Understanding and assessing spiritual health

This chapter explores awareness and compassion as essential elements in spiritual cultivation. Of the education of awareness, it describes the ideas of Aldous Huxley and J. Krishnamurthi as well as the Buddha’s teachings on mindfulness. The practice of awareness would reveal a holistic experience and multiple dimensions of reality. This chapter briefly describes the author’s view of “the five dimensions of reality” that include dimensions from the surface to the deepest, infinite reality. Drawing on Eastern perspectives, it explains that “pure awareness” is identical with infinite reality and that “great compassion” emerges as a manifestation of pure awareness. In addition, as for cultivating compassion, this chapter explores such concepts as the Four Immeasurable Minds, bodhichitta, bodhisattva, and also the mind training called lojong in Tibetan Buddhism. Finally, it suggests a vision of “the education of enlightenment,” in which both awareness and compassion are of central importance