Compassion exists within us all. It is also a skill that can be expanded. The Compassion Shift is an initiative of the Emory Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics to help people uncover and evolve the compassion within and advance a global culture of compassion.
It brings to life His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s famous quote: “Just as ripples spread out when a single pebble is dropped into water, the actions of individuals can have far-reaching effects.”
This ripple effect sets a change in motion by creating a wave of personal transformation. It also continues to journey outward, creating interpersonal transformation.
Ultimately, the ripple of compassion can shift the world around us into a more compassionate place.
In the words of the Dalai Lama, “our world needs a compassion revolution, and we need it now.” The Emory Compassion Center is contributing to this revolution by raising awareness about compassion and providing concrete evidence-based tools that people around the world need to better access and cultivate it.
The Compassion Shift is an initiative to advance a global culture of compassion through two educational programs – CBCT® for adults and SEE Learning® for children. The initiative aims to expand and make these innovative research-based programs accessible to people across the planet and especially to those working in the critical areas of education, business, healthcare, and human services.
CBCT® (Cognitively-Based Compassion Training) is founded on the premise that compassion is both innate and a skill that can be enhanced by anyone of any age, and it is never too late to reap the benefits. The most highly researched program of its kind, CBCT® has been supporting the cultivation of compassion in adult populations since 2004.
SEE Learning® (Social, Emotional and Ethical Learning) brings the cultivation of compassion and other basic human values into education at all levels, from kindergarten up to university, through its age-appropriate curricula and rigorous educator training program. Within two years after its global launch in 2019, SEE Learning® reached more than 50,000 educators in over one hundred countries, and it is translated into multiple languages. SEE Learning® has shown that compassion can be taught to children in both simple and increasingly sophisticated and developmentally appropriate ways.
For over twenty years Emory University has collaborated with the Dalai Lama to promote basic human values through education. Along with CBCT® and SEE Learning®, this collaboration has resulted in the groundbreaking program, Emory-Tibet Science Initiative (ETSI). Since 2007, ETSI has brought high quality science education to contemplative scholars in Tibetan nunneries and monasteries, empowering them to become active changemakers and researchers and showing that science and spirituality can be bridged to advance humanity’s understanding of compassion and the human mind.
Compassion extends ever outwards, but it starts from within.
We hope you will join us in working to establish a more compassionate and ethical world for all.
