Two wings of the same bird: Integrating compassion and wisdom

By Dawn MacDonald, MSW, RSW
Certified MBSR Teacher/Trainer and and MSC Teacher Trainer
UMASS, UCSD, Brown University & The Global Mindfulness Collaborative

I’ve been contemplating mindfulness, compassion, and self-compassion as it relates to this one life, the only real laboratory in which I can at least partially comment from a modicum of integrity. I say a ‘modicum’ because what I know about the narratives my mind creates is that they can only approximate what has truly unfolded. Stories and the telling of stories are manna, real nourishment, and inevitably something gets left out. We need to hear many, many versions of stories to get a complete perspective. So, I offer you this reflection as such, a reflection for you to consider, weigh, measure in your own lived experience. 

There has been exponential growth in the research supporting mindfulness and compassion focused practices in the lives of those struggling with the ailments of human suffering. Researcher David Black has been collating all the emerging research and sharing it with the world for more than a decade. A deep sense of gratitude and awe contemplating the multitude of individuals and collectives that have diligently dedicated their lives to this deeper sense of purpose.

The devotion to living more authentically blossoms naturally in the lives of those of us who choose to turn towards. I have heard Jon Kabat-Zinn say often, meditation is not for the faint hearted.

In rigorous clinical research, researchers recruit homogenous ‘subjects’, for example, young university students, to participate in large-scale studies. From these study results, generalizations can be made. Thus a great deal of evidence gets produced, suggesting that interventions appear to be helpful. But the results are only relevant if individuals experience relief. Enter in the single-subject design also known as N-of-1 trials, where the N represents just one person.

In my own personal N-of-1 study, mindfulness has been incredibly healing. It was the first modality that allowed me to face my life as it was and use all the resources within me to do what I could to begin to make changes where changes were possible and to accept where they weren’t.

It also led me to study self-compassion and to become a teacher and a trainer. If I had a proverbial dollar for every person that said after having taken Mindful Self Compassion (MSC) after Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) or vice versa that one was so much better than the other, I would have a lot more dollars. Thankfully, teaching is not about dollars despite all the hype about changing careers for what looks so easy and seems so lucrative. Anyone who starts down this path knows it has to be a love affair and a radical act of commitment going beyond anything your own narrative mind says you know!

I remember starting on the teacher training pathway and hearing the following quote: from T.S Eliot’s “Little Gidding:”

We shall not cease from exploration 
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. 
Through the unknown remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning; 
At the source of the longest river 
The voice of the hidden waterfall 
And the children by the apple-tree 
Not known, because not looked for 
But heard, half heard, in the stillness 
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always – 
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything).
And all shall be well and
All manner of things shall be well 
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.


from “Little Gidding” in Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot (© 1943, renewed 1971 by Esme Valerie Eliot – Harcourt Brace & Co., New York, 1971, p.59) 

I’ve oft heard from many wisdom beings that compassion and wisdom are two wings of the same bird, like the rose and the fire at the end of Eliot’s poem.

I’m not sure about you, but I wholeheartedly acknowledge that over the years there have been times where I’ve teetered too far towards one or the other. Whilst I was submerged in one, sometimes compassion, sometimes wisdom – doing my very best to navigate the tides of life – the other was often elusive.

Often what I said to students when they too would claim that one protocol was preferable to another (MSC or MBSR) was never to underestimate the value of having steeped even for just 8 weeks in the other to opening us up to a potential integration and wholesome, fulsome access to what we really need to face the ten thousand joys and sorrows of a life well lived and loved.

So having had my share of joys and sorrows and having steeped so richly in the last year in the deep exploration of the elements of the Mindful Self-Compassion teachings in the CDP, I began to wonder what it might be like to “arrive where I started and to know the place for the first time”. I explored with Aimee that perhaps there might be others in the community who would also like to visit or revisit the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction journey and each have our own N-of-1, in the good company of others willing to take that long loving look at the ‘real’ moment to moment. In reaching out to other seasoned MBSR teachers in our midst, our dear colleague Dennis Johnson has also courageously stepped up to take the plunge into hosting this journey together.

Maybe there’s a half-whispered longing in you to touch into the silence, to lovingly explore “using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain and illness” which was always the subtitle of Kabat-Zinn’s Full Catastrophe Living. Won’t you consider joining us?