We explore what happens in our minds when we open our hearts and empathise with the suffering of others.
Meet Dr.James Doty, who once had tens of millions of dollars but gave it all away. This allowed him to explore something that had always been of interest to him which is to understand why when people see somebody suffering they don’t intervene to help them.
Dr James Doty is now a professor of neurosurgery and founder and director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University and he has a fascinating life story. But his early life was a real struggle.
James Doty grew up in poverty, his father was an alcoholic, his mother was an invalid with numerous health problems, his family was on public assistance, essentially his entire life at home. His parents had not gone to college, he certainly had no exposure to college. Obviously in a situation like that it is fairly chaotic and dysfunctional and when you grow up in that situation—you feel like a leaf blown by an ill wind.
He was 13 and had started to engage in...negative behaviours. One day he was riding a bike around and he came across this magic shop. He went in out of curiosity.
It turned out that the owner was not there but his mother was there, a very kind woman who had just sort of this amazing smile. And they started talking and what she said to him after a conversation of about 20 minutes was, 'You know I really like you, if you come in here every day for the next six weeks I’ll teach you something that I think could change your life.'
And what she taught him was a mindfulness practice, if you will, how to settle the mind, how to develop intention and focus combined, if you will, with the power of positive thinking, some self-hypnosis thrown in and a visualisation technique.
And over the course of that six weeks, his perspective changed. In fact his perspective changed from one of limited if no possibilities to an understanding that he had unlimited possibilities and that it was his choice, it wasn’t some external factor that chose how he perceived the world; it was how he looked at the world himself. And that was the primary determinant of how his future would unfold.
And from his humble beginnings and with his new-found positive perspective, James Doty managed virtually to talk his way into being accepted at Tulane University School of Medicine, where he graduated as a neurosurgeon. He was to go on to become an inventor, an entrepreneur and a philanthropist. But first, still deeply affected by his chaotic and dysfunctional childhood, his priority was to get rich.
Many people that come from that background think that the one thing they want is control and the other thing they want is money because it gives you control. And so one of the drivers was this deep desire to - in his own words...... "prove myself, but yes...
I ended up completing a neurosurgery residency and then getting involved in entrepreneurial activities specifically during the dot-com boom and also related to a medical device I ended up making tens of millions of dollars and then...
the dot-com collapsed and I did not hedge my bets in any way. And at that time when you had a lot of stock in these types of companies the banks were quite liberal in giving you loans, and I took loans to buy a penthouse in the top of a building in San Francisco with a nice private elevator and I was driving a Ferrari and I had bought a villa in Florence and I was actually contemplating buying an island in the Marlborough Straits between North and South Island, in fact I’d visited it and then.....
within six weeks I was bankrupt, lost everything and....
was a few million dollars, about 3 million dollars in debt, and had nothing.
So at the end of that—and I had always felt a commitment to give to charity—so the only thing I had left as an asset was the stock in this company, and it had not yet gone public. So I gave all that stock away to charity and then of course when that went public for $1.3 billion and I had been the CEO, that was another tens of millions of dollars that went to charity".
And I didn’t have to give that money away, I actually consciously gave it away. The lawyers I had met with said, "look Jim, you can get out of this. You know you’re bankrupt", and I said,"no, I want to live up to this".
Of course again many of my...essentially 100 per cent of my friends and colleagues said you’re an idiot, don’t do that, but I did it anyway. But giving that money away turned out to be the best thing that ever happened in my life, certainly one of the best things. And the reason is that it released me from this feeling that I had to always do this stuff and money was going to make it all better.
And so it was actually fantastic. And it also allowed me to explore something that had always been of interest to me, which is to understand why when people see somebody suffering they don’t intervene to help them.
You know people who by every criteria have the capacity to do so, whether it’s by position, whether it’s by financial resources...and they just watch people suffer.
Yet the paradox of this, of course, is you see people who they themselves are suffering or are poor yet they reach out. And so that paradox had stayed with me.
The scientific study of compassion was in its embryonic stage at the time. So to stimulate interest amongst his colleagues at Stanford University, James Doty decided to invite the Dalai Lama to come and speak with them. The Dalai Lama sees compassion as essential to the survival of our species, and was so impressed by the idea of studying it scientifically that he ended up making the largest donation he’s ever made to a non-Tibetan cause. Along with other donations James Doty founded the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University within the neuroscience institute there.
One incident that happened in his life reminded him to keep an open heart:
He had made a donation, a significant donation, to a charity that had misused his donation and he was so infuriated by that that he actually sued them. At the time this incident occurred he’d just left this lawyer's office, and he was actually chastising himself because he gave this money away, these people misused it, is he just a fool? He always believed in people and he has been taken advantage of and now he has to deal with this situation which is creating his own stress.
And he was walking along in this not so great neighbourhood with his head down actually contemplating about how foolish he was, and he was tapped on the shoulder by an Afro/American young man in his 20s who was not dressed particularly well, and this was in an Afro/American area, an area of poverty.
And whether any of us like it or not we have prejudices and his immediate response was- this is probably a drug addict who's trying to get money, who’s just going to take it and spend it on drugs. And the individual said to me,
'You know my car broke down and could you give me money for the bus, so I can take my mum and I so we can get home?'
And he saw no mum, no car. So now he's stuck with another dilemma because he has just beaten himself up for giving this money away and he has got this kid in front of him who he has already decided is a drug addict and he thought to himself for a few seconds and
was I going to believe in the innate goodness of people and just give him the money, and
giving him the money regardless of how he uses it, is it going to change his life?
So he went ahead and gave him the money, and then he thanked him and walked away and then he started the walk to this restaurant where he was having lunch and he was going again through the whole exercise—now he's doubly beating himself up because
"I'm saying I'm even more of a fool because I've been used by this one group of people and now I've just given money away that's going to be obviously misused."
And then he feels a tap on his shoulder and he turns round and this young man is there and he’s got his mother, and he says to him, 'You know, I just wanted to introduce you to my mother, I’m so thankful to you for giving me that money.'
You know, so it reinforced of course his basic belief in humanity, and it brought tears to his eyes, and he felt that you can always try to keep an open heart as much as possible.
I’m sure at some point in your life either you were suffering because of something,
you were in pain or you wanted something and
you had exhausted every resource to get that thing or to alleviate that pain.
And what happens when you’re in that position?
You feel alone, you feel isolated, you feel like you’re unloved,
you feel that the clouds are all grey and you feel hopeless and you have despair.
And then somebody comes and saves you—what happens immediately?
Within a microsecond the clouds part,
you believe you have worth,
you believe people love you,
you believe that God somehow meant this to happen and that
you should not have lost faith etc.
But think about when you yourself have done an act like that to somebody and you see on their face how they've responded. When you care for somebody in an authentic way, deep in your heart it stays with you and you can relive it and it makes you want to do it again to somebody else.
And you know I call that transcendence, it is a sense that you have a purpose in life, that the act of connecting with another defines your purpose, that we're in fact all one. And when you have that sense, that is the thing that gives you happiness and joy.
And it’s not that it gives you that big kick like driving that Ferrari, or picking up the Ferrari, or getting the new Prada purse or whatever...those are short term things.
The things I am describing to you I think you will acknowledge are things that stick with you at a very deep level and it defines our humanity and who we are. And showing people the value proposition of those types of behaviours is very powerful.
And you know a lot of times people believe that somehow I’m up here and they’re down there and I’m doing this act, that’s called pity, you’re superior to them and you are doing this because they’re inferior to you.
Compassion is being at the same level, looking them in the eye and saying we’re the same and that defines your humanity—that is true compassion.
Compassion in business or compassionate leadership can have a profound effect on an organisation in terms of how employees respond to stress, create environments to decrease their stress. The fact of the matter is we all have to work, pretty much, but nobody wants to work in an environment that they don’t feel connected to. But it takes enlightened leadership to create an environment where you’re passionate about being there.
When you remove a person's dignity, when you give them the sense that they have no value, well what do you expect? They'll engage in negative behaviours.
And as we get more disparity between the rich and the poor, you will see the further fragmentation of society. It is only until we reach out and embrace every human being as an important part of our society that our country is going to survive—and I think our world is going to survive.-
“My greatest wish is that by each of our actions, we create a "meme" of compassion that permeates our world and by doing so decreases suffering.
Each of us has the ability regardless of our wealth or stature in this world to do an act every day that will relieve another's suffering and tell them they are valued and you recognize their dignity".
Dr. James Doty said he does not regret the decisions in his life.
“Look, I’m the luckiest guy in the world. I can’t complain at all,” he said. “I get to help people every day.”
--Lynne Malcolm
Meet Dr.James Doty, who once had tens of millions of dollars but gave it all away. This allowed him to explore something that had always been of interest to him which is to understand why when people see somebody suffering they don’t intervene to help them.
Dr James Doty is now a professor of neurosurgery and founder and director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University and he has a fascinating life story. But his early life was a real struggle.James Doty grew up in poverty, his father was an alcoholic, his mother was an invalid with numerous health problems, his family was on public assistance, essentially his entire life at home. His parents had not gone to college, he certainly had no exposure to college. Obviously in a situation like that it is fairly chaotic and dysfunctional and when you grow up in that situation—you feel like a leaf blown by an ill wind.
He was 13 and had started to engage in...negative behaviours. One day he was riding a bike around and he came across this magic shop. He went in out of curiosity.
It turned out that the owner was not there but his mother was there, a very kind woman who had just sort of this amazing smile. And they started talking and what she said to him after a conversation of about 20 minutes was, 'You know I really like you, if you come in here every day for the next six weeks I’ll teach you something that I think could change your life.'
And what she taught him was a mindfulness practice, if you will, how to settle the mind, how to develop intention and focus combined, if you will, with the power of positive thinking, some self-hypnosis thrown in and a visualisation technique.
And over the course of that six weeks, his perspective changed. In fact his perspective changed from one of limited if no possibilities to an understanding that he had unlimited possibilities and that it was his choice, it wasn’t some external factor that chose how he perceived the world; it was how he looked at the world himself. And that was the primary determinant of how his future would unfold.
And from his humble beginnings and with his new-found positive perspective, James Doty managed virtually to talk his way into being accepted at Tulane University School of Medicine, where he graduated as a neurosurgeon. He was to go on to become an inventor, an entrepreneur and a philanthropist. But first, still deeply affected by his chaotic and dysfunctional childhood, his priority was to get rich.Many people that come from that background think that the one thing they want is control and the other thing they want is money because it gives you control. And so one of the drivers was this deep desire to - in his own words...... "prove myself, but yes...
I ended up completing a neurosurgery residency and then getting involved in entrepreneurial activities specifically during the dot-com boom and also related to a medical device I ended up making tens of millions of dollars and then...
the dot-com collapsed and I did not hedge my bets in any way. And at that time when you had a lot of stock in these types of companies the banks were quite liberal in giving you loans, and I took loans to buy a penthouse in the top of a building in San Francisco with a nice private elevator and I was driving a Ferrari and I had bought a villa in Florence and I was actually contemplating buying an island in the Marlborough Straits between North and South Island, in fact I’d visited it and then.....
within six weeks I was bankrupt, lost everything and....
was a few million dollars, about 3 million dollars in debt, and had nothing.
So at the end of that—and I had always felt a commitment to give to charity—so the only thing I had left as an asset was the stock in this company, and it had not yet gone public. So I gave all that stock away to charity and then of course when that went public for $1.3 billion and I had been the CEO, that was another tens of millions of dollars that went to charity".
And I didn’t have to give that money away, I actually consciously gave it away. The lawyers I had met with said, "look Jim, you can get out of this. You know you’re bankrupt", and I said,"no, I want to live up to this".
Of course again many of my...essentially 100 per cent of my friends and colleagues said you’re an idiot, don’t do that, but I did it anyway. But giving that money away turned out to be the best thing that ever happened in my life, certainly one of the best things. And the reason is that it released me from this feeling that I had to always do this stuff and money was going to make it all better.
And so it was actually fantastic. And it also allowed me to explore something that had always been of interest to me, which is to understand why when people see somebody suffering they don’t intervene to help them.
You know people who by every criteria have the capacity to do so, whether it’s by position, whether it’s by financial resources...and they just watch people suffer.
Yet the paradox of this, of course, is you see people who they themselves are suffering or are poor yet they reach out. And so that paradox had stayed with me.
The scientific study of compassion was in its embryonic stage at the time. So to stimulate interest amongst his colleagues at Stanford University, James Doty decided to invite the Dalai Lama to come and speak with them. The Dalai Lama sees compassion as essential to the survival of our species, and was so impressed by the idea of studying it scientifically that he ended up making the largest donation he’s ever made to a non-Tibetan cause. Along with other donations James Doty founded the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University within the neuroscience institute there.
One incident that happened in his life reminded him to keep an open heart:
He had made a donation, a significant donation, to a charity that had misused his donation and he was so infuriated by that that he actually sued them. At the time this incident occurred he’d just left this lawyer's office, and he was actually chastising himself because he gave this money away, these people misused it, is he just a fool? He always believed in people and he has been taken advantage of and now he has to deal with this situation which is creating his own stress.
And he was walking along in this not so great neighbourhood with his head down actually contemplating about how foolish he was, and he was tapped on the shoulder by an Afro/American young man in his 20s who was not dressed particularly well, and this was in an Afro/American area, an area of poverty.
And whether any of us like it or not we have prejudices and his immediate response was- this is probably a drug addict who's trying to get money, who’s just going to take it and spend it on drugs. And the individual said to me,
'You know my car broke down and could you give me money for the bus, so I can take my mum and I so we can get home?'
And he saw no mum, no car. So now he's stuck with another dilemma because he has just beaten himself up for giving this money away and he has got this kid in front of him who he has already decided is a drug addict and he thought to himself for a few seconds and
was I going to believe in the innate goodness of people and just give him the money, and
giving him the money regardless of how he uses it, is it going to change his life?
So he went ahead and gave him the money, and then he thanked him and walked away and then he started the walk to this restaurant where he was having lunch and he was going again through the whole exercise—now he's doubly beating himself up because
"I'm saying I'm even more of a fool because I've been used by this one group of people and now I've just given money away that's going to be obviously misused."
And then he feels a tap on his shoulder and he turns round and this young man is there and he’s got his mother, and he says to him, 'You know, I just wanted to introduce you to my mother, I’m so thankful to you for giving me that money.'
You know, so it reinforced of course his basic belief in humanity, and it brought tears to his eyes, and he felt that you can always try to keep an open heart as much as possible.
I’m sure at some point in your life either you were suffering because of something,
you were in pain or you wanted something and
you had exhausted every resource to get that thing or to alleviate that pain.
And what happens when you’re in that position?
You feel alone, you feel isolated, you feel like you’re unloved,
you feel that the clouds are all grey and you feel hopeless and you have despair.
And then somebody comes and saves you—what happens immediately?
Within a microsecond the clouds part,
you believe you have worth,
you believe people love you,
you believe that God somehow meant this to happen and that
you should not have lost faith etc.
But think about when you yourself have done an act like that to somebody and you see on their face how they've responded. When you care for somebody in an authentic way, deep in your heart it stays with you and you can relive it and it makes you want to do it again to somebody else.
And you know I call that transcendence, it is a sense that you have a purpose in life, that the act of connecting with another defines your purpose, that we're in fact all one. And when you have that sense, that is the thing that gives you happiness and joy.
And it’s not that it gives you that big kick like driving that Ferrari, or picking up the Ferrari, or getting the new Prada purse or whatever...those are short term things.
The things I am describing to you I think you will acknowledge are things that stick with you at a very deep level and it defines our humanity and who we are. And showing people the value proposition of those types of behaviours is very powerful.
And you know a lot of times people believe that somehow I’m up here and they’re down there and I’m doing this act, that’s called pity, you’re superior to them and you are doing this because they’re inferior to you.
Compassion is being at the same level, looking them in the eye and saying we’re the same and that defines your humanity—that is true compassion.
Compassion in business or compassionate leadership can have a profound effect on an organisation in terms of how employees respond to stress, create environments to decrease their stress. The fact of the matter is we all have to work, pretty much, but nobody wants to work in an environment that they don’t feel connected to. But it takes enlightened leadership to create an environment where you’re passionate about being there.
When you remove a person's dignity, when you give them the sense that they have no value, well what do you expect? They'll engage in negative behaviours.
And as we get more disparity between the rich and the poor, you will see the further fragmentation of society. It is only until we reach out and embrace every human being as an important part of our society that our country is going to survive—and I think our world is going to survive.-
“My greatest wish is that by each of our actions, we create a "meme" of compassion that permeates our world and by doing so decreases suffering.
Each of us has the ability regardless of our wealth or stature in this world to do an act every day that will relieve another's suffering and tell them they are valued and you recognize their dignity".
Dr. James Doty said he does not regret the decisions in his life.
“Look, I’m the luckiest guy in the world. I can’t complain at all,” he said. “I get to help people every day.”
--Lynne Malcolm
9 comments:
Good Morning, Ilango Ji
Namaste Sir
Prayer, one sublime solution.
GOOD Morning llengo Sir. You always try to give us something good. Thanks.
Good morning master
Thank you
Good Afternoon Sir,
Good Evening,
Justnifty TA @JN group file is not download.please help me How I download this file.
Thanks
Namaste Ilango Sir.
'Compassion is at equal level, while pity and help happen between unequal'. Excellent definition. Eye opening. Beautiful article.
Thanks and regards,
LV
Another eye wetting anecdote!
"But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?"
businessline on nifty
The Nifty (5,850.3) hit the intra-week peak of 5,971 before reversing to close 37 points lower for the week. It is possible that the third wave down from 6,111 peak has begun last week. This wave has the downward targets of 5,827, 5,739 or 5,595.
Short-term traders can continue to hold their short positions with stop-loss at 5,930. Targets on breach of this level are 5,971 and 6,008. We need a strong close above 6,010 to signal that the short-term trend has reversed higher and that the index can move on to new highs above.
There is no alteration in our medium-term view. The medium-term trend in the Nifty continues to be up. This view will reverse lower only on close below 5,600.
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