Skillful Means in Interreligious Compassion Education

This article demonstrates how an extensive use of diverse and innovative approaches to compassion cultivation transformed an interreligious compassion training program which took place in the context of higher education and included both religious and secular participants. Using decolonial, contemplative, and participatory scholar-practitioner research methods, this article investigates how aspects of skillful means were uniquely implemented and received by the training participants. The seminar was designed primarily to deepen each participant’s personal practice of compassion and to identify creative ways to introduce and deepen compassion with others in their community of accountability. The seminar also devoted special attention to how compassion has diverse expressions in and of itself, depending on the context and situation. The findings from this work further stress the importance of adapting contemporary compassion training programs through embracing innovative pedagogical interventions that are endowed with equity and commitments to belonging, especially in culturally heterogeneous and religiously diverse communities. The results of this are increased discernment and clarity for the facilitator as to how to advance the program with care while minimizing as much harm as possible. The study concludes with opportunities to deepen understandings of how compassion cultivation can take place for the broader aims of greater flourishing within contemporary interreligious, intercultural, and intersectional communities. The article also offers new questions to explore around the ways in which skillful means and compassion can interact with interreligious training programs for the purposes of social transformation.