Spreading Compassion One Community at a Time
November 12- the Charter for Compassion was launched (http://charterforcompassion.org). On November 13, eleven individuals in Ottawa came together to watch Karen Armstrong’s TED Prize talk where she made her wish for the drafting, affirming and propogation of a Charter for Compassion.
Karen’s talk, which I accidentally stumbled upon while looking for something to watch on TED.com one day at lunch, struck such a resounding chord with me that I knew immediately that I wnted to do something to participate in this initiative.
With a limited amount of time to plan I decided to keep it simple and just bring some people together to share the Charter, discuss it’s meaning and relevance and to brainstorm on concrete actions we can take as individuals and as a group to live the principle of the Golden Rule in our day-to-day lives. Some solid, practicable, yet brilliant ideas came out of that initial brief discussion. Here are some of our commitments;
- be consciously compassionate towards another person at least twice a day
- consciously choose your behaviour in that space between feeling and action
- bring more people to the next meeting
- make time to consider how to live more compassionately in day-to-day life
- make efforts to avoid judgmental or critical speech towards others or talking about people behind their backs
- run talking circles and more specific compassion events with Meetup group and introduce the Charter to them
- focus on being more compassionate towards specific people that we typically react to negatively
- bring more compassion into parenting
- continue current efforts to be compassionate
- be more compassionate towards ourselves
- create a tool to share the Charter, like a calling card and an email signature
A follow-up meeting is planned to continue our work of affirming our commitment to compassion and to support each other in bringing to life our grander visions.
If you are interested in supporting the Charter for Compassion, please visit http://charterforcompassion.org.
If you would like to participate in the Ottawa Charter for Compassion Group, please email Erin at erin@pureshift.ca.
