Rising to the Virtue of Compassion

“Our culture is obsessed with perfection and with hiding problems. But what a liberating thing to realize that our problems, in fact, are probably our richest sources for rising to this ultimate virtue of compassion. Towards bringing compassion towards the joys and sufferings of others…Compassion can’t be reduced to sainthood any more than it can be reduced to pity…Compassion is equally at home in the secular as well as in the religious. So I will paraphrase Einstein and say that the future of humanity needs [the technology of compassion] as much as it needs all the others that have now connected us and set before us the terrifying and wondrous possibility of actually becoming one human race.”

~ Krista Tippett, from “Reconnecting with Compassion,” TED, Nov. 2010