The word Contemplation comes from the Latin root templum (from Greek temnein: to cut or divide), and means to separate something from its environment, and to enclose it in a sector. Contemplation was an important part of the philosophy of Plato; Plato thought that through contemplation the soul may ascend.

Contemplation

A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.
Lewis Mumford

There has been much attention has been paid to meditation practices that emphasize calming the mind, improving focused attention or developing mindfulness, but it seems that less is known about meditation practices designed to specifically foster compassion.

Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi, PhD, senior lecturer in the Department of Religion, the co-director of Emory Collaborative for Contemplative Studies and president and spiritual director of Drepung Loseling Monastery, Inc. has designed and taught a meditation program used in a study which focused on the effect of compassion meditation on inflammatory, neuroendocrine and behavioral responses to psychosocial stress, and evaluated the degree to which meditation practice influenced stress reactivity.

Sixty-one healthy college students between the ages of 17 and19 participated in the study. Half the participants were randomized to receive six weeks of compassion meditation training and half were randomized to a health discussion control group.

“Our findings suggest that meditation practices designed to foster compassion may impact physiological pathways that are modulated by stress and are relevant to disease,” explains Charles L. Raison, MD, clinical director of the Mind-Body Program, Emory University’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory School of Medicine, and a lead author on the study.

The study’s findings are published online at http://www.sciencedirect.com/ and in the medical journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.