A Fearless Heart

How the Courage to Be Compassionate Can Transform Our Lives

The Best Kept Secret of Happiness: Compassion

Thupten Jinpa, PhD,
Author, A Fearless Heart

Co-founder and President,
Compassion Institute

The Buddhist practice of mindfulness first caught on in the West when we began to understand its many practical benefits. Now, Thupten Jinpa, the highly acclaimed thought leader and longtime English translator for the Dalai Lama, introduces a practice with even greater life-changing power: compassion. Based on the revolutionary course in Compassion Cultivation Training© (CCT™) at Stanford University that Jinpa helped to create, A Fearless Heart, shows us that compassion offers us a path through suffering, a key to robust health, and even an effective way to reach our goals. In face, compassion is probably the best-kept secret of happiness.

Yet we fear compassion. We worry that if we are too compassionate with ourselves, we will become slackers. Pulling from the latest Western research as well as traditional Buddhist psychology, Jinpa makes a compelling case for a fearless heart–one that lives from a place of compassion. Giving us simple practices that we can use every day, he helps us train our compassion muscle for a greater meaning, connection, and fulfillment.

"A Fearless Heart is a rare book that shows how the meeting of contemplative insights and practices with modern science can lead to offerings that are beneficial for everyone interested in deeper personal spiritual transformation. The book shows how such practices can have positive impact in our daily lives. I applaud my longtime English translator Thupten Jinpa for writing this timely book on compassion and its cultivation."

"Firmly grounded in the latest scientific studies, and hugely invitational and convincing in its inspiration, its reasoning, its heartfulness, and its guidance in a broad range of powerful practices, A Fearless Heart is the bravest, clearest, and most engaging book I know on why we need to cultivate compassion, and on how to bring it more widely and deeply into our lives and into the world."

"I love Jinpa's sense of the practical, of bringing compassion down from the pedestal of high ideals and into the messy reality that is everyday human life. A Fearless Heart may prove to be one of the important books of these difficult times."

A Compassionate Mind is a Resilient Mind, Not a Weak One

“When we make a habit of compassion in our everyday lives through regular practice and action, we live with more courage, less stress, and greater freedom…Our habit of kindness will be reinforced over and over by the joy we take in being kind to others and making them happy…In short, making a habit of compassion will transform our lives.”

From A Fearless Heart, (Jinpa, 2015, pp. 199-200)

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Thupten Jinpa, PhD

Thupten Jinpa, PhD was trained as a monk at the Shartse College of Ganden Monastic University, South India, where he received the Geshe Lharam degree. Jinpa also holds a B.A. in philosophy and a Ph.D. in religious studies, both from Cambridge University.

Jinpa has been the principal English translator to H.H. the Dalai Lama since 1985, and has translated and collaborated on numerous books by the Dalai Lama including the New York Times Bestsellers Ethics for the New Millennium and The Art of Happiness, as well as Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World. His own publications include A Fearless Heart: How the Courage to be Compassionate Can Transform Our Lives and translations of major Tibetan works featured in The Library of Tibetan Classics series. Jinpa is the principal author of Compassion Cultivation Training™ (CCT©) developed while at Stanford University in 2009.

A frequent speaker at various international conferences on mindfulness, compassion, and contemplative practice, Jinpa serves as an adjunct professor at the Faculty of Religious Studies at McGill University, Montreal and is the founder and president of the Institute of Tibetan Classics. He has been a core member of the Mind and Life Institute and its Chairman of the Board since January 2012.