What Is Mindfulness and Compassion?
Mindfulness meditation is the practice of being here and now, in a kind, non-judgmental way, rather than being somewhere else (in the future, in the past, in our to-do list, in our pain, or in our stories) as we often are.
It's simple, but it isn't easy. Like any sport or musical practice, mindfulness is a skill, and we build and maintain the skill through practice. Just like we wouldn't become a pianist by reading books about playing the piano, we don't learn mindfulness by reading or talking about it - we need to practice it.
A type of meditation
Before we go further, it helps to start one step back, with meditation itself.
Meditation is the practice of training, directing, or focusing your attention on purpose. There are many different types of meditations: Devotional meditations connect you to something bigger than yourself: prayer, chant, visualization. Contemplative meditations have you sit with and reflect on a theme such as gratitude, grief, love. Concentration meditations rest your attention on one thing, again and again: a candle flame, a mantra, a Zen koan.
Mindfulness is a type of meditation where you train, direct and focus your attention on the present moment, and hold whatever the present moment contains with compassion rather than judgment.
“Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally.” - Jon Kabatt-Zin
“Mindfulness is the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose and non-judgmentally to the unfolding of moment to moment experience.” - Tara Brach
Two wings of a bird
Mindfulness can be likened to a bird with two wings:
One wing is awareness: the open, non-judging noticing of what's here. This is the receptive side, and it's the side most people mean when they say mindfulness.
The other wing is compassion: an appropriate, caring response to what we notice. This is the active side.
A bird needs both wings to fly.
Awareness without compassion can turn cold or detached. Compassion without clear awareness can be uninformed, reacting to how we assume things are rather than how they actually are. This is why we learn them together.
If what you picture when you hear mindfulness doesn't include compassion and warmth, you're only getting half of it.
This is why a lot of teachers say mindfulness is “loving awareness” instead of just “awareness”.
Awareness and compassion help each other. When awareness meets suffering and sees it clearly, compassion tends to arise on its own, in ourselves and toward others. When compassion is present, we are softer, more receptive, and able to perceive and become aware of more.
What is compassion?
Compassion has three parts, as defined by Kristin Neff:
1. Acknowledgement of pain and suffering: letting it touch your heart; letting yourself feel their pain rather than looking away.
2. Common humanity: the understanding that suffering is normal, and happens to everyone. Whatever this person, or you, is going through, you could have been, or have been, in their place. Suffering isn't personal; it's universal. It shows up in different shapes and at different times, but we all carry it.
3. Kind action: responding, actively, with kindness, and meeting their needs as best as possible. This kind action can be as simple as the active wish for their suffering to lessen or end.
Here's what that looks like in practice. Imagine you're at a metro station and you pass a homeless person who's clearly struggling: hungry, cold, slumped against the wall. Noticing the pain without feeling moved by it isn't compassion. Compassion is feeling their pain, and then a kind action: a genuine wish that they weren't suffering, or another kind action, if possible.
Compassion is different from sympathy. In sympathy, we might say “that's awful,” and move on. Our hearts don't necessarily open to it. Compassion stays with the discomfort a little longer, and tries to feel the pain honestly rather than minimizing it with things like “well, they probably deserve it” or “other people have it worse.”
Compassion is also different from empathy: our ability to feel what someone else is feeling almost as if it's happening to us. It runs on mirror neurons, the same brain cells that fire when you watch someone else's hand move as if it were your own hand moving. Empathy has no built-in protection, which is part of why it can wear us down. Compassion, the active wish to help, tends to protect us rather than drain us. This is also why “compassion fatigue,” the term caregivers often reach for, is really “empathy fatigue”.
If we follow the same definition, self-compassion is:
1. Acknowledging your pain and suffering.
2. Common humanity: connecting to how everyone suffers, it's not a personal pathology.
3. Kind action: responding, actively, to yourself with kindness, and meeting your needs.
Here's what that looks like in practice: Say an interview goes badly. A self-compassionate response notices the sting (“this hurts, I'm disappointed”), meets it with some kindness (“it's okay, I'll do better next time,” or just a long shower to decompress), and remembers that plenty of people have walked out of a bad interview before. You're having a very ordinary human experience.
Self-compassion sounds simple but it's not easy. Most people live with really loud inner critics. When we suffer, we tend to be harsh to ourselves. We treat our best friend better than we'd treat ourselves.
In that sense:
“Having compassion for oneself is really no different than having compassion for others.” - Kristin Neff
The more we cultivate self-compassion, it overflows to others. We naturally begin to extend it more to others as well.
Why practice mindfulness and compassion?
We could give a long list of reasons, and as I shared above, many come to this practice for different reasons, but 4 reasons I like to emphasize are:
1. It helps us hold what's painful, instead of fighting it.
There's an old image Jack Kornfield describes: a poster of the teacher Swami Satchidananda, balanced on a surfboard in a yoga pose, with the caption “You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.” We can't stop what happens, inside us or around us. Grief comes. Fear comes. Boredom, anger, disappointment, all of it comes, whether we want it or not. Most of the time we resist it, or we go numb instead. Kornfield has written about how easily modern life nudges us toward that numbness: staying just busy enough, just distracted enough, that we never fully feel how we feel. Mindfulness and compassion don't ask you to stop the waves. It asks you to learn how to ride them, with more trust that you can hold what comes, and in turn, you grow more resilient and more willingness to make brave choices.
For those of us far from home, it matters even more. When you're living far from where you grew up, you're often doing all of this (holding hard feelings, staying present, building relationships, finding rest) without some of the supports that used to do part of that work for you: family nearby, a language that's fully yours, a culture that doesn't need explaining. Mindfulness and compassion won't replace those things. But it gives you a way to meet uncertainty, homesickness, or a hard day in a new language without needing everything around you to feel familiar first. It becomes a kind of steady ground you can return to, wherever you're standing.
2. It helps us not miss our own lives.
Menandraji was once asked why he meditates. His response: “So that when I walk from here to the village, I notice the tiny purple flowers on the side of the road.” The reality is that we are on this planet briefly, and we will die. Most of us spend a lot of time somewhere other than the present moment: replaying the past, rehearsing the future, or drifting into daydream. Mindfulness brings you back to what's real and in front of you, which is where you can enjoy the good stuff that's here and learn to manage what's hard. It connects you with your life, here and now.
3. It helps our relationships, starting with the one with ourselves.
Mindfulness and compassion help us get to know ourselves: how a bad mood colors how we view an experience, how old patterns shape our reactions, where we struggle, where we flow. Rumi asked, “Do you pay regular visits to yourself?” Mindfulness is about visiting yourself regularly, and increasing your self-knowledge. The compassion wing of the bird then helps cultivate a dear, close friendship with yourself. This shift in your relationship with yourself translates to your relationships with others. The practice opens you to the basic goodness in others, and to more intimacy, acceptance, trust, and happiness in relationships.
4. It helps us rest.
Modern life is constant doing, problem solving, and figuring things out. So many people are overworked and are completely disconnected from what it means to rest. Being present, even briefly, lets the nervous system settle out of fight-flight-freeze and into something closer to rest and repair. It's also about as simple a health tool as exists: no equipment, no special place, nothing to buy.
What mindfulness and compassion are not
Mindfulness and compassion are not a quick fix
But real change takes time and practice. The shift won't happen overnight. It usually takes months and years of practice: in sessions together, and at home in between them. How much time it will take will depend on what you're working through, and how much you're able to invest in your practice.
Mindfulness and compassion won't work with only an intellectual understanding; you need the mechanism of practice to build the skill. You can read a hundred books about mindfulness and still not be mindful, the same way you can read a hundred books about playing the piano and still not play it.
Mindfulness and compassion are not about relaxation or feeling good
In mindfulness practice, you'll experience many moments and states of calm and ease, and if you keep practicing in steady fashion, these states will also build into traits. You'll become a more mindful, happier person.
That said, through practicing mindfulness, you'll also become aware of the pain and suffering, both in your life and in the world, more than you were before. In that sense, things may seem to get worse before they get better. This is only because you're now paying more attention to your inner processes (emotions, thoughts, sensations) and to the true nature of things.
The intention in mindfulness isn't to relax or to feel good, though both of these things may arise of our practice. The intention is to be present with whatever is here, beauty or suffering, and to hold it with kindness.
Each time you practice will be different. Sometimes you'll find calm and peace, sometimes restlessness, boredom, sadness, or anger for the entire practice. You're practicing, and you're benefiting from it, nonetheless.
If you're surprised by how much more pain you feel now that you're practicing, trust the process. This is the beginning of a healing process, and you'll learn how to hold and reduce your suffering over time.
Mindfulness and compassion aren't religious or spiritual unless you want them to be
Mindfulness has its roots in Buddhism, and I'll sometimes bring in Buddhist concepts or stories to introduce an idea. But at no point am I inviting you to take on a particular belief or join a particular tradition. I also draw on modern scientific research, and I try to bring in a range of sources, staying as multicultural as I can.
If you're spiritual, you may find mindfulness enriches your own spiritual practice as you cultivate steady attention, loving-kindness, compassion, and gratitude. One client told me mindfulness deepens his prayers.
If you aren't spiritual, that's good too. You don't need to be. And if there are moments where it feels spiritual to you anyway, that's welcome as well.
Read more
Scientific Research on Mindfulness and Compassion
Stress, Brain & Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness
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