The massive disruptions caused by climate change, the Covid-19 Pandemic, war, and ever-rising inequalities have presented the world with challenges across social and economic life, health and education, policy, politics, and community life. Compassion is a central Buddhist value and practice but is also essential to our survival. Defined as feeling genuine concern about the suffering of others and, critically, coupled with a commitment to attempt to alleviate or prevent it. The desire and commitment to help are what differentiates compassion from similar emotions like empathy and sympathy. Compassion demands the courage to turn toward suffering with clarity and skilful means. Hence, we have the Buddhist recognition that compassion is inseparable from wisdom, in the analogy of the two wings. This book is titled, Cultivating Compassion: Going Beyond Crises as it is rooted in this perspective while presenting different approaches which aim to advance our understanding of the questions and dilemmas posed by the current global crises and the cultivation of compassion.

Venerable Juewei Shi has been an ordained monastic and a Buddhist Studies scholar for over twenty years. Juewei is Head of Program for Applied Buddhist Studies and Humanistic Buddhism, as well as Director of the Humanistic Buddhism Centre at the Nan Tien Institute, Australia. Her recent publications include "Connecting with the human condition from the inside out and outside in: a dialogue between a social anthropologist and a Buddhist theologian" (2022). Suzanne Franzway is an Emeritus Professor at UniSA. Her books include Sexual Politics of Gendered Violence and Womens Citizenship (2018), Challenging Knowledge, Sex and Power: Gender, Work and Engineering (2013), Making Feminist Politics: Transnational Alliances between Women and Labor (2011), and Sexual Politics and Greedy Institutions: Union Women, Commitments and Conflicts in Public and in Private (2001). Stephen Hill is Emeritus Professor at the University of Wollongong. Prior to retirement, Stephen was United Nations Regional Director for Science for Asia and the Pacific, and in parallel, Principal Director and Ambassador of the UN organization, UNESCO. Prior to joining UNESCO in 1995, Stephen was Director of the Australian Research Council's National Centre of Excellence for Research Policy, at UOW, following seventeen years as Foundation Professor of Sociology.