Jinpa asked him who are you in Tibetan?
Want to hear my entire conversation with Thupten Jinpa?
The more we can live consciously,” Jinpa says,“the happier we are.”.
We too often ignore,
overlook or even bury the impulse,” says Jinpa.
Before emerging as a leader in compassionate studies, Thupten Jinpa was a young Tibetan refugee growing up in India.
First off, Jinpa recommends that we think of integrating compassion into our life
as a shift in perspective more than anything.
During this visit, the then six-year-old Jinpa was chosen to hold the Dalai Lama's hand
and walk alongside him during his stay.
So, despite his own father- who was a monk himself-
being against his son joining a monastery, Jinpa's strong will won out.
Though the change didn't necessarily mean he
would have to leave his role as translator, Jinpa was still nervous to let his boss know.
He genuinely believes that there's something in the mental training techniques that the Buddhist traditions have developed,
and that they can be adapted,” says Jinpa.
Jinpa's especially seeing workplace benefits within the healthcare industry-
an industry fraught with stress and burnout- and often lacking in compassion when people need it most.
Alongside a team of scientists, psychologists, and even the Dalai Lama himself, Jinpa and his team have been analyzing the merits of mindful compassion for
years- and what they have learned has been illuminating.
So, with the Dalai Lama's blessing- and a scholarship to Cambridge University to study philosophy and
religious studies- Jinpa began a path as an advocate for a more practical,
universal, and academic understanding of compassion.