Compassion in Buddhism The Psychological Dimension of Compassion and Its Relationship with Peace and Well-Being

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ABSTRACT This study was conducted in two parts, part one textual analysis of Tripitka and development of theory of Karuna (Compassion) to answer the research question Psychological Dimensions of Karuna (Compassion) in Buddhism and its relationship with Peace and Well-being. The Concept of Karuna (Compassion) origin in pali language. The etymology of the word Karuna, stemmed from the Buddhist literatures in tripitka, Karuna (Compassion) defines, Kar is one of the fourth qualities of character significant of a human being who has attained enfranchisement of heart (ceto - vimutti), the desire of removing bane and sorrow and bringing that which good and welfare to one's fellow - men as the exalted state of compassion for all beings (all that is encompassed in the sphere of one's good influence or all, directions, ) . The 360 Degree Compass theory of Karuna (Compassion) has been developed after analysis of Buddhist literatures, The finding of this part one research was that Karuna (compassion) has four dimensions Wisdom, Morality, Loving Kindness, and Equanimity were lived in the day today experience of the peoples. The eighty four items was written out with reading several time jataka stories and literature review various Buddhist texts Part two of the study was to construct Psychometric assessment tools of Karuna (Compassion) based on Buddhist literatures. And its relationship with Peace and wellbeing. The correlation of Karuna (Compassion Scale), Cronbach's alpha for the 80-item version of the Karuna Compassion scale is .934, which is an 'excellent' value (George & Mallery, 2003, p. 231), though expected in view of its high test length. The value of Cronbach's alpha obtained for this sample (N=320) is quite close to the alpha value of .963 obtained on the earlier sample (N=524). Armor's theta coefficient was found to be .939 for this sample, which is quite close to the Armor's theta of .964 obtained for the earlier sample. Cronbach's alphas for Form A and Form B were .868 and .904 respectively. If the parent instrument - 80-item version of the compassion scale - has an alpha value of .934, the 40 item versions would have the alpha coefficients of .876. The obtained alpha coefficients of .868 and .904 respectively for the two forms are quite close to the expected value. The results in Table 14 indicate that the main effect of Gender is statistically significant (F = 8.72, df1 = 1, df2 = 312, p < .005, partial �= .027). On Compassion scale, females scored higher (mean = 375.91) than the males (mean = 363.57). The effect size is, however, small (Dugard, Todman & Staines, 2010, p.22). The partial �of .027 suggests that Gender explained 2.7 percent variance in the compassion scores. The results further revealed that the main effect of Residential background is also significant (F = 4.08, df1 = 1, df2 = 312, p < .05, partial �= .013). On Karuna (Compassion) scale, the urban students scored higher (mean = 373.96) than the rural students (mean = 365.52). Thus, the urban students are more compassionate than the rural students. However, the effect size is small (Dugard, Todman & Staines, 2010, p.22). The partial �of .013 suggests that Residential background explained only 1.3 percent variance in the Karuna (Compassion). The Karuna (Compassion) scale has correlated with the Peace of mind, Self-compassion and three of its subscales, trait anger scale/subscales, state anger scale/subscales, and Psychological well-being scale/subscales in a theoretically meaningful way. Of course, some of these correlations are small, though statistically significant. However, high correlations were neither expected nor they would be desirable, since they would indicate that there are already similar trait measures with different names. The small correlation between Compassion and Self-compassion suggests that these are distinct constructs. The small to moderate correlations