Selfless Part 2: Building Compassion - Roundtable

This Roundtable explores issues arising from the podcast 'Building Compassion' (this is the second of four podcasts in the 'Self-Less Series'). We summarise why people may resist being deliberately compasionate and then outline a variety of ways it can be developed. The Roundtable explores neuroplasticity - how we become what we do - and also how this leads to a distinction between personality and character and how the latter is developed by practising compassion. We then explore sympathetic joy and the Buddhist practice of 'kirtan' and how this is also experienced in the 'call and respose' experience so common at live music concerts. This reflects our deep yearning for group experiences of 'oneness' and is contrasted with the separatenes of jealousy and of fixed mindsets. Finally, we explore the importance of consciously using our ability to influence others to increase the odds of more positive and convivial relations with others. We discuss giving people the '3 Experiences' of being heard, understood and accepted and how this creates more opportunities for wise, compassionate action.