According to a analysis of Neanderthal healthcare, evidence suggests that Neanderthals cared for their peers without considering what they could get in return. This goes against the common belief that Neanderthrals were brutal and heartless compared to homo sapiens. Even animals like monkeys, elephants, and dogs show kindness to one another.
This suggests compassion is a vital part of survival for many species outside of humans. If humans are naturally compassionate, what are the benefits? When most people feel compassion and help others, they report feeling happier. We can see evidence of this in scientific research. In one brain-imaging study, the parts of the brain associated with pleasure lit up when the person received money and when they saw a charity getting money.
In another experiment involving money, participants actually felt happier when they spent money on other people instead of themselves. Compassion and happiness are linked. How does health play into this? It makes sense that happier people tend to be healthier. Compassion leads you to take some action to help the other person, not just feel for them. Aristotle suggested that there was a distinction between compassion and other virtues, in that compassion could also be an emotion.
In other virtues, he suggested, there is a separate emotion: anger is often felt at injustice, for example. The virtue of compassion, therefore, is a tendency to feel the emotion of compassion at the right times, in the right ways, and to the right extent. Compassion, then, is the result of seeing someone suffering, deciding that they do not deserve it, and feeling that something similar could easily happen to you, or to someone that you care about.
The nearness of the problem may be crucial to the desire to take action. There is an implication that without this closeness, you would simply feel sympathy, and not the need to take action which is part of compassion. This sounds plausible. Comic Relief and similar organisations have spent considerable effort taking celebrities to witness both suffering and the programmes that alleviate it first hand in order to bring the situation closer to home and create more impact and desire to do something to help.
Compassion is valued by many world religions, including Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity. God is seen as being compassionate and merciful, and there are many teachings about the importance of compassion towards others. Our definition of compassion, then, is closer to that of Confucian philosophy: compassion is the emotional expression of the virtue of benevolence.
People often confuse sympathy, that is, feeling sorry for someone, with caring about someone and feeling compassion. Freud and others fueled this perspective. Even today, some of the widely used measures of this motivation look at how people are more likely to attempt to avoid rejection rather than to act on their non-anxious desire and enjoyment of being close with others. At a deeper level, the model assumes that a desire for closeness is based on the fears or anxiety of being rejected.
So people aroused by a need for affiliation look for evidence that their loved ones or close friends really care about them. They value proof such as frequent declarations of affection, frequent calls, visits, chances to spend time together, and even some degree of exclusivity. At the opposite end of the spectrum lies what we consider to be a more positive, non-anxious form of intimacy or desire to be close to others.
It is not based on reciprocity or the need for declarations of any kind, and does not require proof of affection. Rather, we are looking at the drive for relationship and regard from a glass half-full perspective: our desire for contact and intimacy are natural and we derive great satisfaction and pleasure from compassionate relationships. From this perspective, we simply enjoy being with certain other people.
When we come together, it is as if we have not been apart, even if years have intervened. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
Oriental tradition has always talked about compassion as one of the most important virtues for living a fruitful life. However, recently, even medical and scientific research also backs up this philosophy and highlights the benefits of practicing compassion.
Being compassionate not only makes you find true happiness and peace but also makes you physically much healthier. But people often misinterpret the true meaning of compassion. So, what is it? A compassionate person does not say that people are responsible for their sufferings but try to understand the root cause and help them solve those problems.
Human beings can feel empathy and compassion towards other beings. But should you be compassionate only because research says so? For making compassion a part of your life, you must check out the following reasons that will make you want to be compassionate to everyone. You will be surprised to see the benefits! Research on compassion training programs highlighted that compassionate people in their daily lives have lower levels of stress hormones.
This also helps in improving the response of the immune system in them. How do your stress levels reduce by practicing compassion? When you are compassionate towards people around you, you will notice a sense of calm and serenity within yourself and your surroundings.
It will also nurture harmonious and meaningful relationships with your friends and family. Ultimately, it all leads to a peaceful mind and body relationship leading to good health.
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