J U N E 2 0 1 2 N E W S L E T T E R

CONGRESSMAN RYANSCIENCE OF COMPASSION

CONFERENCECCARE HONORED FOR DALAI LAMA’S TEMPLETON AWARD

CC ARE

TIM RYAN IN CONVERSATION ON COMPASSION

CENTER FOR COMPASSION & ALTRUISM RESEARCH & EDUC ATION

Welcome to the June edition of CCARE’s Newsletter! We have a lot of exciting news and

upcoming events to share with you.

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IN THIS ISSUE2

• A letter from our Director (p. 3)• The Science of Compassion Conference (p. 4)• CCARE’s new Associate Director (p. 5)• Making Waves: Leah & Joel (p. 5-6)• CCARE Post-doctorate Fellowship (p. 6)• CCARE Undergraduate Roscow Fellowships (p. 7)• Congressman Tim Ryan in Conversation on Compassion (p. 8)• Studying Compassion in the Brains of Experts (p. 8-10)• CCARE Honored for Dalai Lama’s Templeton Award (p. 11)• Connect with us! (p. 12)

A LETTER FROM OUR DIRECTOR

Dear Friends of CCARE,

It remains extraordinary to me that so many from the third world wish to come to the West in the belief that we have so much more to offer. Yet when we examine the facts, the West experiences an epidemic of depression, isolation and loneliness that does not exist in the third world (except, perhaps, those areas influenced by the West). In the U.S., we consume 25% of the world’s resources and have what is called one of the highest standards of living, yet many even in the West remain in abject poverty without food and a much larger number live in a different type of poverty. It is a poverty of community and connectedness. A hunger that is not quenched by the acquisition of material goods, but one that study after study demonstrates is due to a lack of sustenance that only social connectedness can provide.

And that connectedness is manifested by compassion...

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James  Doty,  M.D.

Origins, Measures and Interventions

The

Science of Compassion

The work of CCARE and an ever expanding number of labs around the world are contributing to a body of research that confirms the above. It is our mission at CCARE to continue supporting and generating such research.

I am proud to share with you that CCARE will be hosting the first conference of its kind on the Science of Compassion,  July 19-22 in Telluride, CO. World renowned leaders in research on compassion, altruism, and service will be presenting their latest findings. This remarkable gathering of scientists from a number of disciplines will join in conversation to examine the basic science of compassion, approaches to enhancing compassion, and the benefits compassion can afford to health, well-being and psychosocial function. Open to both scientists and community members interested in the topic of compassion and implementing compassionate action in society, the conference will be a forum to exchange ideas and information and to forge collaborations.  

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EMMA SEPPALA, PH.D.

Like any organization, CCARE is changing and evolving. Emiliana Simon-Thomas, Ph.D., our associate director has recently accepted a position with my dear friend, Dacher Keltner, Ph.D., founder and director of the Greater Good Science Center in Berkeley and world renowned compassion researcher. I am very happy for Emiliana not only because this position is a few blocks from her home, but that she is able to continue to contribute to the field. Emiliana has had a profound impact on CCARE through her diligence, critical scientific judgment, and her humanity. CCARE is fortunate in that we have found anoth

CCARE’S NEW ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR

MAKING WAVESCCARE over the last two years has focused much energy on the development and refinement of a compassion cultivation training program. We are continuing to research its effects and also have recently begun training teachers. This development has been led by Stanford visiting scholar Thupten Jinpa Langri, Ph.D., former Buddhist monk and primary English translator of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in conjunction with a number of psychologists. The CCARE Compassion Education program is directed by Lea

LEAH WEISS, PH.D.

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er amazingly qualifiedindividual, Emma Seppala, Ph.D. Emma is a graduate of Yale University and received her Ph.D. in Psychology at Stanford where she worked with James Gross, Ph.D. She recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Richard Davidson, Ph.D., pioneer in contemplative neuroscience and compassion research at the University of Wisconsin. She has spent most of her research career researching compassion so I am very proud to welcome Emma to CCARE.

h Weiss, Ph.D., who I wouldalso like to congratulate on the completion of her doctorate focused on educating compassion. Leah recently did a TEDx talk: “Uncovering Real Compassion”.

long time meditators and

Also, congratulations to Joel Finkelstein, who began with CCARE at its inception as an undergraduate becoming Program Coordinator. Joel has just been accepted into the neuroscience doctoral program at Princeton, one of the premier programs in the country.

JOEL FINKELSTEIN

CCARE POST-DOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP

CCARE is involved with a number of scientists in collaborative research but one of the other research programs that we have just initiated is the CCARE post-doctoral research fellowship.

I am happy to announce that Matthew Feinberg, Ph.D. has been awarded this first fellowship to support his study titled, “Understanding the Different Types of Compassion of Liberals and Conservatives”, which in the present political environment seems particularly germane.  

MATTHEW FEINBERG, PH.D.

Ma#hew  Feinberg  earned  his  Ph.D.  from  UC  Berkeley  in  2012.  Ma#hew  is  interested  in  researching  compassion  with  respect  to  how  it  differs  among  different  social  and  poliCcal  groups  and  how  framing  messages  differently  for  different  groups  can  evoke  compassionate  responses.  

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ROSCOW UNDERGRADUATE FELLOWSHIPS

Another CCARE fellowship program is for Stanford undergraduates and is named after Claire Hollens Roscow who died tragically shortly after completing her CCARE fellowship. This program has allowed undergraduates who feel they may wish to pursue post-graduate training in the field of compassion research to work with CCARE in a number of areas for a one-year period. In this newsletter, two of the CCARE Claire Hollens Roscow Undergraduate Fellows have written letters expressing how the fellowship has impacted and influenced them.

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CHARLOTTE BROWN

Serving  as  one  of  the  Roscow  Undergraduate  Fellows  has  provided  an  opening  in  my  life.  To  be  a  small  part  of  something  as  big  as  CCARE  is  humbling,  but  more  than  that  it  is  enlightening.  I  am  learning  the  many  ways  in  which  people  around  the  World  are  working  together  to  create  a  more  peaceful  and  compassionate  humanity.  I  have  been  introduced  to  the  challenges  inherent  to  such  a  goal.  I  am  discovering  what  it  takes  to  be  effecCve,  bold,  and  compassionate,  a  balance  that  takes  a#enCve  tuning.  I  am  exploring  the  ways  in  which  an  individual  can  have  a  posiCve  effect  on  people  near  and  far,  and  on  him  or  herself.  ReflecCng  on  the  namesake  of  this  fellowship,  Claire  Roscow,  very  much  mirrors  the  set  of  skills  I  am  acquiring.  Claire's  graceful  and  fierce  confidence,  her  kindness,  and  her  ease  are  all  assets  to  which  I  aspire.  Through  the  work  bestowed  upon  me  and  under  the  wise  guidance  of  Leah  Weiss,  I  know  that  the  Roscow  Fellowship  will  conCnue  to  grant  me  space  to  learn  and  grow  with  strength  and  compassion,  and  to  support  others  to  do  the  same  in  my  turn.

There  aren’t  many  recruiters  at  the  career  fair  for  people  who  want  to  go  into  the  field  of  compassion.  There’s  no  prescribed  “pre-­‐compassion”  track.  Working  this  past  year  as  CCARE  Student  Fellow  has  opened  my  eyes  to  all  the  incredible  work  that  has  been  done  in  the  field  of  compassion  as  well  as  to  all  the  emerging  work  that  is  on  the  cusp  of  manifesCng.  I  have  learned  about  the  excitement  and  meaning  of  working  in  this  cuXng  edge  field  that  resonates  so  strongly  with  my  values.  I  have  simultaneously  learned  about  the  challenges  and  obstacles  that  also  come  with  manifesCng  something  enCrely  new.  Even  through  all  the  struggles  and  disappointments  I  encountered,  the  constant  presence  of  CCARE  acts  as  a  symbol  that  the  field  of  compassion  is  legiCmate,  scienCfic,  purposeful,  and  here  to  stay  and  to  grow.  I  am  grateful  for  everyone  I’ve  met  through  CCARE,  all  the  connecCons  I’ve  made.  I’m  honored  to  have  met  and  worked  with  some  of  the  most  intelligent,  creaCve,  moCvated,  and  kind-­‐hearted  people  of  our  day.  The  experience  has  definitely  provided  me  with  a  stepping  stone  to  lead  a  life  of  compassion.

KERYN BREITERMAN-

LOADER

STUDYING COMPASSION IN THE BRAINS OF EXPERTS

RECENT CCARE EVENTS

A special thank you to Chris Wesselman for his wonderful photography!

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CONGRESSMAN TIM RYANJAMES DOTY, M.D.

In the 3rd week of April, 2012, CCARE hosted a delegation of 9 monastics from India at Stanford in order to measure their brains “on compassion”. The monastics (monks and nuns from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition) were from different regions of India, and have more than

20 years of intensive training and practice in the cultivation of compassion. They are all also graduates of a program called Science for Monks, which brings western scientists to India to teach monastics about everything scientific, from cell biology to astrophysics to

We have been proud to host many outstanding events in the last couple of months, including a Conversation on Compassion Talk with Congressman Tim Ryan. The video of this talk is now available on our website. In addition, we hosted a number of Tibetan monks. These long-term meditators visited CCARE and participated in scans with Dr. Brian Knutson, as described further in the newsletter.

recent advanced in the growing field of contemplative neuroscience.The point of Science for Monks is to provide monastics with some basic scientific skills and knowledge, and enable them to participate in the increasingly popular dialogues between western scientists and eastern thinkers; think of the many published transcripts of conversations between the Dalai Lama and pioneering scientists. In the fall of 2011, CCAREcontributed an instructor to the Science for Monks program in Dharamsala, India to teach a course on contemplative neuroscience – that instructor was me. Amidst discussions of immune markers, telomeres, corporate loving-kindness meditation and biological systems that support the intrinsic need to belong, I humbly and repeatedly implored my skeptical monastic students to come to the US and participate in research first hand. They, in turn, implored me to meditate. Remarkably, I learned that several of them were planning a trip to the US in the spring of 2012. Theywere coming to San Francisco to be emissaries for the Science for Monks program in an exhibit on Sensation and Perception at the Exploratorium museum. San Francisco was so close to CCARE! One of CCARE’s core directives is to investigate and support others’ research into the biological underpinnings of compassion. For CCARE, the monastics represented an opportunity to study Olympiads of compassion – individuals who have dedicated the greater portion of their lives to honing the strength and breadth of their capacity for compassion. In fact, Stanford Psychology professor Brian Knutson, director of the Symbiotic Project in Affective Neuroscience, had received a research award from CCARE to scan the brains of compassion Olympiads, and was eager to work with the visiting monastics.

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Fast forward to 8:00am Monday, April 22, 2011 – there is a sea of gold flecked maroon in the Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging facility in the basement of Jordan Hall surrouding Dr. Knutson and dutiful graduate students Alex Genevsky and Matthew Sachett. One by one over the course of 3 ½ days, each of the 8 monastics (6 monks and 2 nuns) took a turn lying perfectly still in the 2 foot diameter tube for 2+ hours to perform psychological tasks. In the first, they were instructed to extend compassion or passively view a series of pictures of faces, then rate how likable several different pictures of abstract art were. Unbeknownst to them, the abstract art pictures were preceded by subliminal flashes of the previously viewed faces.

In Stanford undergrads, Knutson’s group had observed that subjects liked the abstract art pictures that followed ‘extend compassion’ faces more than abstract art pictures that followed ‘passively view’ faces. In the second task, monastics were asked to practice Tonglen, a traditional contemplative exercise that involves taking on the suffering of others and offering loving-kindness in return. The abstract art picture task aims to capture the ‘afterglow’ of extending compassion, the good feeling or ‘carryover’ that is characteristic of people’s orientation towards the world after having extended compassion towards someone. Will the compassion Olympians show a stronger intrinsic pleasure, and corresponding neural reward circuitry activation given their extraordinary capacity for compassion? The second task taps right into the heart of the compassion experience – which brain areas are most involved? How does this look in Olympic–level individuals? Dr. Knutson’s team will continue to collect data from compassion Olympians, as well as comparison subjects who are inexperienced in compassion in an effort to characterize the neural signature of, and effects of compassion.Between scanning sessions, the monastics were shown a good time including tours of the Stanford University campus and departments of interest (e.g. The Tibetan Studies Initiative), an afternoon as special guests of GOOGLE, a visit to the San Jose Tech Museum, and more. Most importantly, we at CCARE were able to exchange novel insights and ideas with the monastics, present the principles and aspirations for our signature Compassion Training programs to them, relish in their enthusiastic approval, and enjoy their wise, humorous, light, and perpetually content company.

Emiliana Simon-Thomas, Ph.D.

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The monks spending the day at Google with CCARE Benefactor Chade-Meng Tan (5th from left) and CCARE Senior Scientist Emiliana Simon-Thomas (4th from left)

CC ARE HONORED FOR DALAI LAMA’S TEMPLETON AWARD

As many of you know, His Holiness the Dalai Lama is the founding benefactor of CCARE. He is admired by a large percentage of the world for his tireless promotion of the importance of compassion and his humanity. Among the innumerable number of honors and awards His Holiness has received, he has just been awarded the Templeton Prize for 2012, which is the largest monetary award given to an individual. We at CCARE are honored as the official announcement by the Templeton Foundation indicated that in part the award was given for his being the founding benefactor of CCARE. At the conference, I met Arianna Huffington who invited me to blog for the Huffington Post. The link to my blog is provided below:

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The Science of Compassion Blog

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We in the West can learn many lessons from those in the third world who live with deep suffering including resilience, the importance of family and community and fundamentally the dignity of each individual.

I hope you enjoy the newsletter. We are fortunate that some of the brightest minds in the world work with us and believe like us that at this time “no longer are love and compassion luxuries but necessities if our species is to survive”.

Dr. James Doty