2 Charter for Compassion
Sharon Down
The following Charter will govern the way we behave in this course:
The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work to alleviate suffering of our fellow creatures, to rise above our selfish impulses, and to honor the sanctity of every single human being, by treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity, and respect.
Compassion also requires that we avoid inflicting pain. We deny our common humanity when we act or speak violently, when we exploit others, when we deny basic rights to anybody, and when we incite hatred by denigrating others—even those we count as enemies. We acknowledge that we have failed to live compassionately some degree.
We therefore pledge to conduct ourselves according to these principles of compassion. We know we will fail at times, but we will do our best to think first of others, their benefit, their well-being, and their learning, knowing that others are compassionately working for our benefit. We will strive to see our interdependence and interconnectedness as we labor for and with one another.
Attributions:
Taken and modified from the original Charter for Compassion and Asao Inoue’s version, included in his 2019 book Labor Based Grading Contracts.
https://wac.colostate.edu/books/perspectives/labor/. This latter work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.