By Marc Ian Barasch – $21.95
Using open and inviting prose, Barasch brings readers into the lives of a wide variety of people who have practiced compassionate living in their daily lives. We meet both well-known people and ordinary unheralded people who have shown compassion through everything from being live organ donors to those who have forgiven convicted murderers.
With each example of someone being compassionate, the book stimulates the reader to explore their own lives and to determine whether they are manifesting their own compassion or whether they could do more.
Barasch argues that we are prewired for compassion. He says empathy is integral to the human operating system. Saint Thomas Aquinas argued that if one loves god and God loves all, then one must love everyone God loves.
The author also clarifies that compassion is not just a single event but a non-judgmental path. He shows how people have struggled to learn to help others they don’t like. And then the reader is asked, “Would you help a person who is terrible?”
Barasch shares with readers how writing this book changed his life. Asking himself the question, “What would happen if a seed of good intention was planted?” Taking time to “do nothing”, Barasch waited to see what would come up.
Barasch met an elderly forestry expert, who had been planting trees across the globe for most of his life. He and Barasch talked through the afternoon. Trees, it seems, could take care of everything from earth to sky and people to planet. Barasch had a minor epiphany, GREEN COMPASSION. He believes there is a moment when one definitely commits oneself and it is then providence moves in.
Through the author’s good deeds and using his compassion, The Green World Compassion was started which was a far-flung network of global citizens finding new ways to care for our world.
The book includes detailed footnotes and a useful index.
This is a good book for everyone interested in enhancing his or her compassion at all levels, not only for personal satisfaction but also to constructively impact the whole world.
