Over the last decade, numerous interventions and techniques that aim to engender, strengthen, and expand compassion have been created, proliferating an evidence base for the benefits of compassion meditation training. However, to date, little research has been conducted to examine individual variation in the learning, beliefs, practices, and subjective experiences of compassion meditation. This mixed-method study examines changes in novice meditators’ knowledge and contemplative experiences before, during, and after taking an intensive course in CBCT®, a contemplative intervention that is increasingly (...) used for both inter- and intrapersonal flourishing. The participants in this study were Christian healthcare chaplains completing a 1-year residency in Clinical Pastoral Education who learned CBCT as part of their professional chaplaincy training curriculum. Prior to and upon completion of training, we surveyed participants to assess their beliefs about the malleability of compassion, types of engagement in compassion meditation, and perceptions of the impact of taking CBCT. We also conducted in-depth interviews with a subset of participants to gain a qualitative understanding of their subjective experiences of learning and practicing compassion meditation, a key component of CBCT. We found that participants reported increases in the extent to which they believed compassion to be malleable after studying CBCT. We also found high levels of variability of individual ways of practicing and considered the implications of this for the study of contemplative learning processes. This multi-methodological approach yielded novel insights into how compassion practice and compassion-related outcomes interrelate, insights that can inform the basic scientific understanding of the experience of learning and enacting compassion meditation as a means of strengthening compassion itself. (shrink)

A Papyrus commentary on Alcman published in 19571 brings us news of a poem in which Alcman “physiologized”. The lemmata and commentary together witness to a semi-philosophical cosmogony unlike any other hitherto known from Greece. The evidence is meagre, but it seems worth while to see what can be made of it; for it is perhaps possible to go a little farther than has so far been done.

Histories of literature tend to treat Stesichorus as just one of the lyric poets, like Alcman or Anacreon. But the vast scale of his compositions puts him in a category of his own. It has always been known that his Oresteia was divided into more than one book; P. Oxy, 2360 gave us fragments of a narrative about Telemachus of a nearly Homeric amplitude; and from P. Oxy. 2617 it was learned that the Geryoneis contained at least 1,300 verses, the (...) total being perhaps closer to two thousand. Even allowing for the shorter lines, this was as long as many an epic poem. Indeed, these were epic poems, in subject and style as well as in length: epics to be sung instead of recited. What was behind them ? Who was this Stesichorus, and how did he come to be, in Quintilian's phrase, ‘sustaining on the lyre the weight of epic song’ ? The biographical problem must be tackled first. The question of Stesichorus’ historical setting and date is confused by legendary elements as well as by contradiction in the sources. On the whole scholars remain spellbound by the specious precision of the Suda's dates , although it has long been realized that they are founded on nothing but the assumption that Stesichorus was younger than Alcman and older than Simonides. There have been excellent discussions by Wilamowitz and Maas, but they seem to have had little influence. (shrink)

The work of many scholars in the last hundred years has helped us to understand the nature and origins of the treatise which we know for short as the Contest of Homer and Hesiod. The present state of knowledge may be summed up as follows. The work in its extant form dates from the Antonine period, but much of it was taken over bodily from an earlier source, thought to be the Movaelov of Alcidamas. Some of the verses exchanged in (...) the contest were current even earlier, and some scholars have supposed that the story of a contest went back to the fifth, sixth, or even eighth century; but this is now much doubted. (shrink)

Résumé : Le PPBS a été conçu comme un instrument destiné à ceux qui décident de l'allocation des ressources publiques : il doit leur permettre de prendre de meilleures décisions. S'il est très difficile de repérer et de juger les choix que le développement du système a inspirés aux Etats-Unis, il n'en est pas mains certain que ses résultats tangibles sant maigres car la masse des anciens programmes, principale source potentielle de moyens nouveaux, n'a guère été remise en question.La valeur (...) intrinsèque du PPBS ne peut être mise en cause. Ce qui doit l'être, c'est la lenteur de son développement, qui demeure peu avancé. Cette lenteur s'explique, car le système ne peut produire des fruits dans une terre stérile qu'on n'a pas préparée.La brutalité et les maladresses de l'opération déclenchée en 1965 dans le gouvernement fédéral américain ne pouvaient que renforcer la résistance au changement et retarder, sinon compromettre, le succès final. Les perspectives demeurent heureusement favorables, puisque la nouvelle administration ne semble pas décidée à faire machine arrière et que les Etats et Villes ont démarré sous de bien meilleurs auspices.La principale conclusion qu'imposent les expériences américaines est que toute juridiction intéressée par le PPBS doit impérativement développer, de la façon la plus générale, la volonté d'instaurer le système et s'assurer les moyens de le faire. C'est dire qu'il est peu sage d'engager la bataille sur tous les fronts à la fois : il faut tenter des percées. Mais c'est dire aussi combi en l'information et la formation sant essentielles. A cet égard, l'installation généralisée de certains éléments du système, à savoir la structure de programmes et le budget-programme, loin de présenter des inconvénients, peut constituer un excellent exercice en dehors de son utilité directe pour le preneur de décision. La bataille en cause est surtout celle de la conviction: l'outil est prêt, il est bon, encore faut-il que l' ouvrier accepte de s'en servir.Samenvatting:Planning-programming-budgeting werd ontworpen als een instrument voor diegenen die beslissen over de toewijzing van de overheidsmiddelen.Dit instrument moet de beslissers in staat stellen betere beslissingen te treffen. Het is niet makkelijk deze beslissingen op te sporen en te beoordelen welke in de Verenigde Staten getroffen werden onder invloed van de ontwikkeling van deze systeembenadering. Toch is het met vrij grote zekerheid te stellen dat de tastbare resultaten gering zijn omdat de veelheid aan oude programma's die tenslotte toch de voornaamste potentiële bronnen zijn van nieuwe middelen, nooit werden aangevochten.De intrinsieke waarde van PPBS kan daarom evenwel niet worden genegeerd. Wat wel dient aangeklaagd is de traagheid van zijn aanslepende ontwikkeling. Deze traagheid is te verklaren door het feit dat het systeem slechts vruchten kan afwerpen zo het ingeplant wordt in degelijk voorbereid terrein.De brutaliteit en de onhandigheden bij de operatie die in 1965 werd ingezet in het amerikaans federaal overheidsbestel konden niets anders dan de weerstand tegen de verandering versterken en afbreuk doen aan het uiteindelijk slagen van het systeem. Gelukkiglijk blijven de vooruitzichten gunstig want de nieuwe beleidsvoerders sinds de presidentsverkiezingen, blijken ermee te willen doorgaan en de staten en lokale overheden zijn ermee van wal gestoken onder veel betere omstandigheden. Het doorslaggevend besluit uit de amerikaanse ervaringen terzake is wel dat elke instantie welke belangstelling heeft voor PPBS, nodig moet op zo breed mogelijk vlak de wil doen groeien om het systeem te ontwikkelen en er ook de nodige middelen toe ter beschikking stellen. Dit betekent tevens dat het weinig aan te bevelen is de strijd op alle fronten terzelvertijd aan te binden maar wel geleidelijk doorbraken te verwezenlijken. Dit brengt dan evenwel ook met zich dat informatie en vorming essentieel zijn bij deze strategie. In dit verband moet dan ook gezegd worden dat reeds het invoeren van sommige deelementen van het systeem, zoals de programmastructuur en het programmabudget, voor de beslisser nuttig kan zijn voor zijn persoonlijk inzicht en vorming.De te voeren actie dient nog slechts te worden toegespitst op het overtuigen van de verantwoordelijken. Het instrument is immers gebruiksklaar en degelijk, er is alleen nog het wachten op de wil van de gebruiker dit instrument ter hand te nemen. (shrink)

Several of the treatises and lectures that make up the Hippocratic corpus begin with more or less extended statements about the physical composition and operation of the world at large, and approach the study of human physiology from this angle. We see this, for example, in De Natwra Hominis, De Flatibus, De Carnibus, De Victu; it was the approach of Alcmaeon of Croton, Diogenes of Apollonia, and according to Plato of Hippocrates himself. The work known as De Hebdomadibus would appear (...) to be a prime example of the type. The first twelve chapters are cosmological. They are dominated by two ideas: that everything in nature is arranged in groups of seven, and that the human body is constructed on the same pattern as the whole world. In the later part of the book we pass to the subject of fevers, their causation and treatment. But as Roscher observed, the cosmology and the pathology do not belong together. (shrink)

‘Alcman lived sometime in the seventh century.’ ‘At some period in the seventh century Sparta was occupied with the Second Messenian War, but we do not know its date or whether Alcman lived before or during or after it.’ Between these two utterances, part of a papyrus commentary on Alcman was published,3 from which it appeared that the poet mentioned names known to us from the Spartan king-lists. It might have been expected that this discovery would lead to a more (...) precise dating for Alcman. Some people think, that in fact it does, and I am one of them. (shrink)

Evolution of the humane resonances between Hindu values and contemporary experiences and challenges; contributed research papers.

In CQ 20 , 277–87, 1 argued for dating Corinna to the third century B.C. In my Greek Metre , p. 141, I continued to assume this date, observing that not everyone accepted it but that I knew of no attempt to answer my arguments. I must confess to having overlooked at least one such attempt, by A. Allen in CJ 68 , 26–8; and now M. Davies has mounted another in SIFC 81 , 186–94, largely repeating Allen's points but (...) with some new touches. Allen upholds the traditional fifth-century date. Davies has yet to come to a decision, but meanwhile he is eager to discredit what he regards as an unsatisfactory case for a Hellenistic dating. (shrink)

It is well known that sometime before 700 b.c. the Greeks took over from the Near East a complex theogonic myth about the succession of rulers in heaven, involving the motifs of the castration of Sky and a swallowing and regurgitation by his successor, and that this story forms the framework of Hesiod's Theogony. It is less well known that at a later epoch, sometime before the middle of the sixth century b.c., a quite different and no less striking oriental (...) myth about the beginning of things was introduced to Greece: the myth of the god Unaging Time, who created the materials for the world from his own seed, and of the cosmic egg out of which the heaven and the earth were formed. I have discussed this myth and its variants elsewhere. My purpose in re-examining it here is firstly to clarify various details of the Phoenician versions of the cosmogony as reported in Greek sources, secondly to obtain a sharper picture of its original form, and thirdly to argue that the world model of the early Ionian philosophers, which to some extent set the pattern for subsequent Greek cosmology, owed more to the myth than has generally been appreciated. (shrink)

In the controversy over the date of Corinna, the following points may be taken as agreed: 1. An edition was made in Boeotia about the end of the third or beginning of the second century B.C. 2. The texts of Corinna current in the late Hellenistic and Roman periods were all descended from that Boeotian edition. 3. Before its dissemination, Corinna was unknown in Greece at large. If she wrote at an earlier period, she must have been remembered only locally. (...) The difference between Boeotian spelling of the fifth century and that of the fourth is very great: but the difference in this respect between the mid-fourth century and the late third or early second is comparatively slight. It is therefore tenable that whereas there would be a good reason for the re-spelling of fifth-century Boeotian into the later convention of any period, there would be no obvious or adequate reason for re-spelling Boeotian of the fourth century into the orthography of the third, or that of the third into that of the second. Even those features of fourth-century spelling which have ceased to preponderate are by no means unknown or even uncommon at the end of the third century. (shrink)