Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life

In this important and thought-provoking work, Karen Armstrongone of the most original thinkers on the role of religion in the modern worldprovides an impassioned and practical guide to helping us make the world a more compassionate place.

The twelve steps she suggests begin with Learn About Compassion, and close with Love Your Enemies. In between, she takes up self-love, mindfulness, suffering, sympathetic joy, the limits of our knowledge of others, and concern for everybody. She shares concrete methods to help us cultivate and expand our capacity for compassion, and provides a reading list to encourage us to hear one anothers narratives. Armstrong teaches us that becoming a compassionate human being is a lifelong project and a journey filled with rewards.

The First Step: Learn About Compassion
The Second Step: Look at Your Own World
The Third Step: Compassion for Yourself
The Fourth Step: Empathy
The Fifth Step: Mindfulness
The Sixth Step: Action
The Seventh Step: How Little We Know
The Eighth Step: How Should We Speak to One Another?
The Ninth Step: Concern for Everybody
The Tenth Step: Knowledge
The Eleventh Step: Recognition
The Twelfth Step: Love Your Enemies