By Joan Duncan Oliver
Updated September 14, 2023 from the article originally published May 16, 2019
We live in unsettled times. War, COVID, political unrest, environmental crises, and social injustice have created stress for millions worldwide. But amid the uncertainties are positive signs. Gallup’s World Happiness Report for 2023 cites a “globe-spanning surge of benevolence.” And this fall, The 3 Doors is again offering the Compassion Project, their popular nine-month course, LIVE online from October 18, 2023 to June 12, 2024. Since it was launched in 2016, the Compassion Project’s program of teachings, reflection, and meditation has provided a practical, effective method and inspiring, supportive community for helping us transform suffering into compassion for ourselves, those close to us, and the larger world.
Like The 3 Doors Academy, the Compassion Project is grounded in ancient Bön Buddhist teachings, reframed to address the realities of life today. Marcy Vaughn and her husband, Gabriel Rocco, senior teachers in The 3 Doors, developed the Compassion Project with the support of The 3 Doors founder, Tibetan meditation master Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. Initially the course was created for people in the helping professions, but its appeal quickly spread. Now participants include anyone who wants to expand their capacity to care for self and others.
The thrust of the program–and the vehicle for personal transformation–is connecting with the openness that in the midst of discomfort allows our natural compassion to arise. “You can’t talk about compassion without talking about suffering,” Marcy Vaughn emphasizes. Instead of avoiding or suppressing our dissatisfaction and disconnection, in the Compassion Project suffering is embraced as the key to awakening compassion for others and ourselves. When we can be present with a painful experience, opening to it fully with body, speech, and mind, she explains, our experience of suffering shifts. What we may have experienced as a tangle of thoughts, feelings, images, or sensations loosens and may even release fully as the open space of being becomes available. This is the natural source of compassion within us. Resting in that open space of being, the inner refuge, clears emotional blocks. Unwholesome habits lift, and reactivity no longer prevents us from responding spontaneously to others and to life.
Can that experience bring us alive authentically? “The premise of the Compassion Project is that yes, it can,” Marcy says. “The practice is to find out if for you it does—and to be particularly interested in the places where you’re not open and direct and warmly present. Can you be curious about discovering what supports you in allowing your defenses to loosen, to soften, so that something else can emerge? It’s interesting to realize that you’re not stuck with your suffering. Nothing is as fixed or solid as it appears.”
To support this curiosity, the Compassion Project integrates personal reflection with meditation. “Rather than reflecting on a text or scripture, you’re reflecting on your own life experience–how you’re living your life,” Marcy explains. “You’re asking, what touches me? What nourishes me? What supports me? What challenges me? And then you’re sitting and feeling how you’re responding to what comes up. I don’t think many people do that sort of reflection. We may think about a problem and search for a solution, but do we really slow down enough to listen and be with ourselves, fully and warmly, to experience how healing arises within?”
In reflection, we bring awareness to where suffering lives in the body, how pain colors our speech, and what thoughts and emotions arise when we sit with our discomfort. Touching our experience with unbiased awareness, we investigate such issues as:
- How do I experience the suffering of myself and others?
- How does the suffering of family members, loved ones, or close friends live in me?
- How do I experience news about the condition of the world or collective expressions of pain?
- Where do I feel this in my body? Does it affect my breathing?
- How do I acknowledge and care for my own suffering?
- Can I identify what might prevent me from accessing compassion for myself or others?
Questions like these, Marcy points out, help us identify the limited sense of self that separates us from the spaciousness, warmth, and clarity of the natural mind.
The Practices
The Compassion Project draws on the simple but powerful core practices of its parent program, The 3 Doors Academy.
The 3 Doors: Accessing the inner refuge and its qualities of spaciousness, awareness, and warmth through the doors of stillness, silence, and spaciousness.
The 9 Breathings of Purification: A breath-focused technique to release patterns of aversion, attachment, and ignorance that block awareness of openness and compassion.
Tsa Lung: Seated yoga-like exercises to work with the five chakras, or subtle energy centers of the body, using breath and movement to clear habitual patterns and allow positive qualities to emerge.
The 5 Warrior Syllables: Engaging the power of sound and silence through singing seed syllables associated with the five chakras to release limiting patterns and allow wisdom qualities to emerge.
The 3 Precious Pills: Informal practice that can be used off the cushion in daily life to access the healing medicine of the inner refuge through stillness of the body, silence of inner speech, and spaciousness of mind.
Personal Reflection: Bringing to mind conflicts and challenges experienced in relation to self, family, and close friends, or professional life and the community, reflecting on them with non-judgmental awareness, which allows harmful patterns and limiting views to release and compassion to emerge.
To participants, the ability to recognize and release blocks as they arise in daily life can be a revelation. For many, the program is a transformative experience that extends well beyond the nine months of the program. “Because I’ve spent most of my life ‘doing’ and not necessarily ‘being,’ this was a seismic shift in my approach to living, and the benefits are profound,” Tami Barry, a former surgeon, says. “Being able to just be with the things I struggle with is another level of self-care that I haven’t ever experienced before.”
Tami was among the first group of participants in the Compassion Project. The monthly retreats were held at Contemplative Arts, Marcy and Gabriel’s studio in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, from 2016 to 2017. Since then, the program has been offered LIVE online. The upcoming program, which starts on October 18 and runs through June 12, 2024, will be offered in English with Spanish translation and Spanish-language small groups. Register now.
And this year, for the first time, a Dutch-language edition of the Compassion Project will be offered LIVE online, taught by Tonny Maas, a graduate of the European 3 Doors Academy and its post-graduate Presenters Path and Teacher Training programs.
How it works
The nine-month course, taught on Zoom, is interactive. The schedule revolves around one 2½-hour class of instruction and meditation each month (recorded for later listening), plus twice-monthly 1½-hour small-group practice-and-meditation sessions, and in Month 7, a full-day retreat. Practices are assigned as homework for the weeks between classes, and a virtual resource room of recorded teachings and meditations is accessible at any time. Assigned readings for the course are drawn from Spontaneous Creativity, Awakening the Luminous Mind, Awakening the Sacred Body, and Tibetan Sound Healing, all by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche and edited by Marcy Vaughn. Throughout the year, a once-a-month online meditation session is offered for both current and past Compassion Project participants.
Review the program details, including a month-by-month rundown of topics covered.
The online meetings, live in real time, are scheduled to accommodate participants in multiple time zones. Past participants have tuned in from Europe and South America as well as North America. For Qatana Samanen, a psychologist and sound healer from the Philadelphia area who has participated in the Compassion Project several times, the international focus is a plus: “It’s a chance to meet people I wouldn’t meet otherwise. The loveliest part of the program is being in the small groups, where people share and you get a sense of the universality of people’s issues and dynamics. There’s a world-is-one feeling about it.”
How it started
The original impetus for developing the Compassion Project was closer to home: supporting health and human service professionals in the Philadelphia area who were at risk for burnout. Marcy had been teaching an eight-week meditation course to a group of formerly homeless women. That inspired her to consider the possible long-range impact of the 3 Doors practices on caregivers—the people dedicated to serving others. How could the 3 Doors practices help these providers reduce their stress levels and respond from a place of compassion? “Usually people who work in helping professions and for non-profits can’t afford to take the time off or pay for meditation programs,” points out Marcy, “so we decided to see if we could offer this program as a gift.”
Marcy found an anonymous donor and, with Gabriel, set about designing the program and recruiting participants. “We wanted people who already had some experience of meditation but wanted to go further,” she explains. Both Marcy and Gabriel have extensive experience teaching meditation as senior teachers in The 3 Doors Academy and both have been associated with the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Program for Mindfulness. Their first Compassion Project program filled quickly.
When Michael Gawrysiak, an assistant professor of psychology at West Chester University in Pennsylvania, approached Marcy and Gabriel about studying the Compassion Project, they jumped at the chance. Much of the scientific research on meditation to date has focused on mindfulness meditation. Dr. Gawrysiak’s study assessed the changes associated with practicing the 3 Doors meditation techniques regularly over an extended period of time.
Of the 28 people in the initial Compassion Project, 27 became study subjects, a group that included doctors, therapists, body workers, educators, and hospital administrators. The question was: Would the teachings and meditation practices of the Compassion Project reduce stress and work-related burnout and increase self-compassion and mindfulness? Dr. Gawrysiak served as lead investigator, supported by the 3 Doors research team: Alejandro Chaoul PhD of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Integrative Medicine Program and Claire Clark PhD of the University of Utah School of Medicine, along with Marcy and Gabriel. The results, published in Current Psychology in 2021, exceeded expectations, showing that the Compassion Project practices led to significant reductions in work-related burnout and general stress, along with an increase in self-compassion and the ability to live in the moment in a non-judgmental way. Notably, these benefits increased progressively over the nine months of the program.
Benefits of the Compassion Project
Even before the research results were in, it was clear that the Compassion Project was a success. Some 268 people have now been through the program, and participants are quick to cite the benefits. “I’ve gained more understanding in relationships with my clients and a lot more compassion for the nurses and aides I work with,” says Ted Jordan, a music therapist. “I’m able to see what they have to deal with and understand a lot better where they’re coming from.” Ted’s experience was so positive that he signed up for the Compassionate Project a second time, as did his wife, Rebecca Jordan, who was working for a non-profit organization. “I started to feel a dramatic shift in my work,” she recalls.
Aleezé Moss, a Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) instructor, also found the Compassion Project helpful with clients. “Because my own practice is deepening, it comes into how I teach,” says Aleezé, associate director of the Myrna Brind Center for Mindfulness at Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. “When I led a workshop on cultivating compassion, I could really feel the depth of my own practice supporting how I was able to hold the space.” And the benefits are ongoing. “I feel the power of these practices: what I’m seeking I already have within me.”
The Compassion Project is a journey of self-discovery, but for many, the warmth of community is also a major draw. “The camaraderie and mutual support in the small groups, with faces that soon became a family, gave me a sense of coming home” says Johanna Hinrichs, from Germany. “A spiritual family, for which I had longed so much.”
The Compassion Project offers a solid introduction to the core practices of the two-and-a-half-year 3 Doors Academy. Rena Potok, a Philadelphian who wears multiple hats as a writer, editor, yoga instructor, and college professor, has done the Compassion Project twice and says the Academy “is definitely in my future” when time permits. “These programs have literally saved my life,” she says. “When I started the first nine-month Compassion Project, I had just ended an abusive relationship, and I was in tatters. The work that I did with these meditation practices allowed me to heal.” Like many practitioners, Rena came to the Compassion Project with previous meditation experience in other traditions, and she appreciates what she calls the “flexibility” of the 3 Doors practices. “I find the whole tradition very, very rich, with infinite wells of depth that never dry out and are always replenishing. And it’s always a different you who’s practicing.”
For graduates of The 3 Doors Academy, the Compassion Project is a way to go deeper into the practices while applying the teachings to new life challenges as they arise. Jason Sperling from South Newfane, Vermont says, “Although I knew the practices, having the opportunity to regularly practice in groups with Marcy and Gabriel was invaluable. The small-group sessions and retreat days supported working with reactivity in a way that practicing on my own would not have.”
Juanita Rockwell, a theater director and opera librettist who is an Academy graduate as well as a longtime Buddhist practitioner and student of Tenzin Wangyal, is now a 3 Doors teacher but has found the program so beneficial that she has continued to participate whenever her schedule permits. “It’s a perfect way to dive back into the teachings,” she says. “Every time I do just one day, it feels like we just did a six-day retreat because it plugs me into the experiences I’ve had.”
Kathy Hayden, a Philadelphian who is a graduate of The 3 Doors Academy and the training for practice leaders known as the Presenters Path, participated in the initial six-week introductory course and has joined the nine-month Compassion Project program every year since. The effect on her life has been dramatic, she says. “I’m much less reactive. I’m more confident. Doing the 3 Doors practices has given me a growing confidence in knowing the right thing to do in stressful situations.” To her surprise and delight, it even reversed a long-troubled relationship with her mother.
Seeing the positive effect of the practices on a friend or family member has inspired many people to sign up for the Compassion Project. That was the case for Nancy Sausser, a sculptor and arts administrator in Washington DC, who joined after seeing “a lot of transformation” in Kathy, a lifelong friend. Nancy has practiced Transcendental Meditation (TM) since college but finds practices like Tsa Lung and “sound healing”—the warrior syllables—”so much more than just meditation. I like the idea of taking the practice into daily life,” she adds. “The precious pills of stillness, silence, and spaciousness are a good window into that.”
Words like “transformation” and “transformative” frequently pop up when participants describe their Compassion Project experience. Judy Pierpont, a 3 Doors Academy graduate from upstate New York, says, “Through several iterations of the Compassion Project, the practices have transformed my life in subtle ways that make a huge difference in my relationships and well-being. Most significant to me is that I experience a self-confidence that was unknown to me before. I connect more easily and reliably to an inner source of knowing, confident that this source is fully trustworthy.”
The Compassion Project provides a safe space for transforming inner pain. “It has allowed me to recognize and connect with my true nature, a nature of love, compassion, joy, and equanimity,” says Bill Gonnsen, a 3 Doors volunteer from Fairmont, Minnesota. “Connecting with that nature through the transformative gifts of the meditation practices, I was able to move from a personal experience of life as exhaustion, struggle, and self-doubt to a space of love of self and others, of openness and joy rather than separateness and fear.”
Tonny Maas, the 3 Doors Academy graduate and teacher who is teaching the Compassion Project in Dutch in 2023-2024, credits the program with helping her approach different groups and situations “with more awareness and kindness.” It “gave me a kind of power supply,” she says. “The ongoing monthly meditations and collective reflections keep me alert.”
Another 3 Doors presenter, Renée Daily, a graduate of two Academies and the Presenters Path training who lives in upstate New York, has found the Compassion Project supportive in her work as a hospice volunteer and as the leader of a twice-monthly practice group of women. From the online discussions with other Compassion Project participants Renée “feels a confidence growing in an area in which I had no prior experience.” Much of that confidence, she explains, comes from experiencing how Marcy and Gabriel guide the practices.
The teachers
For all the benefits of the Compassion Project teachings and practices, it’s the teachers, Marcy Vaughn and Gabriel Rocco, who keep many participants returning year after year. Longtime students of Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche as well as senior 3 Doors teachers, Marcy and Gabriel bring decades of experience as psychotherapists and meditation mentors to the Compassion Project. Even more significant than their professional credentials, Marcy says, is their experience as “people who have a lot of practice sitting with people. That’s the value of what we offer, not the theoretical framework of therapy. What I’m a practitioner of is sitting with myself and others in the presence of challenging life experiences and discovering what supports the inherent healing capacity that everybody has—the inherent light that comes alive as we bring openness to a pattern of shutting down.”
The promise
Ultimately, coming alive to our inherent healing capacity is the promise of the Compassion Project. Patricia McIntyre PhD, a psychotherapist, 3 Doors Academy graduate, and practice leader who was in the first Compassion Project group, observes, “These practices really open our hearts, first to ourselves, and then to the people in our lives, and then to the world around us. And isn’t that what compassion is all about: opening our hearts to ourselves, to our families, and to the larger world?”
Joan Duncan Oliver is a journalist and author whose most recent book is Buddhism: An Introduction to the Buddha’s Life, Teachings, and Practices. A Buddhist and Bön practitioner for over 40 years, she is a graduate of The 3 Doors Academy and a repeat participant in the Compassion Project.
