Confluence of Compassion is an evolving participatory, contemplative artwork. Its conception started with the prompt: Imagine living a world flooded with compassion.

Confluence used in this instance is an act or process of merging. Compassion is a worldview.

At its core, compassion is about recognising our common humanity – about seeing that we are all human with our own struggles, hopes, and needs. Knowing that, we bring a desire to care for, support, and value other people just as we would like to be cared for, valued, and supported. Not only that, it means creating whole societies in a way that everyone feels included and their needs met, defining our approach to everything from climate policy to economics.

At the dam

What if we wrote our compassion needs down, set them out to float trusting they would be received? Perhaps the clarity of the articulation would focus our minds, distilling our needs to their most elementary state.

Might it be that water from this dam and the immersed offerings of compassion find their way to other bodies of water, “that the cyclical life of rainfall - sky to earth to sky again, over and over” - could bring compassion “through cloudburst and current,” to all waters “that flowed across the earth?”

As people engage with the artwork, adding their own experiences of receiving or giving compassion, they can visually see the ripple effect of compassionate acts and the larger subtle flow on effect this has on a societal level. The natural substance to demonstrate ripples and flow is water which is why this artwork is part of the Aqua Limina exhibition. Contemplating water as a metaphor for compassion connects us to our relationship with nature allowing us to remember that the reason humans exist at all is because of water.

Please come along on 11 April to join me at the dam: Free Ticket Link

Compassion for the non-human world at Talweg dam

Images by: Jo Fay Duncan, Lisa Behan and Saisai Luo

It felt very natural to go with the flow of the weather, the conversation, the feelings expressed. Compassion expanded to create a safe container for those in the circle. It was a rich sharing of ideas, experiences, longings, confusion and connection. In the excitement of the flow I had to calm myself to remain steady to attentively listen so each of us felt recognised for our presence in the circle. It was joyful to respond to what came up with matching meditation practices and then discuss their effect upon us. It’s always both surprising and unsurprising how quickly safety is established and the values of generosity, kindness, openness, tolerance, respect and compassion emerge connecting us to our innate goodness. These inner strengths that are undervalued in a society “where competition, invidiousness, status-seeking and authoritarianism prevail.” In the face of these societal urgings meditation, over time, allows us to reconnect to ourselves, to gain self-knowledge, to be steady, to have our own back and to be true to ourselves. A meditation lounge reminds us that this is possible in any moment we choose.

BE HERE NOW.

It’s a way of clicking in to the present.

The Meditation Lounge was one of the offerings at the inaugural day retreat hosted by Retreats Stradbroke Island at the

Point Lookout Hall on 12 April 2025. The next wellbeing retreat is scheduled for 12 July, 2025.

Quote from Philip Slater’s The Pursuit of Loneliness