Compassion training and the scope of Ethics

Compassion training

Those with religious faith have rich resources for the cultivation of compassion. And religious approaches can also be great resource for humanity as a whole. But religious is not necessary for cultivating compassion. If fact, secular techniques for compassion training are already in use, and their effectiveness has even been scientifically demonstrated. The more we train our abilities, the stronger they become. Neuroscientific research conducted by my old friend professor Richard Davidson, for example, he demonstrated that even short periods of compassion training, as brief as two week, can lead to observable changes in the patterns of the brain, as well as to a greater inclination toward charitable giving. Yet, as I often point out, it is vital that when educating our children's brains we do not neglect to educate their hearts, and key element of education their hearts has to be nurturing their compassionate nature. This is a subject to which I will return.

The scope of ethics

In conclusion, it is worth briefly exploring the scope of ethics. Maintaining social order that ethics is understood only as a machanism, then it will cover only those aspects of outward human behavior which have a direct and observable impact on others. And it's only relates to the impact of our actions on others. In effect, to the consequences of our actions, then whatever feelings and intentions we may harbor in our hearts will be irrelevant or neutral with regard to ethics. But this I cannot accept. This understanding of ethics is much too narrow.

The very notion of ethics makes no sense without a consideration of motivation. If we bumped our head on tree, would we blame the tree? Of course we would not! The idea of moral responsibility presupposes the presence of some inner motivation. So, to me, to describe ethics without reference to the level of motivation seems very incomplete.

In fact, the inner motivational dimension is the most important aspect of ethics.  Genuinely directed our actions will naturally tend to be ethically sound when our motivation is pure toward the benefit of others... This is why I consider compassion to be ethically sound. This is why consider compassion to be the core principle on which an entire ethical approach can be built. It is from compassionate concern for the welfare of others that all our ethical values and principles arise, including that of justice.