Day 38: Situational Compassion

Welcome to 40 Days of Mindfulness and Compassion Day 38!

 

Lecture

 The concept of equanimity, or common humanity, has been introduced quite a bit during these 40 days. Equanimity is the foundation of the broadening or expanding practices. This is, at least partly, because our reactive patterns typically emerge from states of non-equanimity. When the mind is not balanced, automatic appraisals are typically reactive in nature.

This point was brought home very powerfully for me at a conference that I was attending this past weekend. A recent study was presented from the perspective of social attribution theory. You might remember a mention of Susan Fiske’s work from earlier in these 40 days. According to Fiske’s research, immediate appraisals of others are based on two dimensions, competence and warmth. Basically, warmth indicates the extent to which someone is appraised as “likable.”

In this study, participants were primed to either “like” or “dislike” a fictional character that would appear in a virtual reality (VR) scenario. This priming was accomplished through narratives describing the characters that were provided to the participants. In the VR scenario, an object was moving toward the participants. In the backround was one of the two fictional characters. At some point, the object becomes threatening because it swiftly approaches the participants.

So, basically, each participant is primed to like or dislike two fictional characters, one of which appears in the background of the VR scenario as an object quickly approaches the participant. This moving object is the intended object of focus. Interestingly, participants who were primed “negatively” (to dislike) had a statistically significant slower reaction time to noticing the object than participants who were “positively” primed.

This was exciting to me because it indicates that, indeed, the appraisal process affects even the awareness of sensory perceptions.  The simply fact of “negative” appraisal influences sensory perception, even if the stimulus of the perceptions is unrelated to the “negative” appraisal. This works the other way around as well.In a real sense, the world of the resentful person is smaller than the world of the openhearted person.

 Ultimately, in equanimity practice, the appraisal process itself is being “softened.” Even-mindedness emerges, which allows for the possibility of the cultivation and expansion of appreciation, kindness, compassion and the like. In this practice of situational compassion, even-mindedness and global compassion are cultivated in the context(s) of daily living. We work with the actual situations of real life, including the challenges and edges that are offered. Life is not easy. Interpersonal relationships are not always easy. This practice works directly with the challenging situations of actual life. We take the practices and approaches of compassion cultivation and apply them to complex and messy actual situations.

 

Meditation

Meditation Day 38: Situational Compassion

 

Self-Reflective Activity

Try to pause periodically throughout the day during your daily activities. Just pause and breathe for a bit, then very gently look at your current situation. Breathe into the situation and use mindfulness to feel into the intricacies and layers of the situation in which you are imbedded. If the situation involves working with others, recite silently “may we work together for the common good.” If the situation is solitary, recite something appropriate, such as “may my activities reflect my inner values and be of benefit to others.”