Karen Armstrong | Appel Salon | November 4, 2019

it's when I read the scriptures I see them as a mandate I see them as not giving me information clear information I put myself into the position of these people who produced these scriptures but also say what would they want now the harbor's excursion I thought it might be appropriate to begin with just a simple question about the title of your book the book is called the lost art of Scripture rescuing their sacred texts what do you mean by the art of Scripture well when you read a particular book it's very important to know the genre you're dealing with when you're reading Pride and Prejudice you're not distressed to learn that mr. Darcy or mr. Bingley never existed and because you and even though this may not be factual or you are learning something very important about the human condition and similarly the scripture in all traditions has a particular genre that and we no longer read it according to that genre first of all it was a performative art scripture was always sung or recited or chanted or a set to plain song or to music or polyphony and until the late 18th century most people couldn't read and so reading scripture today is a bit like reading the libretto of an opera a whole half a lot of it is missing and Scripture was always accompanied by ritual which involved a lot of physical movement and neuro physicists tell us we learn a lot from the way we move and behave and our gestures and all that is - so that we read it - factually at the moment and it also we look back on it we've got a habit now of going back since Luther who wanted to go back to the early church script and people are now doing this in a really ridiculous way I mean so you've got fundamentalists in the United States who are trying to revive the old Israelite legislation and stoning illage stoning and disobedient children for example and in Saudi Arabia people are trying to live in according to the mores of the seventh century but we are not living in the seventh century as Scripture was always an innovative art you are supposed to apply it to your current situation and change the meaning but we don't do that anymore you call it an art but was it seen as an art back then well no one would have said we are now having this is an art form but but their work their work there is a current whether you're talking about Chinese or Indian scriptures that there is that current the the fact that it's innovative and that it's all that it was always sung in fact in India the sound was always more important than the sense which is something difficult for us to understand yeah and we'll talk about that as well tell me about the moment when you realized when you actually felt that the art was was lost oh well just listening to people talking about scripture I when you start off writing a book you have one idea then along the way you suddenly start seeing all kinds of different things so I started off with the idea that of Scripture being a performative art and that it was sung and chanted and recited but then I started finding all kinds of other things too along the way and and that made started to make sense as you started to see how our attitudes have changed and how it's really incomprehensible to us unless we could recover it we can recover it and and what are the things scripture should be doing it's pushing us into action all the scriptures in assists that it's not just a question of me and my God and my salvation you've got work to do in the world what kind of action two kinds in the monotheism's the that the Judaism Christianity and Islam the emphasis has always very much been about equity and justice the prophets of Israel had no time for people who said their prayers nicely in the temple but neglected the plight of the poor and let their rulers get away with war crimes and Jesus was very much a social activist and you couldn't get into the kingdom of God unless you were ready to feed the hungry and visit the sick naked and in prison and the Quran is nothing but a cry for a just and decent society where poor and vulnerable people are treated with respect in the in it that this this is also very important in China and India but in those countries too you have a very important environmental emphasis right from the beginning about 1500 the Vedas are very concerned about the fragility of the cosmos and they start creating rituals to try to help support the cosmos obviously these had no scientific valency but what they did was create an attitude and instead of seeing the environment or nature simply as a resource it was something to which you had to give something back and to be aware that it needed cultivating so so so those are that those are the two main thought that it must it's not enough to read your Bible or have it read to you in church and then go back home to lunch and forget about it you've got you have a mission to the world at the end of the Catholic Mass the priests used to say eat a Miss arrest go you are sent forth and that as I say didn't mean just going home and and having a pleasant time or just polishing your own spirituality you had to go out into society as the Buddhist said you must return to the marketplace after you've encountered enlightenment and back to the mess of human affairs and their practice compassion for all living beings now the overarching message of this book is that you want those scriptures to be rescued hmm but I have to say that in listening to you now and in reading the book sometimes I got the sense that you were also almost calling for you know make religion great again is that fair is that a fair characterization London well I mean by in London my best friends don't read my books let alone you know they would be amazed to see this keep on asking me why I write this dreadful stuff so so no I I don't I I have very few hopes in that direction but on the other hand when I go and visit other countries here but also the United States and also Muslim countries in particular I find there's a great sense of urgency people want to they want an active religion rather than something and that they're worried about the state of religion in their countries here and now now that desire is parallel to a desire that existed you know for millennia and among all kinds of different people as you point out in your book you know it's a desire to sort of reach beyond what sensed a reasoned or that we can see with our eyes and hear with our ears you start your book by describing a prehistoric artifact called the line man can you describe that here ah it's a little figurine about 31 centimeters high that's 40,000 years old it was discovered in a cave in southern Germany just two or three days before the outbreak of World War two and we had it in the British Museum on loan for a while and it it is you feel extraordinary reverence when you see this and the lion man has a lions head and a partly human body and it shows that something has happened to the human mind because it can imagine something that doesn't exist and and this is the essence of religion now I opened that the exhibition where we had this and I said this and I could feel the audience going hmm you know you're saying that God does not exist that is exactly what I'd say and so so did Thomas Aquinas for who said God is not one of the things that exist God is not a being God is si sabes of God is being itself and unimaginable to us and so and and and he's so here you have a fusion of an animal who the cave lion was one of the big the biggest predator in the region and here you have him fused with the with the human of his human prey I suppose and he's obviously been handed around the community and stroked his it's very worn as though that they they are some kind of ritual took place in that cave where they found it because it it's not been inhabited it and he was found being put in a little niche carefully away but what we're seeing is something that does not that takes us out of the real world but is is is fusing a date a danger and embracing a danger and making it seeing its its committee instead of seeing them simply as an enemy embracing the enemy as it were so you're and this comes I I don't know whether we are going to get on to this it shows that this is a right hemispheric for it's it's activated by the right hemisphere of the brain which is the wealth which sees the connection between things justice what you see of the cave line here information reaches us through them we don't see the world as it really is our brains filter things through to us we see we receive the information first in the right hemisphere where we see the unity and interconnection of things as you do with Lion Man there then it passes to the left hemisphere the more analytical side of us where we say what is this what is this going to affect us then it should move back so that you have a balance now we in our culture certainly in London we are very less than hemispheric and and you know we're encouraging our children to focus on the sciences rather than the arts but the the so the right hemisphere is the source of art works like Lion Man that sees the interconnection between things but it also it's also the seat of compassion because we also see and justice because we can also see our connection with one another and with far away so we need both hemispheres to work together in tandem and we will get into that a little bit more as well I wanted though you raised it and one of the symptoms for lack of a better word of of that kind of practice being done on the right hand right side of the brain is that as you mentioned most Scripture was actually oral at the beginning yes I just wonder what does that orality tell you about the scripture itself well a you have you have to listen and as I've said it accompanied with ritual but also the music the music is something that is very right hemispheric in fact music is this it's the seat seated in the right hemisphere and it feels it it it works through the body as soon as you hear music you may want to sway with it or to our foot type of foot or something you want to move with it but it also evokes sorrow and sadness it goes to the heart of of deep buried things in us that we can't really put into words and so that having that that oral aural and aural side shows that it's deeply emotive tears come to one's eyes when you're listening to certain kinds of music and certainly that's certainly true with the Quran for example which the word Quran means recitation and and that the Quran reciting it really is an art form people will traveled miles to hear a good Quran recited just as we'd go to hear a famous soprano you say Arabic is well suited to that sort of in the prophets time they were not literate the Prophet couldn't read or write and but they were they had an extraordinary ear for poetry at that time and so that they would have been very attuned to the layers of meaning in in the Quran as well as its whole musical valency so the oral was important the spoken was important so I wondered you point out in the book then that Moses I didn't know this that leader of his people who was a receiver of God's law actually had a stammer yes and I think that's very important why because he tells at one point he is saying to God look why have you chosen me as a prophet I've got a terrible speech impediment I can't speak no one can understand a word I say and God says to him don't worry your brother Aaron he's a good speaker he can convey this to the people for you and so we get what we're getting ik Scott's words at least secondhand and you wonder how much Aaron really understood of what was going on but the point is that Aaron is also nice voluble clear clear speaking Aaron is also guilty of the archetypal idolatry he is in the one who gets the Israelites to worship God in the form of a golden calf which is seen as the archetype so it that you have here a sense that clarity is not that God is speaking through removes God is not something easily assimilated now this is this is not the way we think about God today we talk about God very loosely God wants this that loves that hates that we don't know what God is we are hearing as I say his words through a second hand at best and too much clarity too much putting God into a particular form is idolatry because and if you look at the book of Genesis for example you start off in Genesis I chapter one with a picture of everything that a God should be there he is in total control totally powerful just has to speak a word and everything comes into being totally fair blesses all that he has made his no favorites he sees that if they're all good but then three set three chapters in this God who is in total control has completely lost control of his creation and the rest of the book of Genesis systematically deconstructs that nice clear picture of God the benign creator becomes a cruel destroyer in the time of the flood wiping out the whole of the human race in a fit of what can only be called peak and and then shoves a rainbow in the sky afterwards a some kind of consolation prize and the God who was so fared blessing everybody it shows monstrous favoritism right from the start with Cain he refuses his sacrifice for no reason and puts an iron in Cain so then you have the first murder and finally jacob esau you know you hear the the sorrow of esau the rejected one have you no blessing for me father he says his to isaac father bless me too and nothing can be done Hagar who's dumped in the wilderness by Abraham with her baby son at God's command and this is the world we live in where things I'm not in the control of a nice benign God where we're terrible disasters happen we see it on the news where we see the total unfairness of life which life is not fair and at the end the God who was continually intervening in human affairs at every opportunity at the beginning of Genesis just fades out and Joseph and his brothers have to wrestle with their dreams and insights and just as we do so what that in all the Scriptures they are saying do not think you have a nice clear image of God when I was 8 years old I had to learn this catechism answer what is God they asked quick as a flash in a single sentence we had to chant God is the supreme spirit who alone exists of himself and is infinite in all perfections wrong God hey the whole idea that you can simply sum up God in a single sentence is is is a disaster but God is not a being he's not a spirit not even these Supreme Spirit that what Thomas Aquinas said and so it's sue and but the point about that catechism the Catechism when many of you may have done had had this - they were compiled after the Reformation by both the Catholic clergy the CLEF Catholic leaders and Protestant leaders to prevent people from reading Scripture this the the reformers the Protestant reformers as you know thought it would be easy as Vinglish said scripture explains itself it's clear Luther said that a simple man with his Bible and knows as much as any Council of Bishops assuming that it's the Word of God yes but the Word of God as we've seen with the Moses Aaron but is is not clear and the Reformers soon found that because they couldn't agree on basic issues and they were at loggerheads from the very beginning they couldn't worship together because they couldn't work out what God meant by what Jesus meant by eucharist and this this kind of thing happens and so they let so they made a ruling that unless you could read scripture in the original languages in Greek and Hebrew you must read scripture you must read it through these filters of catechism that gave you clear doctrinal answers that have no valency in Scripture and take out the mystery of God and reduce God to a set of tenable doctrines I'm interested in in the times even before that when people were encouraged and did did not think literally that they believed their own scriptures that they that they are you know the words of God that they were thought on the right house right-hand side of the brain you write that be that before the early pre-modern period for example scripture was open that it was fluid it was adaptable it was changeable can you tell me how yes yes indeed the best way to introduce is is through rabbinic Midrash after the loss of the temple which was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 the temple had been that the pivot of Jewish religious life without it Jews could not read that the old scriptures in the same way but they didn't just dump the scripture they developed a Midrash and that comes from a Hebrew root - which means to go in search of something that is to look for something that is not self-evident and they devised a method whereby they'd take some who would ask them a question say about God and they'd takes an answer from say one sentence from the Book of Psalms another firm one of the prophets and a third would say from the book of Genesis but the three verses together and then you had something different the person who created this form of exegesis was Rabbi Akiva who's killed by the Romans in the early 2nd century and there's a story about him that was a story that most is the same of his extraordinary scripture classes reached heaven and Moses got to hear about it and he was intrigued so he thought he'd come down to earth and join in the class so he came down and sat in the back row in the eighth row behind the other students but found to his intense embarrassment that he had didn't understand a word of the Torah that Rabbi Akiva was expounding the Torah that had been revealed to him on Mount Sinai and he went back to heaven though shaking his head like a proud father saying and my son's have defeated me they've gone beyond me and they another rabbis pointed out that that which was revealed to Moses and his contemporaries was changed by Rabbi Akiva that you you the scripture goes on and they said scripture revelation did not happen once and for all time it happened it occurred every time a Jew confronted the sacred text and in the early Talmud versions there would be a blank page and every student had to imagine himself standing on Mount Sinai would hide beside Moses with his teacher and getting bringing something new and adding it to that to the revelation on that blank page and without if they didn't do that then the revelation would not be complete so that innovative forward thrusting movement making it new making it speak to an animatic to a present that bore no relation to the past and the New Testaments the first there written by Jews we've also got this idea that but these the evangelists Matthew Mark and Luke as we call them they are really closer to the kind of exegesis used by the Qumran community by the Dead Sea where who saw in all the texts of the past a prediction of their own movement and you've got that wonderful story of their disciples on the road to Emmaus and Jesus has just been crucified and they they're in terrible distress and a stranger comes in he says look I can see that you're really distressed is there anything I can do to help I'm always quite grateful that those disciples weren't Brits the stiff-upper-lip who would have said cheerily oh no thanks we're fine and that would they take they take him into their confidence they bear their grief and he could have just laughed him to scorn but no and then we're told that he goes through the Scriptures starting with Moses and shows how it all pointed to Jesus and the crucifixion what not nothing is like that in but this is new inventive Midrash that Christian Midrash and then of course the story ends they they have dinner together and when Jesus when the stranger breaks the bread they recognized that it's Jesus and he disappears but they say this is important did not our hearts burn within us when he expounded the scriptures to it this isn't just a clever dick cerebral thing it's with nice with Midrash it's an entirely emotive and it was we're taught Luke was written that that Gospel of Luke was written in the early 2nd century so by this time that would have been how they experienced Midrash in in community where they would get an insight into hope I haven't defended so they would get an insight from their reading from their read but something that was emotional that was it wasn't just a bit of clever clever manipulation of the text one of the arguments you make repeatedly is that scripture shouldn't be read literally so if it isn't literally true what makes scripture Scripture well it's certainly not telling us facts about the creation of the world for example there are numerous in the Bible accounts of how God created the world and nobody knows these are and when so and similarly unless they are speaking to you now unless they're speaking to you now you can forget it if an Arabic said for example that when you every time you recite the Quran it should mean something different to you and if it doesn't mean something different to you you're not reciting it correctly because that's what's needed at this moment you must apply it to your situation but it must be practical but what makes it Scripture is it something that's innate or is it is it a function of social customs or is it it's it's an art form that people help people to deal with transcendence transcendence is a fact of life our brains are wired for it we encounter said that the world is something the points to the human the human brain goes in we seek it out and we look for moments when we listen to music or or read a poem when we get that sense of being touched deeply within and lifted momentarily beyond ourselves and feel that we inhabit our humanity a bit more fully than usual and you can get it people get it in sport which is a kind of religion but this not all scriptures do this for example they there are not all religions really want scripture guru nanak for example had no interest in scripture but later six did develop a sickness a scriptural canon and Zen Buddhists they they don't depend upon scripture so it's it's not very good but I mean you know way you you you give me a better question which is how is it different than a poem and in the way that it as you say it touches unit in a way but how do you distinguish between a scripture and a home that does exactly because it may point you to practical action practical action it's no as I said earlier it's no good just having a nice little warm glow in church and then going home to lunch you've the you must the the prophets of Israel for example had no time for people who said their prayers nicely and neglected the plight of the poor and the oppressed and so you must go out and work that the Buddha for example is the very good story have told in the Buddhist scriptures about him that after he'd achieved enlightenment he had the inconvenient thought that perhaps he should help other people to do this too and and then he thought no I don't want to do that he said this this demands it's very demanding and people are going to have to give up their ego their sense of self and that they don't want to do that and it's just going to be too depressing I'm not going to do it at which point Brahma that God in the highest heaven uttered a terrible cry and then he said the world then is lost the world will be utterly lost and he descended from heaven and knelt the god kneels before the enlightened man and he said lord please preach he said because look at the world and we're told that the Buddha looked at the world with the eye of compassion and spend the next 40 years of his life tramping through the villages and towns of India helping people to deal with their pain and so script where is a poem you can read it and you can be moved it does not ask you to give up a nice comfortable life to immerse yourself in the sorrow of the world to worry about where we're very much you probably don't do it in Canada but when in in in the UK when we're watching the news it's quite common for the newscaster to say if there's a bit of disturbing footage coming up you may find this upsetting or disturbing and that gives you a chance to go out and make a cup of tea or switch channels anything so that you don't have to be invaded by the horrors it doesn't happen here - yes okay so but this is very bad sign it didn't always happen and we we must allow the pain of the world to disturb us our scriptures demand that it's there not just about creating a nice and a lot of spirituality today's very self-centered it seems to me I mean yoga for example it's fine I mean but it's not it was not designed as an aerobic exercise it was meant for it was meant to extirpate the ego at a very profound level saying is mindfulness the buddha devised mindfulness and gave it to his months not so that they could feel more themselves and more in charge of themselves there's nothing wrong with it but it's just not what it's not what the Buddha had in mind because you discovered that you the self did not exist at all the self was an entire fiction and you could lay it to one side and yet one term that you sprinkle throughout the book is the ancient word ecstasy I think I'm saying that correctly from which we of course get the word ecstasy yes what is what is that term referring to ex Tarsus means stepping outside the self ex Tarsus standing outside the self and that's what we mean by transcendence when we feel that we are lifted momentarily beyond ourselves but it also means we leave that grasping nasty self behind that says me first or the blocks off the pain of the world and doesn't allow it to disturb us and that we go out and put us ourselves to one side that is the essence of a lot of religion I was brought up the whole way the whole purpose of religion was getting into heaven everything was about salvation my personal salvation mean it's not no I hope not because and that it that simply embeds you in the ego that you're supposed to transcend you're supposed to go out put yourself at the service of others to heal the pain of the world as as you see all the great prophets and sages did now in the book the lost art of of Scripture you say the experiencing Scripture is or should be transformative as you just said but it's not simply a moral transformation as in following a set of rules and it's not just a state of mind or sensations so what shape does transformation take for you personally oh well for years I wanted nothing whatever to do with religion ever again and for me the ecstasy's comes from study I basically coming to speak occasions like this I may see it seemed quite voluble I'm private little cell I live alone and love it I've never got married don't regret it and I love my silence in my study and being out on the road for weeks and and going around the world talking isn't is is a real struggle but I I must do it because the world is such a mess now but the study is it I as I say I went right away and my first books were really anti religious they were smart and clever and superficial but I one career after another faded fail didn't usually an ignominy and shame right when my television collapsed Korea collapsed I was went off and I started writing history of God and I expected it to follow the skeptical light of its predecessors showing that when circumstances changed people rejigged the idea of God to suit themselves but then first of all I was now in silence and working alone and there was no one to egg me on to be outrageous and bold and I began to realize that theology is poetry and you can't read poetry in a noisy nightclub you need you need quiet and then I encountered this footnote in a big hefty three-volume work on Islam and the footnote said that they told me that the historian of religion must must adopt what the the writer called the science of compassion that is a form of knowledge that comes through compassion which means be calm path feign to feel with the other he said the historian of religion cannot judge the spiritualities of the past from the advantage point of post enlightenment rationalism she or he must in a scholarly manner recreate everything that was going on at the time this spirituality was produced either you know intellectually or it's finding out what was happening in environmentally politically economically and and till youths until you finally got the holes setting in which this spirituality development and do not leave it he said until you can feel yourself feeling the same where I there I would do it feel like that in this way he said you broaden your horizons and make a place for the other in your mind and heart and I think that's what changed me around because that you really have to leave that clever overeducated Koren to one side and enter into the feeling of the other and that's that shape that changed me I think so for me it's when I read the scriptures I see them as a mandate I see them as not giving me information clear information I put myself into the position of these people who produced these scriptures but also say what would they want now so there is that so it is that calm pavayne to feel with the other as scripture should make us do that you see that they all tell us a to look at the fragility of the natural world as the Indian and the Chinese do and the the Chinese have been a great revelation to me the Confucians and they see that ethos of compassion as radiating out says I think this is important for our time now you start learning about in the school of compassion is in the family you can't go out and save the world if your own family is in disarray and it's very elaborately orchestrated so that everybody in the Chinese family gets a measure of absolute respect in an ideal way and it trains you in feeling for the other but it can't stop in the family you then spread out to the next circle which is the city in which you live and you've got to involve yourself in that city life a dime for example I'm incensed by the fact in London that twenty-five percent of the population in this rich city are living in poverty and a record numbers of homeless people are speaking in the street and sleeping in the street worried about you should this should worry you've not incentive just part you know stepping over these bodies and so that and try to do something about it but it can't stop with your city it then has to go out to the whole country and finally the Chinese said to the whole world and I think that hope that that ethos of reaching up to the whole world is essential at the moment when we are retreating into nationalistic ghettos like bricks it for example and [Music] it makes the Mexico border for example when the Berlin Wall came down people were dancing in the street but we saw people cheering at the prospect in the United States of a wall between Mexico and the United States and this is just it's we're looking at the way the migrants are dying literally dying every day take try to get into the UK we've just had this hideous incident of 24 29 people being suffocated in in a refrigerated ban from Vietnam and yet all we're thinking of doing is keeping them out we can't live like that in our world now but those concentric circles because of our communication with one another electronic communication it economic interdependence we when stock markets fall in one part of the world they stumble all around that day we this is a this retreat into narrow ethnic nationalism is a denial of what our times are supposed to be so I I got all that from from Confucius that we have all of us a responsibility to reach out to the four corners of the world I'm just curious on this very point did you read scripture differently when you were a nun did you see this global picture when you were reading back then no not at all you see was that we were Catholics we didn't really read scripture very much but we chanted it and there came there was a moment I was telling my guest the other night last night I I entered in 1960 the nineteen sixties during the Vatican Council and we we chanted the Divine Office every day we went through the whole sorter the whole songs every every week chanting them in Latin then the dictate came through that we had to do it in English and a lot of the sisters were thrilled about this because a lot of they didn't read Latin I could manage it and they said it would be lovely to be able to pray it properly because we'd be able to identify and understand what the words are but not all the Psalms are very edifying you know the Lord is my shepherd is lovely but there are a number of Psalms which are blood-curdling in their Roth where the psalmist imagines in great detail what he liked to do to his enemies or what he'd like God to do so if you imagine a large room a large chapter about this size filled with British very restrained polite summon them born in the Edwardian era chanting politely Oh God smash their teeth in their mouths and we just did that we just collapsed in mirth I could not go on incongruity of it so the only way we could get over that was going back to the old way of chanting it and not taking any notice of the sense and and yet I can see now I don't think I understood it then that that was a way of getting rid of the self in a way it's what you're not seeing replying all these words to me or mine the Psalms represent the whole of humanity we are a violent species we won't smash people's teeth in well just just on that point you have the knowledge you've knowledge that every scripture tradition has in it passages that advocate violence yes you do come across it more than once yet you also say that every religious tradition advocates for the other you talk about the compassion that that message is at the heart of every single scripture I find that circle kind of hard to square yeah of course look can you do yes basically the scriptures are not from God there are scriptures we write them but we may be inspired all but but we're a very violent species we are the only you may correct me here but I think we're the only species that kills there its own kind and we have these big brains that have enabled us to slaughter them very effectively and we do it we're doing it we speak and so we have to own this it's no good sitting in a little sort of spiritual ghetto singing the Lord is my shepherd we are also PCs and we all feel at some stage they liked we'd like to smash someone's teeth in you know I certainly get filled with rage sometimes and we've got to acknowledge that within ourselves and so and see it for what it is that the Scriptures because we are living always in violent times so it's it's not a question of squaring it it's a question of facing up to the city of the realistic situation in which we are in and I think the fact that we were chanting it almost impersonally means again that we were not thinking just about me me me so so how would you advocate reading that today those kinds of passages I would say well hey look that's it I have a lot of anger in me and just to say that you know it's only other people who old people of other religions or other faiths who commit violent acts I call I've had such a privileged life life of extraordinary privilege and interest and but I can imagine myself being very ugly indeed and rage vengeful if if I had not living in poverty in some of the distress and and looking at the way the world is this vast discrepancy between rich and poor nations and so you take it because this is your human nature and don't just press you know things that we're just all sweet so that there is that violence in all of us so how much of that informed your decision to be involved in ten years ago in unveiling the the Charter for compassion yeah well what I noted I got this TED Prize Ted gave gave used in those days to give prizes to people whom they thought had made a difference to the world but who with their help could make more of an impact and they give you a wish gave you wish for a better world and so I had been sick and tired of hearing religious leaders coming together to sort of in bay against homosexuality for example or you know what you never heard them saying was talking about the golden rule which is in every single scripture never treat others as you would not like to be treated yourself and that you had to apply to everybody not just to the people you like because that's what the world needs unless now we learn to ensure that all peoples whether we like them or not are treated as we would wish to be treated the world is not going to be a viable place and so I asked Ted to help me create a chart of it which would bring the golden rule back to the Ford so Ted put together a a paddle leading thinkers representing seven major world faiths and we went to wrote the Charter together in Geneva and then it became a kind of movement it's a chequered movement so sucked head was very keen on everybody signing up and so there's always that side of it I was never you know and so people were writing down I just helped an old lady across the road now this is fine I shall shortly be needed that kind of attention myself but this is not what I had in mind that there are there in more serious serious matters it's going we've just had our 10 year anniversary and we've got a new personnel now this success story in my view though which has got very little support in in in the United States where the the Charter is based is Pakistan interesting right in this this desperate country they a business met people are key here because business people know how to take a quixotic idea and translate it - something factual and practical they know how to pilot something find out what works what doesn't and a busy young businessman who's also a leading social activist in Pakistan he took the Charter on and he he said we're making Karachi one of the compassionate cities he sent out a questionnaire to all Karachi citizens what would you like compassionate Karachi to be like this what you'd like just to concentrate on they said education so he got together a team of educationalists who took my little book for 12 steps to a compassionate life and formed it into a training system which and which had to be imbibed by every teacher and everybody working in the building and they now have they are now arrived as charters now running all the government schools in Sindh in the province of Sindh and the neighbouring province is taking it on and these are mostly quite privileged schools so every one of these schools has to team up with a school in the impoverished areas so the rich kids get to see what's going on and and so they've also applied that same to hospital I went last on my last visit I went is the agra cars killed renault spittle and the doctor young doctor who route ran the thing said we go into medicine because we are compassionate but he gets knocked out of us with our training and there's there's rift between junior doctors and the surgeons and the height and and the nurses are regarded with contempt and the administrative staff are nowhere they've gone through this training system and the hospital they they said that culture of the hospitals completely changed and the children are going home two or three days earlier as a result and now that's beginning to be taken that that system is being taken up by other other hospitals and it's that practical that Cheerilee practical thing is what is required I'm not seeing a lot of it is a bit on the airy-fairy side in the United States I have to say though I think we may be seeing the new head the Charter next week when I'm in the States so maybe we can ginger it up a bit but but so that that is what we need to be doing not just having nice ideas about holding hands and and and but we need to do to make compassion something that is practical and usable and and but and basically viable but you I think you need a good practical business head to do that and I think we should take much more notice of business people here who are very eager to help in fact religious leaders most with one or two exceptions we're not the people who came forward to help me it was mostly business people sadly we're almost out of time yes I had asked me two more questions one is the literary theorist Northup Frye was once asked what happens if the myths we live by are forgotten or discarded and his response was this God will have to try his luck with another species would would you concur with yes yes III do think we're in a very very dangerous place I do think we harden our hearts against growing fury and you see in the old days the a small eros stop every civilization was founded by an aristocracy Knight comprised 10% of the population and the 90% of peasants were suppressed but the peasants never saw the enjoyed the riches of the that are in in China the peasants lived in underground dwelling pits in the countryside they never entered the cities they never saw the beautiful things the beautiful urns and inscriptions that you that were produced the wonderful riches of Chinese civilization and that applied all the way through but now that with our divided we flaunt our wealth on the social media and advertising they see this vast inequity and there's growing anger and hence these flow of migrants literally dying and and rage and distress and this I I fear for this very much I think we're at the beginning of some major major crisis and we still yet ah-ho we're retreating as I said earlier into brexit like ghettos to try and block out that pain and it's it's not sustainable and the Scriptures tell us go out there go out extend your compassion right out to the rest of the world unless we do that and just confine ourselves to singing a few hymns in church once a week then religion will will be failing the the traditions that are in our in those scriptures that that were pointing out that we had to see that the sacred core in every single human being and the Upanishads that see that everything of the planet including a banyan seed or a tree or a human being has the same sacred core within it we don't see that anywhere we just used the the nature's and just something's to be exploited and we don't see that other people who live in other traditions other societies or even the poor in our own societies have that same sacredness and it's interesting to come back to lion-man where you have that sense of reaching out to inimical species and embracing it in the in the in the cave lion that this statute this little statuette was discovered two or three days before the outbreak of World War two when we discovered what happened when people lost that sense of the absolute sacredness of every single human being given the responsibility you're infusing this idea of rescuing the Scriptures whose job should it be to rescue I think every one of us who reads them it's no good waiting for some council or Pope or something to do it we are the ones that read our scriptures and we should hear that mandate and and be inventive about it and be imaginative about it as as as the the exegetes used to be to make it apply to our time and in a practical way that can change the world that's what we that we should be doing with the text instead of having absurd schemes above of of returning to the seventh century for example Karen Armstrong thank you very very much [Applause]

Channel: Toronto Public Library

Views: 1,652

Rating: 4.8666668 out of 5

Keywords: Karen Armstrong, nalah ayed, toronto public library, toronto reference library, book talk, author talk, bram & bluma appel salon, appel salon

Id: CF03oKfZxq8

Length: 59min 8sec (3548 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 11 2020