Field Notes on the Compassionate Life: A Search for the Soul of Kindness

Barasch's writing style is crisp, quirky, illuminating, and funny. His exploration into the compassionate life is both personal and well-researched. While not a how-to book, it's a great how-come book--as in how come we think, act, and feel the way we do when it comes to compassion. Others have already covered some of the book's specifics, so I won't take time to rehash those points. All in all, I found this to be an immensely enjoyable and worthwhile read.

Barasch's book "Field Notes on the Compassionate Life" is an essential discourse for anyone wishing to better understand the importance of compassion and kindness. It is an intelligent, wise, very thoughtful and insightful read and one that provides truly optimal nourishment for the heart, mind and soul. It is a guide which gracefully directs one's thinking about what matters most in a hurting, often cold and heartless world; that is kindness, altruism, empathy and compassion. For anyone who may need a refresher course on the crucial components of empathy and compassion and a reminder of why it is important to exercise and implement such components, this IS the book to read! I thoroughly enjoyed and savored this considerate, thoughtful book. Barasch raises such important issues that all people should be mindful of and embrace. As we are all too often bombarded by disturbing news of terrorism, violence, war and tragedies from around the globe, this book reminds us of what makes human beings worthy and inherently good. It reminds us of how capable we ALL are of promoting kindness and caring for one another with utmost grace and dignity. For anyone seeking guidance and a more profound understanding of empathy, Barasch's treatise on kindness and compassion is articulate, thoughtful, thought-provoking and very well-written. I can't recommend this important, vitally nourishing book enough!

Barasch's style is casual and yet compelling, drawing the reader into his quest to understand and practice compassion. I find it altogether easy to relate to his questions, his search, and his desire to live compassionately. He is not a guru sharing rarified wisdom, but a fellow traveler whose experiences, obstacles, questions, and frustrations mirror my own. At the same time, he clearly asserts that compassionate living is attainable not only for the mystic few but for any willing to pursue it with an open heart. Hence the book is empowering, encouraging, exciting, and illuminating. I can't recommend it highly enough.

I savored this book word for word because it gave me such hope for the future of our species and planet. Field Notes on the Compassionate Life is a heart-opening look at empathy, compassion, forgiveness, and altruism from evolutionary and contemporary perspectives. Barasch is a wonderful writer, with just the right balance of insight and wit (I got a kick out of his fresh metaphors). I especially appreciated his personal accounts of his own struggles with forgiveness and compassion.

I will admit at the outset that this is not the sort of book I would normally be attracted to as I roamed the shelves of books at a bookstore. It would probably be shelved in the "self-help" section and I don't usually spend any time there. Categorizing Barasch's work as a self-help book, which some reviewers and bookstores have apparently done, is, I think, a mistake, and may result in some potential readers from being exposed to it. Like me, for instance. I probably wouldn't have become aware of "Field Notes on the Compassionate Life" had a publishers' representative not sent it to me for reading and review. I'm glad he did. It is an interesting work and especially well-written; the author has a literary style reminiscent of Henry David Thoreau and Joseph Wood Krutch. Rather than place the "self-help" label on Barasch's book, I would consider the work a "personal journey" into the meaning and practice of "compassion," that somewhat elusive concept which so often befuddles us and is so often ignored because it smacks of "do-goodism" and "touchy-feely" pop-psychology. Fortunately, Barasch doesn't descend into that muddy swamp; instead, he conducts his search for the "soul of kindness" in a most empirical way by actually doing some field work on the subject (hence, the "Field Notes" in the title), somewhat like a cultural anthropologist going about trying to find out how some specific characteristic of a tribe functions and what its "meaning" is to the members of the group. If there is anything the world needs (and has always needed, for that matter) it is love, empathy, compassion, and kindliness. Or, maybe, we can sum all of those characteristics up in that good old word "charity" in its full and traditional meaning. Whatever the case, Barasch proceeds to investigate the subject, drawing not only on the experience of his personal encounters with actual human beings, but integrating that experience with data from neuropsychology, biology, quantum physics, history, and the social sciences, with help from theological and philosophical traditions, and even the results from some current research in the field of medical science. Some commonly accepted "truths" are challenged by Barasch. For instance, Barasch finds among bonobo chimpanzees a model for caring group behavior that he believes undermines Darwin's evolutionary idea of the survival of the fittest. Could it be that the great driving force of our evolution was really "survival of the kindest"? And what does this mean about us today and what could this mean about our future? Regarding what I have just said in the above paragraph, does the word "comprehensive" come to mind? It should, because this is indeed a comprehensive journey into the theory and practice of human benevolence. Barasch is conducting a search into the heart of the meaning of "compassion," using resources from virtually every area of the human experience. What can we learn from people who are exceptionally empathetic in thei