I had never thought about the relationship of meditation and compassion, but it makes perfect sense now that you mention it.

In the article that you cited it says “Although the research does not prove that compassion can be learned,” I think that the answer to whether or not that’s possible depends on a matter of perspective.

There’s a lot of animal-inmate programs, but one in particular took maximum security inmates who had committed brutal violent crimes and gave them the ability to “adopt” an animal. If they adopted, they would be fully responsible for caring for the people.

At the end of the program, what was noted was that the inmates had learned a great deal of compassion, and many of their hardened ways had been worn down. Long story short – they realized that caring for animals was an amazing rehabilitation tool.

So the question begs – did the people learn compassion by caring for the animals, or was it just that the animals helped the inmates get in touch with the compassion that already existed within them from birth?

Food for thought… 🙂

Also an FYI, I tried to signup for the email udpates but the page takes me to a page not found error.