Thupten Jingpa on Compassion and Mindfulness

We recently had the pleasure of talking with Thupten Jingpa, who has been the principal English translator of the Dalia Lama for the past 30 years. The theme of the conversation was the interrelated practices of compassion and mindfulness, including (i) their role in contemporary society, (ii) the traditional context for learning and applying these techniques, (iii) the utilization of compassion and mindfulness in contemporary behavioral interventions, (iv) issues relating to teacher training, and (v) whether lessons learnt from more than two decades of researching and rolling-out mindfulness-based interventions can be carried forward in order to facilitate the effective integration of interventional approaches based on compassion and loving-kindness meditation. The meeting and subsequent discussion was prompted by the release of Jingpa’s new book (A Fearless Heart: How the Courage to be Compassionate Can Transform Our Lives), as well as by his work relating to the practice and scientific study of compassion meditation. …