Embodying Compassion Through Radical Honesty

4-Part Course: October 18, November 15, December 20, 2025, & January 17, 2026

Each class meets for 3 hours, 10 AM to 1 PM MT

Location: Online, Zoom

Audience: All Are Welcome

Compassion is often misunderstood in modern culture. When compassion is interchanged with other emotions like sympathy, empathy, and self-love, all are essential attributes, but only building blocks to achieving a Buddhist understanding of selfless compassion. 

Karuna Training offers methods that cultivate a nondual compassionate heart and consequently, skillful actions. The Karuna cohort provides a living laboratory of community that fosters practices that integrate the head and the heart. We need a balance of love and intelligence to be genuinely selfless and compassionate. In this course, we explore the basics of discovering how genuine compassion is an innate and limitless resource within us. 

Course Content:

Saturday, October 18, 2025: Embodied Compassion through Exchange

Maitri and Tonglen Practice Introduction and teachings on the Four Immeasurables. Instruction and practice rousing one's awakened heart: bodhicitta.

Saturday, November 15, 2025: Exchange in Everyday Life

Introduction to Compassionate Exchange and Tonglen, Taking and Sending practice; the primary practice of Karuna Training. Compassionate Exchange is a contemplative practice that occurs as a form of sacred communication.

Saturday, December 20, 2025: The Four Bones in Space

The Four Bones of Compassionate Exchange are articulated: Welcoming, Discernment, Mutual Agreement, and Transition.

Saturday, January 17, 2026: Shine the Jewel 

This Class introduces Shining the Jewel, an extension of Compassionate Exchange. Shining the Jewel hones the skill of seeing and cultivating the brilliant sanity of others through thoughtful, loving feedback.

What to expect:

• • Guided Meditation in each class
  • Talks and experiential work on topics
  • Three  Continuity Groups for 1.5 hours between course meeting times and date TBD
  • Readings and study questions; study buddy from the cohort; Karuna Online Circle for discussion on the private cohort channel.

Facilitators:

Melissa Moore, Ph.D, has been a Lead faculty member and Karuna Training North America Executive Director since 2014. She co-founded Karuna Training in Germany in 1996. She has a Master's in Contemplative Psychotherapy from Naropa University and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Integral Studies in Psychological Anthropology. Melissa has trained and certified students in Contemplative Psychology for over thirty-five years in nine Countries. She has been a Buddhist practitioner for over 40 years and the author of The Diamonds Within Us: Uncovering Brilliant Sanity Through Contemplative Psychology.

Miriam Hall, is one of the lead faculty for Karuna Training. In addition to being on faculty for the next cohort for Karuna Training, she presents groups and classes through her business, Herspiral Arts, where she focuses on the mediums of writing and photography combined with social justice and dharma. You can find her online at herspiral.com.

Naoko is on the core faculty for Karuna Training. She grew up as a Buddhist in Japan but began a formal meditation practice in 2007. She is committed to creating and holding space for collective liberation and has been facilitating a group called Racial Justice & Dharma which she finds the most challenging and rewarding work.