Summary
Matthieu Ricard, the molecular biologist turned Buddhist monk who participated in the early neuroimaging studies of advanced contemplative practitioners, spent five years writing this book. Altruism is unusual in its scale: nearly nine hundred pages spanning evolutionary biology, behavioral economics, contemplative philosophy, neuroscience, environmental ethics, and the practical question of how individuals and societies can become more compassionate.
The book is most useful as a reference. The reader who needs the strongest available evidence on a particular question, whether about empathy in primates, prosocial behavior in children, or the economics of altruism, can almost always find it here, sourced and contextualized.
How This Book Cultivates Compassion
How does this book help you understand compassion?
It is the field's encyclopedic resource. No other single book gathers this much evidence on compassion across this many disciplines, and Ricard's curatorial judgment is exceptional.
How does this book help you cultivate compassion in your life?
The closing sections on personal practice are pragmatic and well-judged, drawing on Ricard's decades as both a contemplative practitioner and a research collaborator with cognitive neuroscientists.
How does this book help you mitigate Occupational Distress Syndrome?
Ricard's contribution is encyclopedic rather than therapeutic. The relevant sections, principally the chapters on empathic distress and on the science of compassion training, document the conceptual ground that the ODS framework rests on but do not pitch their argument at the level of intervention. The book belongs on the shelf as reference, not as protocol.
Where to Place It on Your Shelf
It is one of the texts on which much of the contemporary compassion conversation rests. Its place on the foundational shelf is permanent.