← Compassion in a T-Shirt
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- [00:01]
Dr. Stan Steindl
Hi, I'm Dr. Stan Steindl, and welcome to Compassion in a T Shirt, where we explore the science and practice of compassion and how it can truly transform our lives. Today, I'm really delighted to be joined by Associate Professor Paul Condon. Paul is a social psychologist whose work sits at the intersection of compassion, science, mindfulness and contemplative traditions. He's a fellow of the Mind and Life Institute and has spent many years exploring how compassion can be understood not just as a feeling, but as something deeply relational, trainable, and grounded in both science and wisdom traditions. We'll be focusing today on his new book, How Compassion Works. Co authored with John McCrensky, the book offers a really thoughtful and practical guide to what they call sustainable compassion training, an approach that helps us access our innate capacities for love, presence, and wisdom, while also protecting against overwhelm, burnout, and empathic distress. In our conversation, we'll explore the three key modes of practice that structure the receptive mode, deepening mode, and inclusive mode, and how these can help us not only cultivate compassion within ourselves, but also extend it outward in a more stable and sustainable way. I'm really looking forward to this one. And so I bring you Dr. Paul Condon.
- [01:36]
Interviewer / Host
Well, Professor Paul Condon, welcome to Compassion in a T shirt.
- [01:41]
Associate Professor Paul Condon
Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
- [01:44]
Interviewer / Host
Just to let you know, an amusing twist of fate, I guess. Actually, I typed How Compassion Works into Amazon and the search results included your book, of course, which was good, but also my book, the Gifts of Compassion. So just a little, Little shameless plug there for me, but also James Kirby's book, Choose Compassion. So these were the top, top results.
- [02:11]
Associate Professor Paul Condon
Yeah. That's nice. Well, that's a good way for us to connect. That's a cool story. Thanks for sharing that.
- [02:16]
Interviewer / Host
I was. I was chuffed, and I was thinking it could reflect my algorithm, I suppose, but. Oh, and. And James says hi, by the way, too.
- [02:26]
Associate Professor Paul Condon
Yeah, good to know your connection with James as well.
- [02:30]
Interviewer / Host
Yeah.
- [02:32]
Dr. Stan Steindl
So how compassion works begins with the
- [02:34]
Interviewer / Host
idea that we already possess, I guess, an innate capacity for love, compassion, and wisdom. So what.
- [02:42]
Dr. Stan Steindl
What do you mean by that?
- [02:44]
Interviewer / Host
Really? And. And why do people sometimes kind of lose touch with that, that innate part of ourselves?
- [02:50]
Associate Professor Paul Condon
So let me start by saying that a major inspiration for this book, this collaboration between John McCransky and myself, is the intersection of spiritual and contemplative perspectives with scientific perspectives. And I think we'll put. Probably spend some time talking about that more. But essentially, when we look at both Buddhist perspectives as well as some perspectives from evolutionary Psychology and developmental psychology. There's a kind of correspondence that humans come into the world as infants, prepared for social connection, prepared for compassion. So this is the developmental and evolutionary point of view that we expect to be in connection, and we depend on connection. And there's a lot of interesting research and scientific work that parses that out in ways in which we're prepared for care, prepared for pro social action, and that emerges from fairly early on in infancy and early childhood. So it's part of our evolutionary inheritance to have capacities for care and compassion. And from a Buddhist point of view particularly, the book is primarily informed by Tibetan Buddhism and also intersects with Zen Buddhism, which suggests that our underlying nature is characterized by qualities such as openness, ease, peace, compassion, sort of vast capacity for care and openness and wisdom. So we have these underlying natural capacities for care, openness, ease. And we might be able to notice that just in little moments throughout our life. As you know, we all have various different kinds of struggles or difficulties, but if we just pay attention, we might notice little moments in our life that help to evoke or spark a little bit of ease, a little bit of joy, a little bit of calm and care. And so from the point of view of the book, we have that potential. We can tap into it in any moment. And it's kind of a matter of training our attention to be able to notice the capacity for care more readily. And the book describes a range of different kinds of meditation practices with support from psychological theories, to be able to help engage with that contemplative path.
- [05:56]
Interviewer / Host
What is it then, that that means that sometimes we do lose touch with that, that this is such a. An innate part of our. Our very being. You know, it's there really from childhood, the caregiving, care, receiving love, caring, compassion. You know, they're sort of built in, and yet we can lose touch with it.
- [06:17]
Associate Professor Paul Condon
Yeah. So we could. We could take that question and explore it a bit, both from a psychological lens and. Well, as a Buddhist lens. I'll start with the psychological perspective. I've particularly been inspired by attachment theory in developmental psychology. And so I'll try to recap this in a kind of simple way. But attachment theory suggests that infants are born into the world with an attachment system that motivates them to seek proximity to care and that ensures their survival. And so an infant's behaviors and cries and facial expressions are all kind of oriented around maintaining proximity to care.
- [07:11]
Interviewer / Host
And.
- [07:11]
Associate Professor Paul Condon
And if their efforts to receive care are met with sensitivity and empathy and consistency, they will then internalize that experience into A sense of themselves as worthy of care, as loved, as interpreting themselves as capable of being in a caring connection, and then that the world is generally a safe, supportive place, and if they try to seek out care, will be met with support. So there's then kind of trust. And attachment theorists describe this as a secure base that is provided by caregiver. And if the infant and child has that experience, then it supports their capacity to go out and explore into the world with a sense of curiosity, courage, risk taking, and so on. So the scientific and evolutionary perspective suggests that, yes, we do come into the world with the natural or innate capacity for care, but it also depends on some nurturance and support from caregivers for it to mature and develop. So then, as adults, the attachment experiences from early in our life carry with us. And in any moment when we lose touch with a sense of a secure base, when we feel perhaps what's described as insecure or a feeling of distrust or a feeling of unsafety, when we lose touch with our secure base, it becomes more difficult then to extend care to others. So I think from that perspective, every one of us has experiences of safety and security from some element of our life in some way. But each of us also has elements of what we would describe as insecurity or sort of anxiousness or distrust around care or relationships. So when we feel a sense of threat or conflict or trauma or various kinds of challenges, when we're not connected to a sense of secure base, our capacity and ability to extend care to others is limited or not as effective. So each of us can kind of, you know, kind of roller coaster a bit back and forth between feeling safe or unsafe, and then that can impact our capacity to extend care. So maybe I'll pause there and see if you. What you think. If you have further questions before I jump into kind of then thinking about it from the Buddhist point of view.
- [10:24]
Interviewer / Host
Yeah, I was just sort of kind of reflecting on all of that and thinking that there are certain innate aspects to us. Love and compassion, caregiving, care receiving. I suppose there are other innate parts to us as well, to do with responding to threat, I guess. And so once we are born and things start to happen, those innate parts, aspects get shaped by those experiences. And attachment experiences are a big part of that and can you know, sort of move us towards feeling more or less secure, more or less safe, more or less comfortable in proximity with others. Around trust and so on.
- [11:06]
Associate Professor Paul Condon
Yeah, absolutely. And then so from the Buddhist point of view, I think the sort of most direct way to put it there is that a lot of the time, probably 99% of the time, most of us are identified with our fleeting thoughts, our perceptions, our narratives, our stories, our emotional experiences. So these. These mental constructions arise in the mind and we become sort of immersed in them and sort of sucked into them as if it's the only reality of what's happening now. Like if I'm feeling stressed or feeling annoyed. Those feelings are sort of have a gravity that pull us into them and it shapes how we see ourselves and others in the world. And so in those moments, the. The identification with the thought or the feeling is in a way restricting or inhibiting our access to the underlying capacities of compassion and openness and ease. And so a lot of meditation practices, as we describe in the book, and I also think a lot of meditations that others teach and other systems of compassion training are helping people to in a way kind of de. Identify or get less enmeshed in their thoughts and experiences, so that the qualities of care and openness and ease that are sort of always available can come forward with more. More into the foreground, not so much in the background. And that our ability to then interact and connect with others can be informed by the background of openness and ease, rather than simply reacting to our thoughts and reacting to our emotions and so forth.
- [13:14]
Interviewer / Host
I had a lovely conversation with Margaret Cullen recently about her book Quiet Strength, which is all about equanimity. What are your thoughts there about? Equanimity is a part of that balance and non. Reactivity and then I guess, offering access to those innate aspects of peace and openness and so on.
- [13:37]
Associate Professor Paul Condon
Yeah, yeah, that's great. Another idea that's been really helpful for me in terms of kind of connecting a lot of these ideas is also from developmental psychology. There's a concept called a holding environment. This was introduced by a psychoanalyst, Donald Winnicott, I think in the 50s, 1950s, maybe a British psychotherapist. And he used that concept, holding environment, to describe how a parent would ideally be present to a child. So when a child is having a difficult emotion, they don't yet have the emotion regulation capacities. They depend on an adult to help them sort of support with the emotion regulation. So then the child is then scaffolding on the wiser, more mature adults emotion regulation. And I think when we engage in meditation practices of compassion and mindfulness and equanimity and also any other kind of like somatic experience, like yoga or Tai Chi or anything, we're learning to establish a holding environment or to become A holding environment for our own experiences. So whether it's like, if I'm feeling stressed about a busy schedule and not being able to keep up with all my work. Or something annoying that happens at work. Or some difficult news that comes up, then we have that negative emotional state and reaction. Engaging in meditation practices as a way to be a holding environment for that emotion. So not. Not getting caught up in the emotion, not reacting to it, but also not analyzing it or trying to figure it out, but becoming kind of gently, quietly present to the experience. So this is inspired by a teacher. Sokni Rinpoche introduced a practice called the handshake practice. He's made that quite popular. But I think I can see it also in many other systems of psychological therapy. Like acceptance and commitment therapy. Kind of helping people to become present to their experiences in a more gentle, welcoming, friendly way. Seems to be key. Then, to have equanimity, to be able to hold any experience with a sense of friendliness and care. And then that helps us also to develop empathy. Because it gives us a capacity to be more aware of all the layers of our own experience. Which helps us to have empathy for what others are going through. Also, I think more confidence. We can develop more confidence just in any experience that's arising. It can give us then confidence to be more present to others. So I think that's what strikes me as
- [16:54]
Interviewer / Host
really.
- [16:54]
Associate Professor Paul Condon
I think a big aspect of meditative practice. Is not trying to achieve a purely, like, blissful state or clear state, but becoming a holding environment for all of our experience.
- [17:13]
Interviewer / Host
Yeah, I really appreciate that phrase holding environment. I think that's something I'll sort of go on and ponder a bit more. Because one way to develop that more internal holding environment. Is to have grown up with that a bit around us. And our parents might show us the way. But a lot of these practices are also about trying to cultivate and develop that holding environment. Because, you know, the thoughts and feelings and the external, difficult sort of situations and so on, they're just going to happen anyway. But we're really wanting to develop that holding environment. So that's great. One of the things I noticed in the book is you often sort of say love and compassion as a kind of a pigeon pair in a way, or something like that. What are your thoughts there in terms of how you might see those two concepts as similar. Or how you might parcel them out a little bit as well. Or whether there are differences there?
- [18:16]
Associate Professor Paul Condon
I think there definitely is a pretty strong connection. But there is a way of defining them that I think is important. So love would be a sort of intentional wish for others happiness or an attitude of cultivating others happiness, a wish for others happiness and a wish for others flourishing and compassion. And one way that we've been inspired in the book was also through some writing by Matthieu Ricard, who's a monk in the Tibetan tradition. And he, in his writing has defined compassion as love that is refracted through the lens of empathy for another suffering. So it's. It includes love, a sort of attitude that cares for others, sees others as dear, wishes others well, but then also through the lens of empathy, is in touch with others suffering and distress, and is oriented around a wish for the freedom from suffering for others. And another important aspect of that that I really appreciate about the Buddhist definition that I think brings more nuance than what we see in psychological theory, is that the Buddhist traditions have a lot of granularity or nuance around different kinds of suffering. So suffering isn't only just physical pain and illness or hunger, but it also includes the sort of chronic discomfort or distress, or John Kabat Zinn refers to it as dis ease, a kind of chronic discomfort that comes from being conditioned in a human body and sort of being oriented around the construction of a self that's constantly trying to seek out things or. Or to avoid things. One example I sometimes share with my students or when I'm teaching is. So I teach at a university and after sometimes finishing class, I'll go walk to the coffee shop nearby to get some coffee and before I go back to work, to keep working. And I notice when I'm walking a kind of, a little bit of urgency in my chest, kind of subtle. It's not really a lot of stress, but I feel some urgency in my chest to get to the coffee shop a little bit faster. Like I need to get there and get back so I can get more work done. And that little bit of urgency or a little bit of stress from the Buddhist view, I think is like an example of the kind of feeling that is blocking or restricting our natural state of ease and openness and care. That's like an example of more subtle suffering. Like the body is kind of working hard to achieve something in that moment. So that was maybe more than you bargained for there, Stan, but what you asked was such. It was an important question and it kind of brought up a lot for me.
- [22:03]
Interviewer / Host
Yeah, no, I love the answer. It is a curious thing. And I think that these are sort of important, almost a pair of motives there that we might have for a person's happiness and flourishing and a person's alleviation of suffering or prevention of suffering. And they somewhat go hand in hand and they're somewhat separate as well. But also the way you described that dis Ease sort of sense, you know, I think a lot of people really can probably relate to that. Especially you know, sadly at the moment, really with, you know, the world as it is and various other bits and pieces that there are these subtle but sort of persistent snagging types of suffering. And to find that ease again, you know, seems to be, you know, really important and also sort of fruitful life. Life task. Well, you, you introduce something called sustainable compassion training, I suppose, and, and tell us a bit about the idea there then and what led you and, and John McCransky, your co author, to, to develop this, this particular approach to compassion training.
- [23:25]
Associate Professor Paul Condon
So John McCransky had been teaching pract love and compassion and wisdom adapted from Tibetan Buddhism and he'd been looking for ways to make practices accessible for Western practitioners. And this really came out of John's work as a Buddhist scholar. And what he really noticed was that as meditation was being brought into the west, it was being incorporated or influenced by various cultural factors that led meditation to be construed as kind of an individual effort. Meditation as kind of a self help project, you might say. And it's not something that's necessarily conscious to us, it's just something that kind of happened because of the cultural conditions that we just swim in and we don't necessarily see. But meditation from a self help perspective or sort of from an individualist perspective looks like a person on their own efforts, trying to become more mindful, trying to become more loving, trying to become more compassionate. But as we know from the attachment theory work that we talked about earlier, human beings depend on social support and social connection. We can't just figure it out all on our own. That's not enough. It's not reliable enough or sustainable enough. And so in Tibetan Buddhism, as well as many world religions and cultural traditions, there's many kinds of rituals or kinds of ceremonies or practices in which practitioners will first connect with a kind of relational entry into a path of compassion and wisdom. Like a lineage of teachers or enlightened practitioners, or a communion of saints, or a field of spiritual ancestors, the natural world. So there's indigenous traditions in the Americas and Asia and Africa that all sort of have rituals around connecting with one's ancestors. And so we've described this relational kind of dimension to beginning practice as the relational starting point for compassion training. And that was a piece that seemed to be not present within modern secularized forms of meditation practice. And so John had introduced something that was referred to as a benefactor practice or field of care practice which would help people from any perspective on life, whether scientific, secular creatures, Christian, Buddhist, indigenous, Jewish, Islam, whatever kind of background the person might be coming from, helping people to identify a benefactor experience or a simple memory of care, which could be used as a relational starting point for experiencing a sense of communion or connection or safety. And that could be then the basis for developing a secure base and then engaging in practices that kind of can build from there. So that was John's work. And then I was trained as a social psychologist and I studied various social psychological theories and theories of emotion, how emotions are constructed in the brain. And as John and I were working together, it just became apparent that there's such rich resources within the scientific world that could come into dialogue with the kind of contemplative and compassion based training that John was working on. And, and we realized, well, this is something we need to write about and we have written some scientific journal, some academic articles to kind of develop the ideas and that was good. And then from there we worked on the book length treatment of it for a more general audience.
- [28:24]
Interviewer / Host
And the thing I love about the book is that it, it just sort of sets it out in three or four stages, I guess, in a sense. And, and you started to really allude there to what in the book is, is perhaps the first stage, the, the receptive mode, I suppose, and, and where compassion begins with connecting to that field of care. And, and you, I think you sort of mentioned it there. But, but what is the, the caring moment meditation? Just tell us a bit about like that practice in, in that first stage.
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Associate Professor Paul Condon
Yeah, for sure. So in the book, yeah, we have the category receptive mode, which the field of care benefactor practices a version or example of helping us to cultivate receptivity to experiences of care and warmth and ease that are coming from our own underlying capacities or awareness. So a field of care would involve calling to mind a caring moment, which again is like a simple memory of care. So it doesn't need to be anything complex or grand. Something simpler is actually better and easier. But calling to mind a moment that feels happy to recall or a moment in which another person was supportive to you or cheering you on, or a moment of laughing together with a friend
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Interviewer / Host
or
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Associate Professor Paul Condon
yeah, any moment in which another person was kind in a supportive way that felt good. So reconnecting with memories like that helps us to experience a sense of warmth and care. And then within the practice, we're not. The intention is not to get too caught up in the imagery or the narrative of the story, but to notice the felt qualities like the embodied experience of care, and then allow our minds to relax into that or rest into that felt sense of care. And so we're using a memory or an image as a way, as a kind of gateway or doorway into a embodied felt experience. But then the practice sort of releases the imagery and invites us to just settle into the feeling of a warmth or sort of loving energy that's coming out of the experience. And we're. So with repetition and increased practice, we can discover then that that quality of warmth and care is coming out of our own awareness from within our own minds. It's not like the image or the person is coming into the space and putting it into us. So that was the, you know, that's the caring moment example. For some people, it might take the form of a benefactor, might be a little bit more powerful or accessible. So a benefactor would be a person or being that is a mature, caring, stable presence that might be a spiritual benefactor, like the Buddha or God or any divine or spiritual figure image that is inspiring, could also be somebody that you've never actually met, but their work or writing is inspiring and feels uplifting, like maybe a book, an author that you've read is really meaningful. So the field of care practice can take these, like, multiple diverse forms. Caring moment, benefactor, spiritual benefactor, could even be a pet. And so when teaching these practices, we work with people to just explore different options and see what's sort of connecting for you, and then try it out and then notice the felt quality that comes with reinhabiting that moment.
- [32:56]
Interviewer / Host
Yeah, you've sort of preempted my question, but I suppose as a therapist, I do sometimes notice that people have had sort of relational or attachment trauma or tragedy in their life, and they find it really hard to actually recall an experience of care. There are other ways in, by the sounds of it, in terms of benefactor or spiritual benefactor or even books and novels and characters and so on. Do you have any kind of thoughts there or any sort of things you would say about the person who does really find it hard to access that field of care from the start?
- [33:42]
Associate Professor Paul Condon
So when we're teaching this, the field of care includes the options that we need went through, but ideally it's also something that's occurring in the context of a supportive social space too, where we might be practicing with others. Who are kind of also engaging in the experience, like other peers who are also engaging in it. So the field of care is happening sort of internally within the meditation experience and the imagery, but also potentially physically in the social environment, in the space where there's a sense of connection and support from others, other practitioners and so forth. Or like, I teach this stuff and I teach these kinds of practices in classrooms too. So, like there, you know, this, we set up the space and kind of in a way that feels connecting for the whole class. And so that can be noticed as a resource that's supporting us, even if the imagery or the visualization isn't connecting yet for us. And then the other thing we can look to is with attachment theory, there is the perspective that we tend to have one organizing attachment experience or pattern, like secure or anxious or avoidant. But it is also the case that we have a kind of network of attachment representations or experiences across the lifespan. So even if insecure attachment is our predominantly organizing experience, the data suggests that we can still reconnect with little moments as a kind of attachment priming or security priming, even just for a moment. And that can help us to reconnect with a sense of safety. So I think it's helpful to. Like you were saying, there are people that have difficulty with connecting with it, but I think it's helpful to acknowledge that as that's quite normal and that yet still there's some scientific data that suggested that we can find little moments and reconnect with. Might even be a moment, like maybe it's not a caring memory with another person, but it could be a moment in a place that felt supportive, like the natural world, like maybe a beautiful sunset or a beautiful clear. A memory of a beautiful clear sky or at the top of a mountain or at the ocean or whatever. Any kind of place that helps us to feel nourished and at ease and welcome, reconnecting with that in our memory could help us. So, yeah, I think those are some general points of like, there's many different ways of connecting into it. And also recognizing that there is a kind of process of we might be able to tap into care, notice some difficulties with it, and yet there is this underlying capacity still to be able to find and connect with care.
- [37:15]
Interviewer / Host
Yeah, there's many and varied ways in it no doubt takes time and reflection and practice and so on to. To find these moments of care. It's really funny because as you were talking and I was just listening to you sort of mentioning these different kinds of things and ways in and so on. I just had this sort of flash in my mind of one of my dad's friends, Yuri, when I was probably about 8. And I'm trying to think. I can't actually remember the interaction, but it was a brief interaction where. And I've got little sort of shivers up my spine thinking about it, where I could tell that he, as an adult, was actually interested in me as a. As a person, as a. As a real person. One of the few of the adults, you know, that might have come in and around, you know, whatever that. That actually sort of did that. And it's just funny how it just. I mean, I can't. It's not something that I think about, but it just popped to mind. And so I suppose, yeah, it's a bit like that, isn't it? You know, just as. As the conversation unfolds and the. The examples are offered and the. Even the theory is, and people come to that sort of holding environment, maybe little things pop in, actually, and little moments, even brief moments that aren't fully sort of specifically remembered, but a felt sense is remembered.
- [38:48]
Associate Professor Paul Condon
Yeah. So what's so cool about that, what you just shared, that story is there's another perspective that comes out of cognitive neuroscience which suggests that our experiences are simulated throughout multiple modalities in the body and different modalities within the brain. So when we start to think about a caring memory, for example, we're not just thinking about it in a kind of abstract, decontextualized way, but rather we're starting to. The brain is starting to simulate it again as if it's here. This is just kind of a natural way that the brain works. And by simulating it as if it's happening here, then there's a kind of like, there's a re. Embodiment of the experience. So you described kind of the. The feeling in the spine, and that's a signal, just even like on thinking about it a little bit, that it's starting to happen. Even though we didn't do a formal guided meditation, like, that's a cue that it's already starting to work and that that could be an effective option for engaging the practice.
- [40:12]
Interviewer / Host
Yeah. Yeah. Great. The next stage is the deepening mode in the book, which emphasizes openness and expansiveness and presence. Can you tell us a little bit about this stage? This mode?
- [40:31]
Associate Professor Paul Condon
Yeah.
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Interviewer / Host
So
- [40:33]
Associate Professor Paul Condon
earlier we were talking about the Buddhist idea of shifting from being identified with our thoughts and perceptions and emotions to then relaxing into the underlying capacities of care, joy and ease. So the deepening Mode is that process of, like, releasing our focus on any particular thought, releasing our focus on any kind of imagery, and allowing our minds to come to rest or settle in its own nature. So from a Buddhist perspective, it's referred to as nature of mind. And there's language, like letting the mind come to rest in its own sense of openness and lucidity or cognizance, a kind of vast openness. When I'm teaching in the university, I will also look at other traditions and perspectives with students. So we sort of take this idea and look at it also. Like, how do different cultures and different traditions have their own kind of lens on this? So it's a multicultural kind of conversation. From a Christian point of view, there's kind of, like the sense of our thoughts and feelings being identified with thoughts and feelings, which is maybe separate from what's sacred. But then through various kinds of contemplative prayer or practices, we're learning to reconnect or reunite with what is sacred or the divine nature that is created by or given by God, for example. Or there's within some indigenous traditions, like within the Apache tribe, there's a term called usan which means something rather than nothing or something about like everything has an underlying life force. So I think this is like, what the deepening mode is helping us to do is shift identification from thoughts, feelings and so forth, and letting what's in the background, our underlying sense of openness, ease, warmth to come into the foreground more fully and actually becoming that as if that's who we are. And it doesn't mean to dismiss our. Our kind of what we would call relative identities. So not dismissing, like, you know, my name is Paul and I'm a professor. Those are relative identities. Also our various kinds of social categories. So it's not dismissing the fact that, like, I'm a white male professor, for example, and that has some relative truth, but the deepening mode is helping us to kind of come into recognition and sense that our minds are something deeper that's beyond these kinds of categorizations and beyond these limiting thoughts or stories or impressions, and that our minds are this kind of vast openness of warmth and care and ease and so forth. And so the book, really, you know, that aspect of the book is deeply informed by Tibetan Buddhist traditions, but there is some connection there also to Christian theology and some scientific ways of understanding what's kind of happening or what's possible within the deepening mode.
- [44:45]
Interviewer / Host
A phrase that stood out was expansive awareness, I suppose. Yes. What sorts of shifts begin to happen, really, when as people start to deepen their practice in this way.
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Associate Professor Paul Condon
A simple way to describe it is that by shifting our identification from the kind of fleeting thought to the expansive awareness, we're cultivating a kind of confidence or trust in a dimension of our being that is unchanging or unconditioned, and a dimension of our experience in our being that is completely safe and completely trustworthy. A kind of ultimate, secure base. Or in the book, we describe it as an infinite secure base, and that is a source of comfort, love, nourishment. It can give us courage, then, and more discernment. I think that's probably one of the biggest things, is kind of learning to tap into this sense of our being that is unconditioned and unchanging and a source of comfort. And that can help us then to meet any kind of. Help us to meet challenges that are going on in the world with perhaps a little bit more calm, a little bit more groundedness, a little bit more curiosity. There's an aspect in the book this is informed by some cognitive science research, and I find this helpful, too. One of the basic organizing experience or elements of any experience, any conscious moment, is the goal that we have in a moment. So, like right now, I have a goal to try to explain concepts in this conversation, right? And, you know, depending on that, how that's going, it might cause some stress or some uncertainty, and then that can cause kinds of reactions. And so if we can notice the goal that is operating in any given moment and let it relax, let it soften a bit, you know, the situation is still present. But then our ability to interact in the moment or to engage can be more infused with the qualities of practice or the qualities of expansive awareness, so that our efforts might be a little bit more effective. And we can then come back into the goal now with the ground of the practice to inform action. And I find this helpful. There's a kind of irony in it, because that phrase of like releasing our goal or soften our goal might feel kind of frightening or unsafe. Like, what do you mean, release my goal? Especially in maybe a situation where there might be some conflict or some difficulty. But I think this is something I've noticed coming up in a lot of different kinds of writings from many people about contemplative practice. That sort of releasing our efforts and releasing our attachments can ironically help us to have more agency, to have more creativity, more presence. I think this is an important element in how contemplative practices and social justice or social action can be supportive of each other.
- [48:50]
Interviewer / Host
Yes, I was just thinking. I was interviewing Professor Ross White, who wrote the Tree that Bends, and he sort of describes strong intention, light attachment, something like that. And it's sort of a similar notion there. And I really love your idea of from fleeting thoughts to expansive awareness. That really sort of. That's the deepening mode, I guess, is that sort of shift you then move to the inclusive mode where compassion extends to anyone and everyone, I think it says in the book, and I guess even expands beyond the people maybe that we naturally care about and, you know, to others. How do these practices really start to widen that circle of compassion?
- [49:41]
Associate Professor Paul Condon
Yeah, thanks for that question. So I think in a basic way, when we engage in an inclusive mode, it's letting the qualities of care and warmth that are coming out of the field of care practice the then flow through us, allow others to be sort of included within that sense of the field of care and our embodied sense of warmth and ease and peace, simplicity, so that our intention in sort of connecting and relating to others is aligned with care and wishing others well. So I think that's one thing is first, it's helping align our intention and aspirations for how we come to relate to others. A second piece is, and this is a big theme in the book is through the meditation and the inclusive mode of extending care to others, we can become more conscious of the way in which our minds are kind of constantly constructing stories or kind of limiting or false impressions of others. A kind of like, just as we experience the fleeting thoughts or images or perceptions about ourselves that we might ordinarily be identified with, we talked about earlier, so too our minds are like projecting fleeting images and thoughts and stories about others. And so that through the inclusive mode, we are becoming more conscious of the way our minds are creating those impressions of others. And then we can hold that in a kind of holding environment capacity and then sense others beyond the limiting impression. So like, for example, like in a work meeting, you might have a particular agenda for your own needs. I mean, I do when I'm in meetings, right? I have particular needs that I need to accomplish. And we might experience others through the limiting view of my own agenda. We might then perceive others in a kind of, oh, that person is just causing me some annoyance or causing me some frustration. But if we can, through the practice, learn to drop into a sense of care for our own being through field of care, deepen into the sense of awareness that is beyond goals, we can then sense the other also from that space, from that sense of Expansive awareness beyond goals, that the other is more than just what my mind is constructing in the moment, more than what my mind is projecting in that moment that there's a person there that is a whole mystery of experiences with their own aspirations and their own difficulties, their own also capacities for care so we can start to sense others then in a more empathetic and caring way. And I find that. So I find that to be a much more joyful way to be. Even when there's maybe annoyances or difficulties. I found it's much more fun and enjoyable to kind of like relax, let those impressions relax a little bit. Even though our minds really like to be. I think it's. It's, you know, that's a different kind of attachment, the Buddhist attachment. Our minds are really attached to the limiting stories that we make of others. So it can be. It can feel hard to let go of that. But I find it, yeah, much more enjoyable to kind of sense into others as more nuanced and more layered and more. And having more potential than just what my mind is projecting in any given moment.
- [54:01]
Interviewer / Host
Yeah, sometimes it's like we relish in those limiting stories, don't we? But at the same time making ourselves experiencing frustration or irritation or anxiety, and yet we dive into those waters. But actually to sort of create a sense of ease and openness and awareness. It actually can be quite joyful to sort of see the. The wonder of. Of people and all of the many and varied possibilities there. I know sometimes a practice I try to do too is, you know, you. You really hurt me. You must really be suffering kind of thing. And being able to understand perhaps the suffering. Actually that might be there as well.
- [54:55]
Associate Professor Paul Condon
Yeah, that's a good point. I was going to share maybe a little example if we have time. It's kind of a humbling story, but I was at the gym one time and I wanted to do this particular exercise that involves you put your arm, your hands up, and you pull a bar down. It's called a lat pull down at the gym. So you pull the bar down and there's only one machine in the entire gym where you can do that. And I was sitting there and there was a guy who was, like, just standing at it and he was talking to other people. And I was getting kind of annoyed because, like, he was just kind of standing there, like, he wasn't actually working out. He was just standing there talking to some people. And I was, like, annoyed because I wanted to go do that workout. And I thought, well, I'll just Go do the next one and I'll wait. And I kept going around and around, and he was still there. And in my mind, I was getting really upset, and I could have probably. I'm sure I could have just gone up to him and said, hey, can I get in on that? And I'm sure it would have been no problem. But, you know, it was an example of where my mind was really projecting a kind of annoyance. And then I was. He finally left, and so I went and sat and he was at the next one. And I don't know this guy at all. But then as I was doing it, and he's this guy. He's like an athlete, a rugby player, I think. So he's got a lot more knowledge and experience than me, but he shared with me, like, oh, if you try moving, it's like, if you tweak it a little bit this way, it might be more effective. And I tried it and it was. It was great. He gave me a really good tip. And now I talk to him all the time when I see him at the gym. It's like, you know, kind of a pal. So that was a humbling experience where I noticed that was an example of my mind was creating a limiting impression and really getting upset about it. But it was something that my mind was making happen. It was kind of not a real reality or real thing. But I think it really captures kind of that concept of the limiting impression and how we can learn to then sense past it.
- [57:19]
Interviewer / Host
Some of my most humbling stories start with, so I was at the gym. But actually, I would say. I would actually say that that's a story where you had those. Those thoughts and feelings and urges and so on and at the same time created some ease and patience and, you know, waiting and. And allowed that time to pass. And it was, in a sense, by. By practicing what you preach there that. That this. This connection ended up happening. So it is an interesting, interesting example of. Of both things, in a way. Do you have time for two more questions?
- [58:01]
Associate Professor Paul Condon
Sure. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah.
- [58:03]
Interviewer / Host
Because. Because the first one really is that one of the themes in the book is learning to care and, you know, cultivate compassion without becoming overwhelmed, I suppose, or, you know. And so, yeah, what are your thoughts there about this approach and helping people avoid empathic distress or compassion fatigue or burnout or those sorts of ideas?
- [58:26]
Associate Professor Paul Condon
Yeah, I think that the secure base concept is really helpful there. And so we can think of the, you know, the receptive field of care. Receptive mode. Field of care is like an External secure base, the caring qualities that we tap into is an internal secure base. It's internal to our own being and experience. And then the deepening mode is the ultimate secure base, that unconditioned, unchanging kind of source of our capacities for care. And so whenever we're feeling stressed or overwhelmed or burned out or fatigued, it's a kind of a signal that we need to reconnect with a secure base. However that is interpreted for each person. And each person needs to find their own way into things. So what is a secure base for you? For each person. And when we're feeling those difficulties, what are the tools that help us to reconnect with the secure base? So in attachment theory, I had a teacher from when I was an undergrad, Kent Hoffman, who he described security as not 100% and always feeling at ease. But security means being able to navigate between relatedness and autonomy comfortably kind of navigating back and forth between stages. So I think with there's a kind of analog to that within the SCT trajectory, the sustainable compassion training trajectory of practice, that we can use our fields of care, our caring moments or benefactors as an external secure base. We then release the focus on that to then tap into the deepening mode or the underlying source of our innate care. And we can navigate back and forth as needed. Like, there may be times when I really do need to connect with a benefactor experience to feel a sense of support and ease and well being. And we also through that practice, I think another effect of it is we might also become more comfortable and receptive to asking for help in the real world, not just in meditation. We might begin to recognize when, hey, like the meditation is not the only thing I need right now. I actually need to connect with others who can offer some support or like share difficulty. And I think the field of care practice helps us to become more comfortable with that of connecting with others for support. And there's some scientific research that suggests that when people are learning attachment priming or starting to learn a sense of security, they're more comfortable at requesting help, more comfortable with building a sense of connection or seeking out a sense of community. And those are factors that help protect against burnout and fatigue and empathic distress. So yeah, I think helping to sort of stay in connection with the secure base, whether it's through the various meditation lenses and also through connection and support with others, that can help us engage in being in contact with others suffering. There's also practices in the book toward the end that build on the Secure base, the field of care and the secure base concept to then help us to really, in the. In meditation practice, contemplate layers of suffering that we are experiencing and that others are experiencing to help us to like, kind of strengthen our muscles or sort of empathic capacity to be in solidarity with others suffering. So I think that's also an important aspect of it.
- [62:44]
Interviewer / Host
Yeah, I've realized that actually modes is probably a very intentional word there from you, from. From you both. That it's not really sequential in the sense it's. It's. You move about the different modes and. And that's one of the real. The. One of the powerful ways that we can sustain, as the name implies, we can sustain the compassion by being able to understand these different modes and moving about them and. And cultivating the wisdom to know where we might need to be, you know, across the. The different modes. So I've just. Just worked it out.
- [63:24]
Associate Professor Paul Condon
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I think that's right. It's not a kind of like linear progression, even though it's, you know, it's presented in a, you know, you have to, in writing, present chapter one, two, three, et cetera. But yeah, it's kind of a spiral or circular kind of interconnected system. And we can see how even within the first example of the benefactor caring moment, the receptive mode, the deepening mode, is already happening to some extent. And I've also been really inspired by some work in social and cultural psychology that looks at. And also sociology that looks at how our internal experiences are connected with others. So like, for example, an emotional experience or a sense of identity is shaped by our social and cultural environment. And so if we are becoming a holding environment for our own experience, we're already becoming a holding environment for others because our experiences include connections to many others. So our practice of the receptive mode and becoming a holding environment is already including others, even if we're not consciously aware of it.
- [64:51]
Interviewer / Host
Yeah, that's brilliant.
- [64:53]
Dr. Stan Steindl
So we'll just.
- [64:55]
Interviewer / Host
To finish off, tell us a bit about the importance of motivation and practice, I guess, and bringing these practices into everyday life.
- [65:06]
Associate Professor Paul Condon
I think motivation is important for us to stay connected to because it helps us to have some inspiration to keep practicing. You know, meditation can be, you know, it can be a difficult practice. It can be a struggle. It can be easier maybe to sort of engage in other things or prioritize other things. And so keeping in mind and staying connected to our motivation for compassion or for connecting with our deeper selves, our better selves can help motivate and Inspire reconnecting with the practice. So I think that that's an important angle. The other thing that I think is particularly helpful about the field of care practice is that it's training our attention on experiences of care. And we will, by doing that, we will start to notice care more often. And we'll start to notice like this has happened for me with my experience, and I know others who have also reported this from their experience of it, that by repeating and doing the field of care practice multiple times and kind of making it a regular rep routine, people will start to recall more memories from their life that they had forgotten about that become further fuel for the practice. And that can be really joyful and really rewarding. So then we can start to experience reward, you know, not through our whatever are like impulses or habits or like, you know, various different kinds of addictions, whatever that might be. You know, even if it's just like, you know, scrolling through social media or, you know, watching Netflix or whatever it might be, the field of care practice is kind of reshaping our attention in a way that these simple experiences that help to cultivate a sense of warmth and ease are very rewarding. And we will then start to prioritize them more. And that's actually from a neurobiological lens, like the neurobiology of attachment. That's how attachment bonds are formed. Because infants experience a sense of reward when they're in a kind of synchrony with an attachment figure. And that also explains how we might experience bonds then with non parental figures, also with peers or friendships. A sense of like when we're in bio behavioral synchrony with another being, it feels more enjoyable, it feels more rewarding. And then our attention can be. Our attention and motivation might be more focused on seeking out or prioritizing or even just noticing those potential experiences that these benefactor experiences can be happening all the time in many different ways. So yeah, I think that like that question about integration with daily life, there's a lot there. But to me, the field of care and noticing how. How many different things can take on a kind of role of benefactor is really powerful. There's one example of that that I like to share sometimes. There was a day when I was feeling stressed and I was trying to meditate and it just wasn't working very well. And my neighbor's table saw went off and it just totally cut through my chain of thoughts, like it just interrupted everything. And then I was able to relax and settle into the meditation practice. And so in that moment, like my neighbor's table saw was serving as my benefactor because it interrupted my identification with thoughts and allowed me to settle into that sort of expanse of openness and awareness with ease. And so I had that sense of reward with that experience and the table saw. So we can start to notice like, these really subtle little things that are helping us, you know, in, in different ways so we can discover it all the time. I think what a, what a beautiful
- [70:08]
Interviewer / Host
and sort of unexpected example is with the table saw. Well, Professor Paul Condon. I mean, holding environments, limited thoughts or limiting thoughts to expansive awareness towards anyone and everyone. And with practice, it, it builds and spreads, I guess is sort of the, the idea here. So thank you very much for a wonderful book. I've. I've. I got it on Kindle, but it's. I'll have the links to the book in the description. But yeah, thank you for speaking with me on Compassion in a T shirt.
- [70:50]
Associate Professor Paul Condon
Thank you, Stan. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Thanks for the great questions and nice summary there at the end. That was great.