unfairly awarded throughout history to certain groups of people based on race while disempowering others. These systems function on a systemic and cultural level, but also within each of us individually when we unconsciously internalize messages…

    Read More