ABSTRACT
The capacity for empathy … is of crucial importance when it comes to ethics.… We find that in practice, if we are not able to connect with others to some extent, if we cannot at least imagine the potential impact of our actions on others, we have no means to discriminate between right and wrong, between what is appropriate and what is not, between harming and non-harming. It follows, therefore, that if we could enhance this capacity—that is to say our sensitivity towards others’ suffering—the more we did so, the less we would be able to tolerate seeing each other’s pain and the more we would be concerned to ensure that no action of ours caused harm to others.(Dalai Lama, 1999: 77−78).
