“Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It’s the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else’s pain is as meaningful as your own.”
-Barbara Kingsolver
I believe a quality that we should be centralising in spiritual practice and discourse is empathy. Empathy is a layered concept and in order to understand it more effectively (and thus practice it more effectively) it helps to dive into some reading and resources.
I recently guided an empathy mediation. The audio can be purchased here. And one of the participants asked if I could point them to some further resources. So this blog is here to do just that. Below you will find some good places to start, a few of my favourite resources on empathy.
Videos :
1. This is a short animated video with the voice and teachings of Brene Brown. It’s a short summary of empathy (and how it differs from sympathy) and is also nice to watch with kids :
2. The Power of Empathy by Helen Riess. Dr. Reiss is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. This is a great talk that also captures some of the science of empathy.
3. Empathy is our Superpower! By Anita Nowak, PhD. Dr. Nowak is an empathy expert and this is a great talk about how we can become more empathetic with practice.
Books :
- How To Fight by Thich Nhat Hanh
- Start Where You Are : A Guide to Compassionate Living by Pema Chodron
- The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
- Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown
- Braving the Wildnerness by Brene Brown
- Mindsight : Transform Your Brain with the New Science of Empathy by Daniel J. Siegel
- The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World by Jamil Zaki
A few favourite quotes :
“We need to dispel the myth that empathy is ‘walking in someone else’s shoes.’ Rather than walking in your shoes, I need to learn how to listen to the story you tell about what it’s like in your shoes and believe you even when it doesn’t match my experiences.”
—Brene Brown, from Atlas of the Heart
“A receptive consciousness can grow by means of the organ of hearing just as an active consciousness develops through the hand. The ear can get nowhere, make nothing, do no one harm. We receive the other as if he were music, listening to the rhythm and cadence of his tale, its thematic repetitions, and the disharmonies . . .If the soul is a chord, only the ear can reveal it. The ear is the feminine part of the head; it is consciousness offering maximum attention with minimum intention. We receive another through the ear; through the feminine part of ourselves.”
—James Hillman, from Insearch : Psychology and Religion
“When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don’t blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertiliser, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet, if we have problems with our friends of family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, ore does trying to persuade using reason and argument. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.
—Thich Nhat Than, from At Home in the World
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