Learn mutualism, reflective listening, and empathy circle facilitation. The two day, in person, training will be at our Las Canoas Road campus. November 16 & 17, 2024. www.bestempathytraining.com
This is an Open Thread / Coffee Hour and all topics of conversation are welcome. And as a suggested topic, today lets talk about the interfaith leadership conference held on Saturday. And an Empathy Circle conducted with the monks on Sunday.
An please note that for those readers that are in Santa Barbara we hare having a in person two day training at our Las Canoas Road campus on November 16 & 17, 2024. Please visit our website for registration information:
https://www.bestempathytraining.com/
The interfaith leadership conference was conducted as part of the Empathy Center’s out reach program to attract local Santa Barbara organizations to use the campus to host their events.
I’m pleased to announce that the Empathy Center has just received its “not for profit status” and this will be used to solicit donations from foundations so that the Empathy Center can continue to offer its programs for free. Currently both our in person training and online training are free, and have been running on voluntary donations from the participants, but it is costing a small fortune to maintain and repair the campus.
Please jump the fold for a video of the leadership conference and the monk’s empathy circle.
This is an Open Thread / Coffee Hour. How are you doing today? What is for dinner? What is on your mind? All topics of conversation are welcome. If you are new to Street Prophets please introduce yourself in the comments below.
The comments for this article are are after community links.
Below is the video of the interfaith leaders conversation. 16 leaders from the Santa Barbara community attended. The Empathy Center’s vision is: A world where mutual empathy guides human interactions, fostering understanding, connection and care, leading to a more innovative and prosperous society for all. This is the underlying motive for assembling this meet up.
The suggested topics or questions for the conversation were: 1) In such a divided social climate, what do you think is the most important thing we can do to find common ground? 2) What teaching from your tradition would be most helpful to find this common ground? 3) What positive change in our world would make you most happy? Each person will have 5 min to speak.
The video of the above event is about 90 minutes long, so I’m unable to put the full transcript into the post. But the full transcript is available on line when you click on the read more button under the video. But I would like everyone to read the opening statement from the Empathy Center founder Edwin Rutsch:
So about 15 years ago I came across the the value of empathy. I was making some documentaries. And, I thought, you know empathy is how we really connect with each other. And kind of a deeper empathy is just about listening. So I'm actually wearing it on my t-shirt here.
And that's uh what our Empathy Center has been all about is offering a deep listening to people. But that it's a Mutual listening. It's not like hey I'm going to sacrifice myself and do all the listening in the world. It's like hey let's have a mutually empathic a mutual listening uh relationship and to uh I think that's really how we Bridge those political social personal divides is sitting down and and and having uh these uh deeper dialogues and having some practices.
So I'm not a big uh proponent of just exhortation. Like oh you know love everybody. Because it I haven't seen that that really works. It's more like let's have some real tools and practices you know that we can have. That's what we have here at the empathy Center. We have something called the empathy Circle.
And we'll be doing that actually tomorrow if you come tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. We will have some empathy circles here. And e're a bit like empathy evangelists that we need to uh kind of spread that word and and actually model what we're what we're kind of uh walk our talk and we do that.
You saw the empathy tent you know set up and we actually have a team we go out to like State Street and we're going to go to UC Santa Barbara and we've been going to the harbor and other places and we just go and offer to listen to people
So I would like to invite you if you actually want to kind of work towards that common ground. you know come here uh join us in some of our uh workshops join us in the empathy tent.
If you're one of the faith leaders to uh come and actually become a sponsor of the empathy tent we want to set it up on a regular ongoing uh basis so I'm going to keep it short since we have so many uh speakers and uh thank you all for coming and taking part in in this event and do come to more events and if you have other events you like to host uh do let us know about those. Thank You.
Edwin Rutsch from the video
The Saturday event was a mash up of displaying the sand mandala and educating the public about the mandala and having the interfaith conference. Naturally a lot of the interfaith communication that occurred was with conversations before and after the 90 minute video.
Edwin told me that about 100 visitors passed through the center on Saturday and Sunday to view the Sand Mandala. This included the guests that came for the conference and lunch.
This event is hosted by Thepo Tulku from the Tibetan Buddhist Community.
He will be joined by Edwin Rutsch of the Empathy Center, Fr. Larry Gosselin OFM from SB Mission, Jeanette Love from the Church of the Beatitudes, Mahomed Kahn, Amjan Khamjan Khrueasui from the Thai Community, Geshe Tsewang Dorje from Tibet, Dr Wael Hagazy and Mahomed Khan from the Muslim Community, Philip Prinz from the Jewish Community, Michael Kearney with mindful nature connection and The Becoming Forest Project, Rev David Moore and Rev Tim Burnette from the Protestant community, Radhule Weininger with mindfulness and Mindful Heart Programs, and Japanese Zen Master Souken Danjo (Danjo San), who is visiting from Japan.
From News Channel 12, 13, 11
One notable attendee missing from the news article was Dean Wilson from the Turner Foundation. Dean also hosts a video show called Good Life TV. SEE: https://www.youtube.com/@goodlifetelevisionsb. I will be looking forward Dean interviewing Edwin on the show.
On the following day, Sunday, Edwin facilitated an Empathy Circle with visiting monks that created the sand mandala. This was before the monks went down to the ocean to release the sand mandala.
Below is an excerpt from the circle where the monk talks about the sand mandala. Please understand that English is not the monks first language. And that this may be the first time they ever participated in an Empathy Circle. Each member of the circle gets to speak for a fixed amount of time to a reflective listener. After the speaker has said a few thoughts. The reflective listener reflects back what the speaker said. And the speaker indicates that the listener has heard correctly. The facilitator only intervenes to keep to the process. In the case below to remind the speaking monk to pause so the reflecting monk can reflect.
Speaking Monk: I will discuss some mandala this right yes so you can talk about mandalaing maybe so maybe I have to talk about mandalas and we doing this mandalas and doing uh different places with the different mandalas like mandalas ches mandalas and Medicine the mandalas so these three mandalas have different to around different places and uh dat has a different benefit for they have on what call Specialized Tara has a special clearing obstacles and the medicine is lot healing powers and also the uh what CH is compassionate so it's three different D we going around in different places around United States.
Edwin as Facilitator: Remember to pause.
Speaking Monk: Yeah yeah.
Reflecting Monk: I you talking about the mandala in a few weeks so we talk about the benefits why we mandala benefit of each Mandala
Speaking Monk: Yeah so I mean we do this different places so I think it's good that uh uh because this some kind comes from the East uh e world so we come into the west and then people also understand what is the mandala and at the same time this can place uh to different people and also some kind of a interact like that East West culture sharing so so those who have understanding of the Buddhism they understand clearly but those who are new to Buddhism they don't know what's about so they share all this uh Exchange program about sharing the uh different religions and different cultures is I feel very good that coming around.
Reflecting Monk: I said you you talk about the culture exchange between the east and west and you talk what uh benefits for the people who who visit us and see this Mandala and understand our culture and we can understand their culture.
Regards,
Jonathan
