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To acquire it, however, will demand an immense effort of mind and heart. Gandhi memorably said that we must ourselves become the change that we wish to see in the world. We cannot reasonably expect the leaders of our own or other people’s nations to adopt more humane policies if we ourselves continue to live egotistically, unkindly, and greedily, and give free rein to unexamined prejudice. We cannot demand that our enemies become more tolerant and less violent if we make no effort to transcend the Four Fs in our own lives.
I am in agreement with His Holiness the Dalai Lama that “whether a person is a religious believer does not matter much. Far more important is that they be a good human being.”24 At their best, all religious, philosophical, and ethical traditions are based on the principle of compassion.
www.charterforcompassion.org
The Buddha’s crucial insight was that to live morally was to live for others.
but can you imagine what it would be like if it became more compassionate? How would this affect the global community? And what would a compassionate modern nation-state be like? What would be the minimum requirements for a compassionate modern state? And how can a modern politician observe the Golden Rule in his or her domestic and foreign policy?
“I would need to understand the feelings of abandonment, loneliness, fear, and the sense of not belonging—the same feelings that children from abusive, dysfunctional, and broken homes feel.”13
Remember what it is like to feel alone with sadness and take the trouble to listen to your friend’s tale of woe: “And one who asks for help—do not turn him away.”
As you direct the four Immeasurables to each one of them in turn, think of their good points, their contribution to your own life; their generosity, courage, and sense of humor. Look deeply into their hearts, insofar as you can, and see their pain: the sufferings you are aware of and all the private sorrows that you will never know about. You will then desire them to be free of their pain and resolve to help them in any way you can. Wish for each of your three people the joy that you desire for yourself, and finally admit that you all have faults—yourself, the person you feel neutral toward,
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As you conclude the meditation, make a resolution that today you will translate these good thoughts into a small, concrete practical act of friendship or compassion to one of your three people, if you have the chance. If you do not see them, reach out to somebody else who needs a helping hand or a friendly word.
After they had realized that some of their deepest convictions were based on faulty foundations, Socrates’ disciples could begin to live in a philosophical manner. But if they did not interrogate their most fundamental beliefs, they would live superficial, expedient lives, because “the unexamined life is not worth living.”7
“I’m gaining ground!” he said, beaming. “I sit quietly and forget.” Confucius shifted uneasily. “What do you mean?” he asked. “I let the body fall away and let the intellect fade,” replied Yan Hui. “I throw out form, abandon understanding—and then move freely, blending away into the great transformation. That’s what I mean by sit quietly and forget.” Realizing that his pupil had surpassed him, Confucius went pale. “If you blend away like that, you’re free of likes and dislikes,” he said. “So in the end, the true sage here is you! So you won’t mind if I follow you from now on, will you?”
An unenlightened person, Zhuangzi explained, is like a frog in a well who mistakes the tiny patch of sky he can see for the whole; but once he has seen the sky’s immensity, his perspective is changed forever.
his only talent was an “unwearying effort to learn and unflagging patience in teaching others.”
Therefore, the Buddha concluded, giving Pasenadi his version of the Golden Rule, “A person who loves the self should not harm the self of others.”7
We should make a point of asking ourselves whether we want to win the argument or seek the truth, whether we are ready to change our views if the evidence is sufficiently compelling, and whether we are making “place for the other” in our minds in the Socratic manner.
To take just one example: every fundamentalist movement that I have studied in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is rooted in a profound fear of annihilation; and each one began with what was perceived to be an assault by the liberal or secular establishment.
But aggression, righteous condemnation, and insult only make matters worse. Somehow we have to break the escalating cycle of attack and counterattack. We have seen what happens when fundamentalist fear hardens into rage.
When we speak out in the defense of decent values, we must make sure that we understand the context fully and do not dismiss the values of our opponents as barbaric simply because they seem alien to us. We may find that we have the same values but express them in a radically different way.
When you argue, do you get carried away by your own cleverness and deliberately inflict pain on your opponent? Do you get personal?
we must also reach out in some way to the stranger and the foreigner—even to the enemy. Mozi put it clearly when he insisted that the well-being of humanity was dependent upon jian ai: “concern for everybody,” a principled and practically oriented acknowledgment of the absolute equality of human beings.
We cannot destroy our neighbours or ignore their interests!
In the world of religion too, many people enjoy contact with other faiths, but others have retreated into denominational ghettos and erected new barriers of orthodoxy against the “other.” The strain of piety popularly known as “fundamentalism” can be seen as a religiously articulated form of nationalism or ethnicity, which emphasizes the more particularistic elements of faith.
“If a stranger lives with you in your land do not molest him. You must count him as one of your own countrymen and love him as yourself—for you were once strangers yourselves in Egypt.”4 Israelites must recall their own suffering as despised aliens in Egypt and ensure that the strangers currently in their midst do not endure this pain.
Think carefully about the concept of a just war. Find some examples of a just war in the past and then ask yourself how many of our current conflicts fit the just-war criteria. Can you detect the tribal spirit in any of them? Is military action improving the situation or is it increasing hostility?
“Why do you observe the splinter in your brother’s eye and never notice the plank in your own? How dare you say to your brother: ‘let me take the splinter out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own? Hypocrite! Take the plank out of your own eye first, and then you will see clearly enough to take the splinter out of your brother’s eye.”5
we should meditate on the words of the influential Sufi philosopher Muid ad-Din ibn al-Arabi (1165–1240). His warning against religious exclusivity can also be applied to any “tribal” chauvinism. Do not attach yourself to any particular creed so exclusively that you disbelieve all the rest; otherwise you will lose much good, nay, you will fail to recognize the real truth of the matter. God, the omnipresent and omnipotent, is not limited by any one creed, for, he says, “Wheresoever ye turn, there is the face of Allah.”
In a global society, conflict is rarely the fault of only one party. All participants in a conflict have sown bad karma in the past, and we are all now reaping the results.
You might find it helpful to consult a website, such as Search for Common Ground (www.sfcg.org
The object of the exercise is “to make room for the other” in your mind. You will need to approach it with the “science of compassion.”
During this step, you will have been engaging in a Socratic dialogue with yourself, overcoming the limitations of the unexamined life and the dangers of habitual tribal thinking
Let all beings be happy! Weak or strong, of high, middle or low estate, small or great, visible or invisible, near or far away, alive or still to be born—May they all be perfectly happy! Let nobody lie to anybody or despise any single being anywhere. May nobody wish harm to any single creature out of anger or hatred! Let us cherish all creatures, as a mother her only child! May our loving thoughts fill the whole world, above, below, across—without limit; our love will know no obstacles—a boundless goodwill toward the whole world, unrestricted, free of hatred or enmity. Whether we are standing
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You cannot force people to behave as you wish; coercive methods are more likely to drive them to the exact opposite.
The best conqueror of the enemy is he who never takes the offensive. The man who gets the most out of men is the one who treats them with humility.
as Gandhi famously remarked, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”: Jesus was asking us to show courage when he told his disciples, “Offer the wicked man no resistance.”9
“Mine is not an exclusive love. I cannot love Moslems or Hindus and hate Englishmen. For if I love merely Hindus and Moslems because their ways are on the whole pleasing to me, I shall soon begin to hate them when their ways displease me, as they may well do any moment. A love that is based on the goodness of those whom you love is a mercenary affair.”
“Only goodness can drive out evil and only love can overcome hate.”13 Loving our enemies means that we have to accept “the necessity, over and over again, of forgiving those who inflict evil and injury on us.” King was convinced that this was “an absolute necessity for our survival … the key to the solution of the problems of our world.”14
It is now time to investigate your enemy, using the “science of compassion” in the same way as you began to get to know your “adopted” foreign nation or tradition during the tenth step.
if you seek to establish yourself, then seek to establish others. Humiliating the enemy can be dangerous. The harsh conditions inflicted on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles after the First World War gave birth to the conditions that helped to bring Adolf Hitler to power. We need to find a way to ensure that all peoples enjoy the treatment that we wish for ourselves.
King, Martin Luther, Jr. Strength to Love. Philadelphia, 1963. Ladner, Lorne. The Lost Art of Compassion: Discovering the Practice of Happiness in the Meeting of Buddhism and Psychology. San Francisco, 2004.
Thich Nhat Hanh. Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames. New York, 2001. ———. The Art of Power. New York, 2004. ———. The Miracle of Mindfulness. Boston, 1975. ———. Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life. New York, 1991. ———. Taming the Tiger Within: Meditations on Transforming Difficult Emotions. New York, 2004.
