Quote

Developing our capacity for compassion makes it possible for us to help others in a more skillful and effective way.

Joan Halifax

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Joan Halifax
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: July 30
Activist
Anthropologist
Religious Writer
Hanover
New Hampshire
Joan Jiko Halifax
Others
Effective
Way
Developing
Capacity
Compassion
Possible
Help
Helping
Makes
Skillful

More quotes by Joan Halifax

Image
Kaz's art is a powerful example of discipline and freedom. His classical calligraphy captures the inner movement and stillness of the brush and mind.
Joan Halifax
Image
Yes, creation is moving toward us life is moving toward us all the time. We back away, but it keeps pushing toward us. Why not step forward and greet it.
Joan Halifax
Image
The Shobogenzo is an enormous work that captures the vastness of Dogen's realization. Kaz, over many years, threaded the beads of these many fascicles into a great mala of wisdom.
Joan Halifax
Image
Compassion has enemies, and those enemies are things like pity, moral outrage, fear.
Joan Halifax
Image
[I'm inspired by ] courageous young people who take a stand and go into the field to serve really old people who see that every minute of life is to be lived fully and compassionately and so many between this world and that world.
Joan Halifax
Image
We live in a time when science is validating what humans have known throughout the ages: that compassion is not a luxury it is a necessity for our well-being, resilience, and survival.
Joan Halifax
Image
Most of us are shrinking in the face of psycho-social and physical poisons, of the toxins of our world. But compassion, the generation of compassion, actually mobilizes our immunity.
Joan Halifax
Image
I've worked in the prison system, on death row and maximum security. I did that work for six years. I've worked with some of the most difficult people in our society. Buddhism was accessible and helpful for these individuals.
Joan Halifax
Image
Buddhist practice is the grounding for this work, this life, this way.
Joan Halifax
Image
Catastrophe is the essence of the spiritual path, a series of breakdowns allowing us to discover the threads that weave all of life into a whole cloth.
Joan Halifax
Image
I met Kaz in the mid 1980s when we invited him and other artists to the Ojai Foundation with Thich Nhat Hanh. I felt an instant connection with him, and since that time we have collaborated on many projects and have become good friends and allies in the work of nonviolence.
Joan Halifax
Image
May I see my own limits with compassion, just as I view the limits of others.
Joan Halifax
Image
Don't ever think compassion is weak. Compassion is about strength.
Joan Halifax
Image
If compassion is so good for us, why don't we train our health care providers in compassion so that they can do what they're supposed to do, which is to transform suffering?
Joan Halifax
Image
To work with Kaz on this kind of project is a fascinating process...He seems to be Dogen himself when offering the translations that we Western collaborators then refine with him.
Joan Halifax
Image
I am working on a technical paper on compassion. So I am reading everything I can on the subject, including my own mind and heart.
Joan Halifax
Image
How about Burma, Somalia, Afghanistan, Libya, our streets, our neighborhoods, our own minds. We don't have to look far - and we should look far as well.
Joan Halifax
Image
My work has been in the field of engaged Buddhism. That is my own practice, which began in 1965 that formed the base for the work I was doing in the civil rights and anti-war movement.
Joan Halifax
Image
All are interconnected...the environment rights of the dying care of caregivers education and medical care for peoples of the Himalayas prison work those living on the margins of society, particularly kids.
Joan Halifax
Image
For me, Buddhism is a psychology and a philosophy that provides a means, upayas, for working with the mind.
Joan Halifax