The Compassionate Heart Community is a Community that seeks to discover the next phase of religious and spiritual practice. Our members come primarily from Christian Churches, but have also developed an interest in a diverse array of spirituality and spiritual practices. Who in today’s world hasn’t read or heard the teachings of Dalai Lama, or Ram Dass, or Thich Nhat Hahn, or other spiritual teachers inaccessible in the West before the development of the Internet? We believe that our journey as Progressive Christians is enhanced by, rather than threatened by, exposure to other traditions. After all, isn’t God bigger than all traditions lumped together? At Compassionate Heart, we are present for each other to offer mutual support, share our experiences and our journeys, and to provide a source of community in a world in which community seems harder and harder to find.  We ask ourselves where the transcendent can be found in our lives, how our practice of being in silence can benefit all corners of our lives, and how we might transform the world one person at a time through the insights gained in our meditative and contemplative practices.  We use the terms meditation and contemplation interchangeably to mean time spent in silence.  We adopt no doctrine or dogma of any kind so that our community can be as diverse as possible.  What binds us together is our practice and love of silence, as well as high regard for mysticism. We draw some general beliefs from different traditions:

• from Hinduism: a respect for all religious and spiritual traditions.
• from Christianity: an emphasis on social justice, love of neighbor, the Christian Sacraments, and the cultural value of Jesus’ teaching for those of us raised in the West.
• from Buddhism: an understanding of the inherent goodness of all.
• we understand and respect the common roots of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
• from all the great monastic traditions, east and west: a respect for silence and contemplative practices.

Our focus is always on looking at the various traditions and their teachings with an eye toward applying them to our lives in a practical way.