"Compassion means to feel the feelings of others" - Dr. Robert Thurman

I thought it might be helpful to have an expert's opinion on what compassion is before I start showing you all the different ways it manifests in the arts. So here's the brilliant Dr. Robert Thurman from a TED talk, on compassion––it really fits with what we're talking about here:

Where compassion comes is where you surprisingly discover you lose yourself in some way, through art, through meditation, through understanding, through knowledge, actually... knowing your interconnectedness with other beings, you can experience yourself as the other beings, when you see through the delusion of being separated from them. And when you do that, you're forced to feel what they feel.

the Dalai Lama says that "when you give birth in your mind to the idea of compassion, because you realize that you yourself and your pains and pleasures are finally too small a theatre for your intelligence, it's really too boring...."

Enjoy!
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"Compassion means to feel the feelings of others" - Dr. Robert Thurman