Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh walking with a large group in nature.

Considered a living embodiment of compassion, the late Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh's human rights and reconciliation work during the Vietnam War led Martin Luther King Jr. to nominate him for a Nobel Prize. His legacy as a meditation teacher, poet, and peace activist continues to resonate worldwide.

Courtesy of: The International Plum Village Community

Compassion

Call to action:

Cultivate compassion across all levels of society to catalyze the shifts in consciousness and human relationships needed to address the planetary emergency.

To address the interlocking ecological and social crises of our time, we need a cultural, relational, and spiritual transformation. Compassion can be a catalyst for this shift, countering, amongst others, greed, selfishness, and apathy, considered to be at the root of these crises. Compassion can be a regenerative pathway, centering reciprocity, kindness, and interconnectedness at the heart of daily life and decision-making. There’s a growing consensus that compassion has become hard-wired into our human biology through evolution and that it can be actively nurtured. Cultivating compassion in families, schools, local communities, businesses, and politics has the potential to accelerate the emergence of regenerative systems and societies.

Nexus Rating System^Beta

Solutions to the climate emergency have unique social and environmental effects, positive and negative. To develop a broader understanding of the solutions in Nexus, we rate each solution on five criteria.

Sources for each Nexus are graded numerically (-3 through 10), and the average is displayed as a letter grade. You can explore each source in depth by clicking “view sources” below. For more information, see our Nexus Ratings page.

Compassion

0.00

Social Justice
Culture
Women
Biodiversity
Carbon

Reference	Social Justice	Culture	Women	Biodiversity	Carbon
The science of compassion	8.0
Compassion in business: Why it matters and how to practice it	7.0
A compassion narrative for the sustainable development goals: conscious and connected action	9.0
What Are the Benefits of Compassion?	8.0
Leading with Compassion Has Research-Backed Benefits	8.0
Compassion: The Root of Social Justice	7.0
Compassion, Cruelty, and Human Rights	9.0
A Remedy called Empathy: The Neglected Element of Human Rights Theory	9.0
Compassionate Mind, Healthy Body	8.0
Compassion: A Catalyst for Racial Justice?	9.0
	8.2	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0

Action Items

Individuals

Learn about compassion and its benefits. Compassion, in its simplest form, is being attuned to another’s pain or suffering and feeling motivated to relieve it. It can also be described as extending a loving awareness or kindness to others. Compassion expands our ability for connection and reciprocity.

Compassion is distinct from empathy and sympathy. According to Thupten Jinpa, compassion implies not only understanding and feeling another’s pain or suffering but being moved to want to help them to alleviate it.
Compassion can be seen as part of the third dimension of The Great Turning. To catalyze the emergence of life-sustaining systems, we require fundamental shifts in consciousness founded on values like compassion, reciprocity, and interconnectedness.
There’s a growing scientific consensus that compassion is humanity’s strongest instinct, something even Charles Darwin suggested. Compassion has become hard-wired into our biology through human evolutionary history.
Applying epidemiology to the study of compassion suggests that compassion, like disease, is clustered and is influenced by a number of different factors. These include gender, social and cultural norms, spirituality and religiosity, and one’s perception of time; studies show that the more rushed someone feels, the lower their capacity for compassion.
Studies suggest wealth and social class influence our tendency to be compassionate. Researchers showed that the wealthier a person is, the less likely they are to be compassionate because they feel less dependent on others and are more likely to endorse the notion that greed is justifiable.
Compassion is a connector - it’s common to most faith, spiritual, and cultural traditions. Growing evidence suggests that empathy - the precursor to compassion - is not an exclusively human trait but that other animals, including elephants and other primates, display these kinds of behaviors. Until recently, researchers focused very little on positive human qualities like compassion and altruism; instead, studies largely centered on the pathologies of the human mind.
Positive emotions like compassion can enhance the neuroplasticity of the brain and can be actively nurtured. A study showed that practicing a specific kind of meditation, known as Loving Kindness Meditation, led to sustained increases in compassion, empathy, prosocial behavior, altruism, and social connectedness.
People place greater importance on compassionate values than is often thought. A study of people in the UK found that 74% valued helpfulness, equality, and the protection of nature more than wealth, public image, and success. It also revealed that most assume that other people place greater importance on these more “selfish” values and that doing so makes them less likely to participate in civic life and engage in compassionate acts, like volunteering.
Compassion is sometimes described as a four-part process. It begins with noticing and giving attention to suffering, interpreting it, feeling concern for the person experiencing it, and then taking action to relieve it. Ekman’s Taxonomy of Compassion suggests there are different types of compassion, including familial, global, sentient, and heroic.
According to the empathy-altruism hypothesis, compassion motivates altruistic action. Compassion can also be self-perpetuating– oxytocin (a hormone that increases feelings of trust, generosity, and connectedness) is released in the body when we perform behaviors associated with compassionate love, such as offering a warm smile or a tender hug.
When we feel compassion, an ancient part of our brain is activated, triggering nurturing and caring behavior. The vagus nerve is also activated when we feel compassion, suggesting that through evolution, humans have been designed to care.
Practices like meditation and mindfulness can enhance compassion by altering the structure and function of the brain. A study of Buddhist monks with a regular practice found that meditation can cultivate altruistic and compassionate states of mind.
Certain people, especially those working in fields such as counseling and humanitarianism, can suffer from “compassion fatigue,” putting their own well-being at risk. This article explores compassion fatigue in more depth and offers some tips on how to deal with it.

Cultivate compassion in your daily life. You have the agency to actively nurture compassion in yourself and your wider community. Being compassionate towards yourself increases your compassion for others. Cultivating and practicing compassion can have measurable benefits on your mental well-being and can even boost immune function and decrease the risk of chronic illness.

Mindfulness and meditation have been proven to increase compassion towards yourself and others. Awake in the Wild offers daily meditation sessions online, while Insight Timer and Spirit Rock have online libraries of guided meditations and resources. You can also join the International Compassion Community’s weekly practice space.
If you want to deepen into compassionate skills and practice, there are a number of training courses you can enroll in. These include: Cultivate a Compassionate Heart training, Compassion Cultivation Training, Compassionate Integrity Training, and a series of courses offered by the Charter Education Institute. The Global Compassion Coalition also has a directory of compassion-focused programs you can explore.
Volunteering is a powerful way to cultivate and extend compassion in yourself and your community. Look for local volunteering opportunities and use platforms like ServiceSpace to explore volunteering tools and opportunities.
Nature connectedness and compassion are closely linked. Spending time in and connecting with nature can make us feel a sense of awe and wonder, which can foster kinder, more compassionate behavior. Here’s a simple practice for experiencing awe in nature and here’s a handbook on fostering your connection to nature. See Nature Connection Nexus.
Developing compassion for the more-than-human world – particularly other animals - is key to increasing compassion in human societies. The Animals’ Manifesto outlines ways to nurture greater compassion for the rest of the world.

Raise awareness about the importance of compassion. Compassion begins at the grassroots, and there is a global ecosystem of organizations, communities, and people practicing compassion, which you can learn about and elevate.

Explore and share inspiring stories about compassion by writing an op-ed for your local newspaper, a blog, or a social media post. Greater Good magazine has resources and ideas to get you started, while the Grassroots Wisdom Book contains stories of compassion from across the world.
Connect with other compassionate actors. Join the Charter for Compassion’s Map of Co-Creators and connect with and learn from compassionate individuals and organizations.
Become a Compassion Connector. Join the global network of Compassion Connectors, and get access to training and guidance to help you cultivate compassion in your life and community.
Organize a compassion event in your local community, school, or office. Reach out to one of the Key Players listed below and invite them to give a talk about Compassion. Use some of the tools and resources in this Nexus to share with the people who attend your event.

Support campaigns and organizations making the world more compassionate. By doing so, you can cultivate greater compassion in your own life while helping to further the growing global movement for compassion.

Compassion in Politics advocates for a political system that puts compassion at its core. Support their campaigns and get in touch with their co-founder, Matt Hawkins, to get advice and inspiration on setting up a similar initiative in your own locality or country.
The Global Compassion Coalition is a movement of people and organizations dedicated to making the cultivation of compassion action-oriented and accessible to as many people as possible, with resources for individuals, communities, and businesses. There are numerous ways to get involved: become a member of the coalition, sign up for their events, register for their Compassion Circles, and join their Facebook Community.
The Charter for Compassion supports the emerging global compassion movement. There are many ways to support their work, including affirming the Charter, becoming a member, joining a compassionate initiative, or making a donation.
The Outward Bound Center for Peacebuilding works with communities, organizations, and educational institutions to cultivate compassionate leaders. Learn about their approach to building compassion in nature and read stories about the communities they have worked with.

Groups

Educators, Parents & Families

Center compassion in educating and raising future generations. Compassionate societies are founded on nurturing compassion from an early age within families, schools, and other spaces that shape children and young people.

Compassionate education is emerging globally. Researchers at the University of Derby have developed curriculums with compassion at their heart, including a Compassion Mind Training for Teachers and Students. Connect with Frances Maratos, who is leading this research, and Kathryn Waddington, who’s written extensively on nurturing compassion in universities and colleges.
If you are a teacher, there are some simple ways to bring compassionate approaches into your classroom and teaching methods. The University of Manitoba has some helpful resources to get started, while The Compassion Project has free lesson plans and activities for nurturing compassion in younger children.
Education models that foster connection to nature can nurture compassion in children. Compassion is a core value of the Outward Bound schools and their programs lead to measurable increases in compassion in their participants. Being in nature - often in challenging conditions - allows the children and young people they work with to relate to and practice compassion for others on a more fundamental level without the constructed identities and lenses of daily life (See Environmental Education Nexus). Programs like Jane Goodall’s Roots and Shoots revolve around the cultivation of nine compassionate traits. The program provides resources for educators on how to use its model in their work and for youth on how to join a Roots and Shoots group or set one up in their local area.
Integrating mindfulness and meditation into your family routines and into your classroom can increase children’s propensity for compassion. Here’s a library of resources on teaching and practicing mindfulness and meditation with children, some broader tips on teaching compassion in your classroom, and a global directory of educators teaching compassion.
Practices that cultivate deep listening and interconnectedness are impactful ways to foster compassion. Instill practices like the Way of Council, The Work that Reconnects, and the Courage and Renewal Approach in your families, classrooms, and wider communities.
Compassion Corps offers grants to teachers and facilitators to run compassion trainings for ‘communities of need,’ who would otherwise not have access to them. If you have a connection to such a community and have experience running training of this kind, you can apply for a grant.

Cities and Local Communities

Put compassion at the heart of cities and local communities. Fostering compassion on a local scale is critical, especially in a time of growing polarization and inequality. Making compassion a guiding principle of your city or community can enhance its resilience and collective well-being.

Explore this map of compassionate communities and start one in your area. Learn from communities with compassion at their core, such as the global network of Transition Towns.
Follow the example of cities like Louisville, in the USA, whose mayor, Greg Fischer, pioneered the concept of Compassionate Louisville. Mayors and Business Leaders Center for Compassionate and Equitable Cities is another example of compassion being fostered through local governance.
Create the conditions for compassion to flourish in local public services, including police stations, hospitals and clinics, schools, prisons, and community businesses. Seek support and draw inspiration from organizations such as Beyond Us and Them, which provides training for these groups, combining contemplative neuroscience, mindfulness, and council pedagogy to cultivate self-awareness, emotional regulation, and compassionate communication.
Compassionate USA has a toolkit for fostering compassion in your community or city, while initiatives like the Compassion Games offer imaginative and inclusive ways to foster compassion in your local area.
Compassion should be a central part of approaches to refugees and migrants. The #WithRefugees campaign gathers cities, towns, and local communities pledging solidarity with refugees. Join them by signing the statement and drawing inspiration from their examples of compassionate practices.
Cultivate compassion for refugees and migrants in your local communities (See Migration Nexus). Share knowledge and awareness about the obstacles to feeling compassion for these groups of people, and take these simple steps to deepen collective compassion for refugees and migrants.
Encourage community participation in volunteering to help refugees and migrants find housing, work, and educational opportunities through organizations like the Red Cross and Caritas. Look for community matching schemes to support a newcomer’s integration into your local community.

Researchers

Contribute to the scientific understanding of compassion and communicate it to a broader audience. There is a growing interest in compassion and how it can be actively cultivated across the sciences—from psychology to neuroscience. It remains an emerging field, with much still to discover, understand, and share beyond the confines of science.

Explore the current state of research on compassion. There’s a growing scientific consensus that compassion emerged through evolutionary processes to facilitate cooperation and the protection of the weak and those who suffer. Studies suggest that compassion can be actively nurtured, although it is difficult to measure.
Get involved with the Global Compassion Initiative’s work to embed the evidence and practice of compassion into everyday choices. Connect with them to support their development of a Global Compassion Index and to participate in conversations and events around the science and practice of compassion.
Contribute to CCARE’s research on the science of compassion. Their current research focuses on the effects of meditation on compassionate behavior and how compassion manifests itself in politics.
Help to fill the research gaps in building an epidemiological understanding of compassion by connecting with the Task Force for Global Health’s Focus Area for Compassion and Ethics. Areas needing more research include how compassion can be transmitted to others and what influences people’s ability to receive compassion.
Contribute to Penn State University’s research exploring the effect of outdoor experiential education on the development of character in young people, including its role in fostering traits like compassion. Get in touch with lead researcher Pete Allison to find out more.

Companies

Nurture compassion in the workplace and harness business as a force for creating more compassionate societies and economies. Businesses can be key actors in fostering more compassionate societies. It’s also in their interest to do so, with compassionate approaches likely to yield greater employee trust in their leadership, lower turnover rates, and greater collective well-being.

Foster compassion in the workplace. The Global Compassion Coalition offers advice on how to do this, while Awakening Compassion at Work provides some longer-form guidance.
Provide your staff with opportunities to cultivate their compassionate leadership skills. Training like the Compassion in Leadership program, the Global Leadership for Sustainable Development Program, and the Compassion Training are good places to start.
Integrate compassion into your values and mission statements, and develop metrics to assess and elevate the impact of fostering compassion on business outcomes. Empathy Lab runs workshops to help build empathy and compassion into your team’s culture, and Outward Bound runs compassion-centered team-building programs for organizations.
Join platforms like Neighbourly, enabling your business to drive compassionate action in your communities through employee volunteering and supporting charitable causes.
Set up a company-wide volunteer program, giving staff time off to volunteer their time. These schemes can foster compassionate leaders and team members. This article has tips on best practices and pitfalls of company volunteering programs, while platforms like Benevity offer tools to make company volunteering more accessible.
Compassion can decrease as individuals in leadership positions gain power within organizations, to the detriment of the wider team, and ultimately, the business. There are simple practices business leaders can take to remain grounded and compassionate.
Become a sector partner of the Charter for Compassion and sign the Charter on behalf of your organization. Their sector ecosystem spans business, the arts and media, science, and research. It facilitates knowledge-sharing and networking for compassionate action on a local and global scale.

Governance

Make compassion a guiding principle of policy-making. Compassion is an activating force that needs to be present in every policy discussion and decision. Compassion and kindness have often been dismissed in policy-making as irrational and sentimental. Public policy should be informed by compassion and create the conditions for greater compassion to flourish, centering on a relational rather than a transactional approach to decision-making.

Engage directly with people who have lived experience of the issues your policies seek to address. This requires listening with empathy to their experiences, co-creating policy solutions, and committing to being accountable for your decisions.
Institute a compassion threshold for all new laws passed, ensuring that social and environmental justice are prioritized in every policy decision.
Compassion ultimately demands economic system change, away from a system based on individualism and towards one based on our interdependence. Put compassion at the heart of economic policy-making, drawing inspiration from ideas such as Caring Economics.
The Wellbeing Economy is being implemented by governments around the world, including Iceland, Scotland, Finland, Canada, and New Zealand, as well as many city-level governments. The Wellbeing Economy involves a participatory approach to policy-making, prioritizing long-term outcomes, and distributing wealth from the start.
Doughnut Economics is another alternative economic framework that centers collective well-being and compassion. Connect with the Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL) to engage with other actors and integrate the concepts and tools of Doughnut Economics into policy-making.
Make compassion a guiding value of national policy-making and a metric of economic and social well-being. Examples like the Gross National Happiness Index in Bhutan - whose constitution enshrines compassion as a distinct objective - can offer inspiration.
Design economic policy around compassionate ideas such as the Four Ps - Purpose, Prevention, Predistribution, and People Power. These ideas inspire New Zealand’s Wellbeing Budget, centering collective and compassionate notions of wellbeing.
Orient policy-making towards the creation of an infrastructure of kindness and compassion. Scotland’s government actively sponsors compassion and kindness as values in public policy through their National Performance Framework.
Instill compassion as a core value of local and national healthcare systems. The National Health Service in the UK has enshrined compassion as a core value in its constitution, while the Taskforce for Global Health is a leader centering compassion in global health practice.
Give healthcare workers opportunities to develop greater compassion and resilience. Draw inspiration from programs such as Compassion, Attunement & Resilience Education for Healthcare Professionals (CARE).
Place compassion at the heart of asylum and immigration policy, and work with international partners to create a global asylum system founded on compassion and cooperation in line with international treaty obligations. As the response to the Ukraine war demonstrated, providing safe and legal routes for those seeking asylum or seeking to settle in another country can be effective and replicable and garner domestic support. See Migration Nexus.

Engage with and support organizations, campaigns, and experts in the field of compassion. There is a global movement of people and organizations dedicated to fostering greater compassion in politics, with an abundance of resources and expertise. Supporting them can help to bolster the growing global movement for compassion, while connecting with them can make policy-making more effective and resilient.

Draw on the expertise of organizations like the Global Compassion Coalition, including resources like their compassion guide for policy-makers and Compassion in Politics’ leadership training.
Engage with initiatives such as the Inner Development Goals to integrate targets into national policies that cultivate regenerative human qualities and skills. These qualities - including compassion - can catalyze the human-to-human relationships needed to accelerate urgent progress on multilateral targets such as the Sustainable Development Goals.
Collaborate with the Center for Compassionate Leadership and support their efforts to make the 2020s the Decade of Compassion. The Center works with government agencies to cultivate compassionate leadership through training, workshops, and collaborations.
Connect with and seek support from organizations and individuals working to elevate the mental well-being of those in public office. Skippy Mesiro from the Elected Leaders Collective and Ashley Weinberg from the Apolitical Foundation support politicians to foster the skills to govern and lead with compassion and resilience.

Key Players

Organizations

Global Compassion Coalition (Global)

Charter for Compassion (Global)

Compassion in Politics (UK)

Mind and Life Institute (U.S.)

Compassion Institute (U.S.)

Taskforce for Global Health - Focus Area on Compassion and Ethics (Global)

The Greater Good Science Center (U.S.)

Encuentro Mundial de Valores (Global)

Templeton Foundation (U.S.)

Global Compassion Initiative (UK)

Center for Compassionate Leadership (U.S.)

Humaniterra (U.S.)

The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (U.S.)

Compassionate Mind Foundation (UK)

Center for Compassion, Integrity, and Secular Ethics (U.S.)

Compassionate USA (U.S.)

Compassion in World Farming (Global)

HeartMath Institute (U.S.)

Outward Bound Schools (Global)

Outward Bound Center for Peacebuilding (Global)

Individuals

Thupten Jinpa is a leading expert on compassion. He founded the Compassion Institute, developed Compassion Cultivation Training, and is the Dalai Lama’s principal English translator.

Matthieu Ricard is a Buddhist monk and author who has written and spoken widely on compassion, altruism, and happiness.

Karen Armstrong is an author and former nun known for her writing on the commonalities between religions. Her work led to the creation of the Charter for Compassion.

Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology, Director of the Greater Good Science Center, and a leading expert on the science of compassion.

Marilyn Turkovich is the Executive Director of the Charter for Compassion.

Matt Hawkins is the COO of the Global Compassion Coalition and Co-Director of Compassion in Politics.

Joanna Macy is an author and scholar of Buddhism, deep ecology, and systems thinking. She is the root teacher of The Work That Reconnects.

Joan Halifax is an author, activist, and Zen Buddhist priest. She is known for her compassionate work with the terminally ill.

Marc Bekoff is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology who has written extensively on compassionate conservation, as well as animal behavior and welfare.

Katherine Trebeck is a political economist and advocate for economic system change. She co-founded the Wellbeing Economy Alliance and has written extensively on compassion in economics.

Paul Gilbert is a professor of clinical psychology. He is the author of The Compassionate Mind and founded the Compassionate Mind Foundation.

Ann Seide is an integrative medicine practitioner and has run compassion training for prison inmates, social activists, and survivors of genocide.

Jared Seid is the Executive Director of Beyond Us & Them and the author of Where Compassion Begins.

Satish Kumar is a peace pilgrim and author who has written, spoken, and taught widely on compassion, peace and deep ecology. He’s co-founder of Schumacher College and founder of the Resurgence Trust.

Liz Grant, David Addiss, Corinne Reid, and Heather Buesseler are public health experts working to put compassion at the heart of global health practice and the Sustainable Development Goals through the Global Compassion Initiative and the Taskforce for Global Health FACE.

Greg Fischer was mayor of Louisville, USA, and is known for his work centering compassion in the city, including through an organization called Compassionate Louisville.

Thich Nhat Hahn was a Buddhist monk and peace activist who profoundly influenced the practice of Buddhism and Mindfulness in the West.