Mindfulness as a Context for the Cultivation of Compassion

Mindfulness training and compassion-focused approaches are both significant, rising clinical and research trends in cognitive and behavioral therapies. In the historical Buddhist lineages that developed mindfulness practices, initial training in mindfulness frequently evolves into specific training in compassion and loving kindness for self and others. The sequencing of this mental training would suggest that there is a relationship between the experience of mindfulness and the experience of compassion, wherein mindfulness may serve as a context for compassion-focused approaches. Accordingly, current cognitive and behavioral therapies that make use of these concepts often interrelate the development of mindfulness with an emergent compassionate perspective. If this relationship is to bear the scrutiny of a scientific practice, then we would expect to see evidence of a such a relationship between the experience of mindfulness and compassion. Further, a scientific rationale for mindfulness as a context for compassion-focused therapies would be useful, if Western therapies are to integrate these processes responsibly. The present article is aimed at providing an exploration of the constructs of mindfulness and compassion, and the hypothesized neurophysiological processes involved in their cultivation. An examination of the relevant theoretical and neuroimaging literature reveals that both mindful awareness and a felt sense of compassion may be interrelated dimensions of human functioning, having their evolutionary roots in human relational behaviors. This is in accord with Buddhist philosophy, which has explained both the experience of mindful awareness and the phenomenology of an arising of compassion as correlates of a direct experience of the self as an interrelated part of a greater process of ever-evolving, interbeing.