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Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

We get connected with each other in the space that opens up when we let go of our ideas of good and bad, right and wrong. When we feel safe and connected to ourselves, we don’t need to use these labels. When we are connected to ourselves, we are also connected to the people around us. It’s hard to find words to describe this field. In a sense it is beyond words. We are connected in such a way that it hardly makes sense to talk about us as separate beings. There’s just a sense of compassionate presence, intense closeness, and empathy. Through empathy we can find a way to stay connected to our humanity and to contribute to a more peaceful world. I’ll meet you there. – Shantigarbha, from the Introduction

‘An excellent book on empathy that teases out the centrality of this value in Buddhism as the foundation for the cultivation of compassion and loving-kindness.’ – Stephen Batchelor, Buddhist teacher and author

‘Although this book is consistent with the scientific data it is also refreshingly unconstrained by it. Instead it synthesises scientific knowledge to date with age-old wisdom from the Buddhist tradition.This approach allows for deeper exploration of empathy and compassion than science, which only scratches the surface.’ – Dr Emma J. Lawrence, Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK