Compassion is a cycle of music born of the need for healing. It’s a great moment in life to realize when healing is required. No matter how broken in body and spirit, to be able to recognize what is needed—that something is needed at all—is the beginning of relief. Jim Becker has been playing music for several decades, in Chicago and around the world, with lengthy tenures in Califone and Iron & Wine and many additional production and playing credits to his name. Lama Lobsang Palden is a gifted energy healer, teaching Yantra Yoga and Buddhist meditation. As a young boy, he was recognized as a tulku—a reincarnation of a Nyingma guru yoga master. Following the path, he studied all aspects of Buddhist philosophy in Tibet and India and has taught meditation, yoga and the Buddhist Dharma all over the world. The relationship that allowed Lama and Jim to make this record started with treatment, three years before the record was begun. Jim went to the Lama for healing, to address the many aches and ills that medicine couldn’t seem to heal. As Jim was leaving his first session, the Lama said to him, “You and me, we make a record.” It would be years and many other life events before a record could be undertaken, much less completed. It was a long road ahead to becoming whole, but that was the beginning...