The Dharma Study group is currently reading “Compassion: Listening to the Cries of the World” by Christina Feldman.  Commentary on the book is listed below.  Please join us in this timely undertaking.

Copies of the book are available on Amazon

Link to review of “Compassion.”

Compassion in the face of pain, anguish, or unspeakable evil often produces confusion and bewilderment: How can someone endure such unjust suffering with such calm? Wouldn’t it be more natural, and more proper, to not be calm at all? In Compassion, Christina Feldman draws over 30 years of experience as a Buddhist to explain how ordinary people are able to use compassion to overcome negative feelings like tragedy, pain, and terror. Feldman first examines compassion itself, using Buddhist texts and real-life stories to explain precisely what this strange force is, and argues that it is the most precious of all gifts. Feldman then proceeds to show, in six separate chapters, how compassion can be used in the face of adversity, mapping out meditations and strategies that can overcome the dark thoughts that everyone experiences. Compassion is for anyone who has ever felt helpless in our own turbulent, uncertain times.

Feldman describes compassion as the “innate, natural condition of our hearts.” She says “You do not need to be a saint to find the grace and transformative power of compassion; you need only to be willing to pay attention to pain and its cause and to commit yourself to its end.”

A review of this book can be found at ttp://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/books/reviews/view/10050