By Kozo Hattori
What does it take to foster compassion in men? To find out, Kozo Hattori interviewed scientific and spiritual experts.
I remember being a very compassionate child. While watching The Little House on the Prairie,
I cried my eyes out when Laura couldn’t give Pa a Christmas gift. But
12 years of physical abuse and being forced to the confines of the
“act-like-a-man box” wrung most of that compassion out of me by the time
I reached adulthood.
Although I was what therapists call “high functioning,” my lack of
compassion was like a cancer that poisoned my friendships,
relationships, business affairs, and life. At the age of 46, I hit rock
bottom. Unemployed and on the verge of divorce, I found myself slapping
my four-year-old son’s head when he wouldn’t listen to me. As the
survivor of abuse, I had promised myself that I would never lay a hand
on my children, but here I was abusing my beloved son.
I knew I had to change. I started with empathy, which led me to compassion. I committed to a daily meditation practice, took the CCARE Cultivating Compassion
class at Stanford University, and completed a ten-day silent meditation
retreat. I read and researched everything I could find on compassion. I
found that the more compassion I felt, the happier I became.
Convinced that I had found an essential ingredient to a happy and peaceful life, I started to interview scientific and spiritual experts on compassion, trying to find out what made a compassionate man. Interviewees included Dr. Dacher Keltner, co-founder of the UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center; Dr. James Doty, founder and director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University; Dr. Rick Hanson, author of Hardwiring Happiness; Marc Brackett,
director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence; and Thich Nhat
Hanh, the Zen Buddhist Monk nominated by Martin Luther King Jr. for the
Nobel Peace Prize in 1967.
From these interviews and research, I compiled a list of what makes a compassionate man.
1. A fundamental understanding of compassion
Most events I attend that discuss compassion are predominantly
attended by women. When I asked Thich Nhat Hanh how we could make
compassion more attractive to men, he answered, “There must be a
fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of compassion because
compassion is very powerful…Compassion protects us more than guns,
bombs, and money.” Although many men in society see compassion and
sympathy as feminine—which translates to a weakness in our patriarchal
society—all of the compassionate men I interviewed view compassion as a
strength.
Dr. Hanson noted how compassion makes one more courageous since
compassion strengthens the heart—courage comes from the French word
“Coeur,” which means heart. Dacher Keltner argues that Darwin believed
in “survival of the kindest,” not the fittest. Dr. Ted Zeff, author of Raise an Emotionally Healthy Boy,
believes that only compassionate men can save the planet. Zeff argues
that “the time has come to break the outdated, rigid male code that
insists that all men should be aggressive, thick-skinned, and
unemotional”—an excellent description of the act-like-a-man box that I
tried to live in.
The compassionate men I interviewed agree with the Dalai Lama when he
said, “Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them,
humanity cannot survive.”
2. Compassionate role models
All of the compassionate men seemed to have role models that
supported their compassion instinct. Marc Brackett gives credit to his
uncle, Marvin Maurer, who was a social studies teacher trying to instill
emotional intelligence in his student before the term emotional
intelligence was coined. Over 30 years after teaching in middle school,
Maurer’s “Feeling Words Curriculum”
acts as a key component of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence
RULER program. Similarly, Marshall Rosenberg, author of Nonviolent
Communication, constantly mentions his compassionate uncle who cared for
his dying grandmother.
A role model doesn’t necessarily have to be living, or even real. Chade-Meng Tan, author of Search Inside Yourself,
cites Ben Kingsley’s portrayal of Gandhi as a role model for
compassion. Dr. Rick Hanson posits Ender from the science-fiction novel Ender’s Game
as a compassionate role model. Certainly, Jesus and Buddha are obvious
role models of compassion. The key is to treat them like role models.
Role models are not meant to be worshiped, deified, or prayed to.
They are meant to be emulated. They pave the way for us to walk a
similar path. Can we turn the other cheek and love our enemies like
Jesus asked us? Can we transcend our ego and see all things as one, like
the Buddha did?
In contrast are individuals who were not guided by positive role models. In his book From Wild Man to Wise Man,
Franciscan friar Richard Rohr describes what he calls “father hunger”:
“Thousands and thousands of men, young and old…grew up without a good
man’s love, without a father’s understanding and affirmation.” Rohr, who
was a jail chaplain for 14 years, claims that “the only universal
pattern I found with men and women in jail was that they did not have a
good father.”
Scott Kriens, former CEO of Juniper Networks and founder/director of the 1440 Foundation, concurs: “The most powerful thing we can do for our children is be the example we can hope for.”
3. Transcendence of gender stereotypes
All of the compassionate men interviewed broke out of the
act-like-a-man box. At a certain point in his life, Dr. Rick Hanson
realized that he was too left brained, so he made a conscious effort to
re-connect with his intuitive, emotional side. When Elad Levinson,
program director for Spirit Rock Meditation Center, first encountered
loving-kindness and compassion practices, his first reaction was what he
claims to be fairly typical for men: “Come on! You are being a wuss,
Levinson. No way are you going to sit here and wish yourself well.” So
the actual practice of compassion instigated his breaking free from
gender stereotypes.
Dr. Ted Zeff cites a study that found infant boys are more
emotionally reactive than infant girls, but by the time a boy reaches
five or six years old “he’s learned to repress every emotion except
anger, because anger is the only emotion society tells a boy he is
allowed to have.” If society restricts men’s emotional spectrum to
anger, then it is obvious men need to transcend this conditioning to
become compassionate.
Dr. Doty points to artificially defined roles as a major problem in
our society because they prevent men from showing their vulnerability.
“If you can’t be vulnerable, you can’t love,” says Doty. Vulnerability
is a key to freedom from the act-like-a-man box, for it allows men to
remove the armor of masculinity and authentically connect with others.
Both Dr. Doty and Scott Kriens emphasize authenticity as a necessary
pathway to compassion. Kriens defines authenticity as “when someone is
sharing what they believe as opposed to what they want you to believe.”
This opens the door to compassion and true connection with others.
4. Emotional intelligence
In Raising Cain,
Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson argue that most boys are raised to be
emotionally ignorant: “Lacking an emotional education, a boy meets the
pressure of adolescence and that singularly cruel peer culture with the
only responses he has learned and practiced—and that he know are
socially acceptable—the typical ‘manly’ responses of anger, aggression,
and emotional withdrawal.”
In contrast, most of the men I interviewed were “emotionally
literate.” They seemed to see and feel things with the sensitivity of a
Geiger counter. Tears welled up in Dr. Doty’s eyes a number of times
when he talked about compassion. Dr. Hanson explained how he landed in
adulthood “from the neck up” then spent a large part of his 20s becoming whole
again. Much of Chade-Meng Tan’s Search Inside Yourself training that he
developed for the employees of Google is based on emotional
intelligence developed through attention training, self-knowledge, and
self-mastery.
Similarly, Father Richard Rohr leads initiation groups for young men
that force initiates to face pain, loneliness, boredom, and suffering to
expand their emotional and spiritual capacity. It is no coincidence
that these initiations are held in nature. Nature seems to be an
important liminal space that allows boys and men to reconnect with their
inner world. Dr. Hanson is an avid mountain climber. Dr. Ted Zeff
advocates spending time in nature with boys to allow their sensitivity
to develop.
5. Silence
Almost all of the men I interviewed regularly spend some time in
silence. They’d hit “pause” so that they can see themselves and others
more clearly. When our interview approached two hours, Dr. Rick Hanson
asked to wrap it up so he would have time for his morning meditation.
Meng Tan had just returned from a week-long silent meditation retreat a
few days before our interview. Scott Kriens started a daily sitting and
journaling practice almost ten years ago that he rigorously practices to
this day.
Father Richard Rohr practices Christian contemplative prayer, which
he says leads to a state of “undefended knowing” that transcends
dualistic, us/them thinking. Rohr argues that true compassion can’t
happen without transcending dualistic thinking. “Silence teaches us not
to rush to judgment,” says Rohr.
Self-awareness through mindfulness practices like meditation, silent
prayer, or being in nature allow compassionate men to embrace suffering
without reacting, resisting, or repressing. Thich Nhat Hanh says that
mindfulness holds suffering tenderly “like a mother holding a baby.”
That poetic image is backed up by more and more research, which is
finding that mindfulness can help foster compassion for others.
So the path to making more compassionate men is clear: understand
compassion as a strength, get to know yourself, transcend gender roles,
look for positive role models—and become one yourself. If that sounds
too complicated, 84-year-old Marvin Maurer sums up being a compassionate
man in five easy words, “Be in love with love.”
