In this solo episode of A Show of Hearts, host Rosemary Pritzker dives into the subject of compassion: how to cultivate it for ourselves and others and what compassion and having an open heart means in today’s world. She shares her interpretations of the Buddhist concept of the Four Immeasurables: Lovingkindness, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy and Equanimity. Rosemary shares her own stories and recounts stories about compassion passed down from her teacher (a Tibetan Buddhist Lama). Then she leads listeners through a 15-minute heart-opening meditation for cultivating compassion, called Tonglen. Rosemary shares the personal story of how a childhood trip to Nepal and Bhutan opened her heart and helped her deal with childhood bullying by using Tonglen and learning to have compassion for both herself and the pain of those who hurt her. You’ll come away from the episode with tools for how to build your own meditation practice so that you can feel the benefits of implementing them into your day-to-day life.
Resources mentioned in the episode:
The Compassion Book by Pema Chödron
When Things Fall Apartby Pema Chödron
Why is the Dalai Lama Always Smiling? By Lama Tsomo
The Compassion Institute
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Transcript
You’re listening to A Show of Hearts. The podcast about finding the courage to live a deep and magical life. I’m your host life coach, Rosemary Pritzker.
(singing)
Today’s episode is about compassion. We’ll talk about what it is, how to cultivate it, and why. A Show of Hearts is focused on why it’s essential to follow our hearts in life and the fact that it takes courage, bravery, and guts to do it. It’s not just rainbows and butterflies all the time. It can be really painful or scary to face ourselves and overcome our fears. So it’s important to me that this show include ideas and instructions on how to do all the things required in order to truly follow one’s heart. From time to time you’ll hear me share some of the tools and practices that have helped me the most. I’ve been a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism for most of my life. And two things that have helped me the most with the long list of things that I’ve faced is training my mind through meditation and learning to better understand compassion. So that’s what I’ll be sharing with you today.
But before we jump in I want to share the review of the month. This month’s review is from Keely Carney who wrote “I love this podcast. It makes me feel like I’m getting to know some of the most interesting people on the planet in a really in depth way. Always excited for new episodes and invariably end up inspired after listening.” If you want to be featured as the next review of the month, head over to iTunes and write a five star review. This helps make sure more people will find this show so they can be inspired to follow their hearts too.
Albert Einstein said “A human being is a part of the whole called by us, universe.