Indeed, when the Dalai Lama heard about this aspect of Darwin’s work, he was astonished by its similarity to Tibetan Buddhism. (“I will now call myself a Darwinian,” he said.) Both Darwinism and Buddhism view compassion as the greatest virtue, and the mother-infant bond as the heart of sympathy. As the Dalai Lama put it, in a dialogue with the University of California, San Francisco, psychology professor emeritus Dr. Paul Ekman, “In the human mind, seeing someone bleeding and dying makes you uncomfortable. That’s the seed of compassion. In those animals, like turtles, not dealing with a
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