
Compassion meditation (karuna in Sanskrit) is a practice of cultivating the wish that all beings be free from suffering. Related to but distinct from loving-kindness, compassion meditation involves deliberately bringing to mind beings who are suffering and opening the heart to their pain with the intention of helping. Research by Tania Singer and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute found that compassion training increases prosocial behavior, altruism, and positive emotion in response to others' suffering — counteracting the natural tendency toward compassion fatigue that occurs when people are exposed to suffering without a contemplative framework for holding it.
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