Karen Armstrong won the TED (Technology, Entertaintment and Design) award in February 2008 and she asked TED to help create, launch and propagate a Charter for Compassion that would be written by leading thinkers from a variety of major faiths and would restore compassion to the heart of religious and moral life. The Charter for Compassion was finally officially launched on 12 November 2009 in 60 different locations throughout the world, including Malaysia.
Thousands of people from all over the world contributed to a draft charter on a multilingual website and their comments were presented to the Council of Conscience, a group of notable individuals from various faith traditions, who met in Switzerland in February 2009 to compose the final version. Malaysia is proudly linked to this noble movement through Dr.Chandra Muzaffar, who is on the Council of Conscience and the Chairman of the Malaysian Charter for Compassion movement. The official version of this charter is available on the link below. Welcome and let's create this compassionate world now!
http://charterforcompassion.org/docs/cfc_dl_english.pdf
What is Compassion?
ReplyDeleteA quick look at you computer aided synonyms can lead to meanings such as sympathy, empathy, concern, kindness, consideration and care. However, I took the liberty to explore the meaning of Compassion from a journal. This is what I found: One of the key principles emphasized within many schools of Buddhism is learning to be compassionate which is posited to help individuals develop their ability to recognize and motivate themselves towards meaningful change. Compassion within Buddhism is seen as a way of helping individuals to train their minds, which can lead to a general improvement in well-being and ultimate enlightenment. The compassionate stance that individuals gradually learn to adopt towards themselves and others enables them to cope with challenging emotions with a greater degree of understanding, self-directed care, and support which further enables even the most difficult change. (Gilbert, 2009; Neff, Rude, & Kirkpatrick, 2007).