About SCT

What is Sustainable Compassion Training?

Sustainable Compassion Training has been developed by John Makransky with Paul Condon and other teaching partners and collaborators. SCT has been adapted from practices of Tibetan Buddhism for people of all backgrounds, secular and religious. SCT teaches us how to become newly receptive to unconditional qualities of love and wisdom from the depth of our being, to settle into that depth, and to respond to others from there with more replenishing and expansive compassion and awareness. SCT is designed to support people in caring roles and professions, modern Buddhists, and people of other spiritual traditions who want to access a power of unconditional love, compassion and wisdom for living, service and action.

SCT has three modes of meditation practice:

Receptive Mode

Helps us find new access to hidden qualities of love, compassion, inner peace, and wisdom.

Deepening Mode

Helps us settle into the source of those qualities in the depth of our awareness—with a deepening relaxation, inner acceptance, and spaciousness that is healing and freeing in mind and body.

Inclusive Mode

Helps us come from that depth to respond to others in their deep dignity and potential, with more replenishing, unconditional and expansive powers of care, compassion and wisdom in action.

John Makransky, Ph.D.

John Makransky, PhD, is Associate Professor of Buddhism and Comparative Theology at Boston College, senior advisor for Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche’s Centre of Buddhist Studies in Nepal and developer of the Sustainable Compassion Training model for accessing innate capacities of compassion and awareness. John's academic writings have focused on connections between practices of wisdom, compassion and devotion in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, on adapting Buddhist practices for contemporary minds, and on interfaith learning.

In 2000, John was ordained as a Lama, a meditation teacher of innate compassion and wisdom, within the Nyingma Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. As a meditation teacher, John is known for guiding participants in their discovery of underlying powers of love and wisdom. For the past twelve years, John has taught meditations of innate compassion and wisdom, adapted from Tibetan Buddhism, for modern Buddhists, those in other spiritual traditions, and for people in caring roles and professions.

Paul Condon, Ph.D.

Paul Condon is an associate professor of psychology at Southern Oregon University, a visiting lecturer for the Centre for Buddhist Studies at Rangjung Yeshe Institute, and a fellow of the Mind & Life Institute. His research examines the ways that psychological science can inform the adaptation of meditation practices in dialogue with contemplative traditions, with an emphasis on compassion training. His research and writing also examine the constructed nature of emotion and concepts, attachment theory, and the impact of meditation on compassion and prosocial behavior.

Paul also teaches meditation practices adapted from the Tibetan Nyingma tradition. He has studied and collaborated with John Makransky to develop and teach Sustainable Compassion Training. His practice and teaching have also been informed by study with Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, Lama Willa Baker, and the Courage of Care Coalition.