Karen Armstrong | Special Lecture Series

hello and good afternoon I welcome you all on behalf of a special lecture series the event started eighteen years ago in line with universities policy to enhance broad-based education over the years we have been inviting eminent national and international guests our guest today is Miss Karen Armstrong I will invite mr. Amin Ashwani to come to the stage and introduce our guests good evening everyone I'll make this very short as much as we would like to believe that we live in a globalized world the process of globalization however has been a disruptive experience for most people creating conflicts mass migration inequalities and giving rise to populist and unkind leaders that are playing on the fears and insecurities of its population and all this is happening at a time when we are facing imminent and irreversible environmental disasters from massive mass extinctions global warming population pollution deforestation and rising sea levels most of us know dr. Armstrong as an author and a historian but to me she is a visionary and an untiring social activist over a decade ago upon receiving a TED Prize she launched a global movement known as charter for compassion arguing that unless we don't change our ways and bring compassion to the center of our lives we will not leave behind a viable planet for our generations to come ten years later her quest continues with missionary zeal and here she is amongst us today more determined than ever to make her vision come true and it is my pleasure to invite dr. Armstrong to share with us her thoughts and insights in how we can save us all from ourselves thank you thank you Amin and it's wonderful to be back here last time I came the Charter for compassion hadn't even been thought of last time I was in this auditorium and it's has been an absolute thrill to come here this this afternoon to see the marvelous work that's going on in the ArchiCAD Children's Hospital i-it's it's been for the I see well the the the team they're taking that vision and translating it magnificently practically creatively [Applause] and it should be it should be a model for the entire world it because medicine as we know is one of the ways where they went where compassion is essential and is so often left out but out of sheer pressure and and overwork and ego gets in the way but what I've seen this afternoon has given me hope and I shall be talking about it when I visit the world Parliament of Religions in in November in the Canada now what we talk about compassion a lot but what does it actually mean the words often confused with pity or being nice in some way or mercy in fact it's it comes from a Greek and Latin root calm parfait in kampar Co which means to feel with the other to put yourself in somebody else's shoes where tolerance a word that's often used in conjunction with compassion comes from another latin root meaning tolerate means to look to put up with something to to endure and it's that rather the language of the victor who decides what he or she will tolerate compassion is about equality to feel with the other to look into your own heart discover what gives you pain and then refuse under any circumstance whatsoever to inflict that pain on anybody else in every single religious tradition it's been often expressed in the Golden Rule Confucius was the first to enunciate it in a way that that put it into a negative form do not impose on others what you yourself desire forces you to look into your own heart discover what gives you pain and then refuse under any circumstance whatsoever to inflict that pain on anybody else and that's not just anyone's private life but also it's essential as I'll come to later politically because we're how does compassion work in a fragmented world as the title of this our world is in a mess as we've just been chatting about now before we arrived in this auditorium I I as a Brit I'm struggling with a whole nightmare of brixon a complete insanity we have Donald Trump here you have a renewed attention with India the world will not be a viable place unless we learn to treat all peoples whoever they are whether we like them or not as we would wish to be treated ourselves so but this is not new in the past there have been times of huge huge fear and distress and all the our great mentors philosophers and prophets who enunciated the golden rule were living in times like our own where violence and hatred and conflict had reached an unprecedented crescendo you take Confucius for example he was writing at the very beginning of a terrible period in Chinese history called the warring States Period in which all the states on the Great Plain of China fought one another mercilessly with increasingly sophisticated and effective military technology until 500 years later only one of them was left and that became the Chinese Empire was fought the forcible unification of China and in in in Palestine Rome and Palestine where Jesus and where Hillel great rabbi Hillel were operating you have a tremendous sense of oppression it under imperial rule hello right in working in Jerusalem great Pharisee at the beginning of their of the of the first century of the Common Era was once asked by a pagan if he could enunciate the whole of Jewish teaching while he stood on one leg if you can do that said the pagan I'll convert to Judaism Hillel stood on one leg and said that which is hateful to you do not do to your fellow human being that is the Torah and everything else is only commentary go and study it and Jesus made the same comment when he was asked but he put it in a positive firm where do unto others what you would have done unto you not one of you can be a believer that the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him unless he desires for his neighbor what he desires for himself and again the Prophet was speaking and working at a time when Arabia had reached a crescendo of tribal warfare and violence and Mecca itself in the throes of creating an infant an infant market economy well as torn apart and becoming extremely unequal and unfair certain people were being the poorer people were being pushed to the wall in an entirely new way so they were speaking to violent societies and we should make this Golden Rule speak now in our time because unless we do so it's unlikely I think that we can evolve or even survive now with all these really worrying hands who've got their fingers on nuclear baths so but how did I get here because I know I never associated religion with compassion as a young woman I had I entered a religious order the Catholic religious order and I didn't see much compassion there and that's quite quite common I think in in in in institutions of that kind and I came away very bruised and angry hated religion wanted nothing to do with it ever again look what happened and I buy early books were really very very critical of religion and especially it's it's seeming unkindness but I had a softer leaving the comment I had a series of career disasters and one of them I went off to a remote part of London to write a book called a history of God and in that time I was by this time I was entirely alone there was nobody there and there's no television crew to egg me on to be outrageous and outspoken there was just silence me and the texts and the texts began to speak to me in a different way because of course theology is poetry and you cannot really read a poem in a noisy nightclub you need a certain silence and receptivity and the text started to talk to me in quite a different way and so I I kept being concerned that this word compassion kept calling coming up I did whatever faith tradition I was talking about in whatever period whether it was the Indian or the Chinese or the monotheistic compassion was seen to be at the core of the entire thing it was that it was the hallmark of faith not one of you can be a believer unless he desires for his neighbor what he desires for himself and yet you never seem to hear about it very often when religious leaders came together they were often condemning something or promoting a certain doctrine or a certain certain policy but so that's when Ted asked me to write to think when Ted gave me the prize they give you a wish for a better world and I asked Ted to help me to write create and propagate a charter for compassion that would restore compassion to the center of religious life and we came to we decided at the end that we do this in Geneva a place where everybody could feel safe a neutral ground and we had 23 religious leaders representing Judaism Christianity Islam Confucianism Hinduism and Buddhism sitting around the table and - and the idea was that we at a time when the religions has often seemed to be at loggerheads on this we were all in agreement and we could come together to make a better world and together we wrote this Charter it's only at 30 short 300 papers page statement I've been I we didn't know what would happen and it's been up and down I have to say and some you know Ted was tended to be a bit on the let's get compassion out there so getting people to do a good deed and then write it up on the website which wasn't my idea really because you don't do a good deed and then tell the world about it very often these things are silent and unobtrusive and anyway it's not about ego because compassion requires you as we said in the charter to dethrone yourself from the center of your world and put another there instead of sticking out for what you want you have to put yourself in the position of the other all day and every day so Confucius don't do to others what you would not like to be done to you you have to think what would I like this and then don't apply it to anybody else and the same for the positive putting yourself in in in a secondary position and what has been the great revelation to me is that the what we really need to do this not religious people like me or writers I have I have not got a practical mind I spend my life sitting at a desk writing and reading abstruse texts but businesspeople and I now see medical people who are practical people able to translate that charter and I have to say that of all the countries where the Charter for compassion is being implemented Pakistan is way up at the top and and that is a magnificent achievement given that this is a country right on the front line of many of the conflicts that are tearing our world apart and it shows what can be done so it's that's why it's such a pleasure to be with you here today and because I mean has been largely instrumental in this and he is a business person and unlike me who have no head for business at all he knows how to take an idea and translate it into practical action pilot it he's not afraid that a business person isn't afraid to take risks you know I say this too why don't you try this some some people and they don't know we can't do that it probably won't work well you have to try things and you have to watch see try something out maybe it doesn't but then you'll you'll see what happened you have justice you have to pilot any new invention Amin was saying the other day think how many attempts there must have been failed attempts before finally got the Internet and that's how progress happens and what's happening in here not just in this wonderful hospital but in Pakistan generally is is a real example to the world because and so it's it's thrilling to be here today for that now one of the things that they're also doing beside being in the hospital is a fantastic Schools program because getting the young on board is essential and I mean they were talking to me about the educational system that they have set up they're now in control working with the Sindh government to create schools of compassion to get the young familiar with this terminology compassionate cricket's for example we should certainly have compassion at football in the UK we can't play cricket anymore but let's be honest but football perhaps we could do something and also tomorrow I'm gonna starting a new project bridges and we're opening it tomorrow I can't wait to see it they've the Charter has reinvigorated a space under the bridges of Karachi where the street children live and they've they've built a facility there it would be open for the street children and university students will be coming to teach the the children to read or or do or English or maths or or cricket indeed and so it will be a bridge not just a physical bridge but a bridge where the rich and the poor the privileged and the unprivileged can come together and become aware of one another and work together it's just starting tomorrow and it's it that's going to go far it's all in because they're the team are very concerned not to impose anything do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire do not impose on others what you yourselves do desire sometimes wait and see what is needed in that particular community and then act accordingly and that's the policy they're going to take no my latest book I'm just in the final stages of finishing it before it finally goes to press is a history of scripture scripture in all religious traditions Indian Chinese as well as Jewish Christian and Muslim and I've learnt a number of things first as the golden rule is essential to all of them where there's a lot of talk about how scripture is aggressive the Koran in particular preaches violence not at all again the emphasis is always on on compassion and equality equality which in our world with all our fine talk about freedom we've still not managed to create equal societies certainly true in the UK it's certainly true in the United States I'm sure it's true here that we've we've been unable to do that now the punish ads in India they say that every single creature not just every single human being has it a sacred core of the Atman which is identical with the ultimate reality the Bronfman so one of the sages says to his son as he is inducting him into this spirituality we are what we all share the same nature and he takes the parable of all the rivers in the world which eventually flow into the sea and they do not say I am after they flowed in they do not say I am this river or I am that River because they have become one together in in the divine a sense of total equality and hence in you have a whole idea of the divide divinized human being and it Hindus will bow to one another acknowledging the sacredness that they are encountering in the other in the other person the chine what are the things they insisted upon was that it you must translate this into practical action and the Chinese very early in about the 11th century but before the Common Era invented the Mandate of Heaven heaven being the supreme reality in the Confucian worldview and which said that if a ruler failed to treat the mean the little people the peasants the poor correctly and fairly and kindly if he inflicted severe punishments on the more harsh rule heaven would take away its mandate and to rule it's a very very subversive idea because it means that any king could could be deposed and that remained in Chinese history right up until the 1911 revolution we're talking about transcendence in religion to get beyond the self and that the golden rule requires you to dethrone yourself from the center of your world and put another there so it is compassion pact practiced all day and every day as Confucius says is the transcendence we seek because we are leaving the self behind so instead of seeking out some vision or of the divine you have it within you it sits there as a potential and leaving that ego that clamorous selfish mean-spirited a part of ourselves behind you encounter a larger sense of self we have to do it in order to get it all day and every day jesus said love your enemies and that needs a bit of decoding know one eye expecting us all to fall deeply in love with Osama bin Laden or Donald Trump he he was using a Hebrew term commenting on a Hebrew term has said he was caught doing a bit of rabbinic exegesis on a passage in Leviticus that says love your neighbor and treat your neighbor kindly and Jesus is saying yes certainly love your neighbor but in a typical rabbinic way he takes it further and says now love your enemy and the word has said in the ancient Near East was used in international treaties two kings would promise to love one another and that didn't mean that they would fall into one another's arms and become best friends but that they would be they would be loyal to one another they would come to one another's aid in time of trouble they would risk they would they would give him support practically and militarily even if it went against their short-term interests and come to their help even in times that were difficult and that is the kind of love that we have to give up to our so-called enemies today because if we if we want a viable world it was a practical thing and the whole of the Quran is simply a cry for compassion the in some of the early sewers talking about the the final judgment the Quran says that it is the unconsidered act the little act of kindness that you've forgotten which may turn the scale that will bring you into paradise something a kind is like just give you a cup of water or food to someone when you have little yourself and that was a jihad not holy war that was a jihad because he'd meant a struggle with that selfishness and to give to the other and also the pluralism of the Quran where in my convalescent period when I was beginning to realize that religion wasn't as dreadful as I imagined I learned a lot from other faiths in Judaism I learned never to stop asking questions to keep on asking inconvenient questions right up to the the end never to stop which was a great liberation for me who brought up with infallible Pope's and hard-lined Catholic dogma at that time but what attracted me to the Quran was its pluralism the fact that it endorses other faiths and the Sufi tradition was of huge importance to the world I think I I think there's been very I think the Sufis gave an example an extraordinary example of a respect for other religious traditions that is unparalleled in the world and I just like to share with you this quotation which turned me around when I read it out on an index card and pinned it on my bulletin board so as I saw it every day it's by every Arabi do not praise your own faith so exclusively that you disbelieve all the rest if you do this you will miss much good may you'll fail to recognize the real truth of the matter God the omnipresent and omniscient cannot be confined to any one Creed for he says in the Quran where so every turn there is the face of Allah everybody praises what he knows his God is his own creature and in praising it he praises himself consequently he blames the beliefs of others which he would not do if he were just but his dislike is based on ignorance and here there you have again the sense don't cling to your opinions which is a form of go but recognize the divinity in other traditions that may that may challenge you and I think again in a world where increasingly strident Orthodox is not just in a religious way but politically economically we need that that kind of mentality remember his God is his own creature and in praising it he praises himself that we identified it's an assertion of ego too much but what I've also learned from the Scriptures is that it has to be implemented practically and in public life I'm all for the secular ideal because what secularism should do but or isn't often doing is it liberates religion from the inherent injustice of the state and then because no state however democratic it maybe has ever achieved in creating perfect equity certainly Britain certainly hasn't even though we sing proudly Land of Hope and Glory it has written has committed great harm not least here in the subcontinent and we have so but that doesn't mean we all should scurry back into our little burrows and say our prayers in private you it it frees you to perhaps hold the state to account sometimes but we've been having some dreadful scenes in London you know recently we've had a very very cold winter last winter and is at the moment a rich country and it was a disgrace that there were unprecedented numbers of people sleeping rough on the streets in during that winter about a year ago you've probably read about the tower block a housing development a tower block which was burnt down and said see two people were killed many of them Muslim immigrants in and in one of the rich in one in the richest borough in London Kensington and Chelsea the the council had put on their housing it highly flammable cheap cladding which the whole thing exploded just one one fridge blew up and the whole tower block went up in flames but did I hear I didn't hear any religious leaders speaking out about it our Muslim mayor came and he's doing great by the way and he came and and and braved the anger of the crowd chanting a church opened its door the local church did but I heard nothing from the Archbishop of Canterbury or the archbishop of westminster say talking about about this taking the nation to task because and that i think is is perhaps what we're missing because then what the in the scriptures i've learned that the great tradition say that you achieve enlightenment by helping others i was always taught as a young nun that first I had to perfect myself before I could really be let loose on the world and help the world well you know we could all wait until you know the clouds come home for that to happen but no they say no in the Confucian tradition that is how you achieve what they call enlightenment they say you must start off by working on yourself and then they the Confucians they go out in a series of concentric circles each one getting wider and wider and wider we start with concern for yourself then you move to your city your own village then you move to your country and finally you reach out to the entire world and that that is an endless process that you're a sense of responsibility for the pain of the world never stops it goes on and the neo-confucians in the 12th century were saying don't think that you've got to say your prayers first or be like as some of the Chinese Buddhists who were saying first you have to achieve enlightenment but Nevada he's they said no you do it by helping others by reaching out to others practically and politically the Buddha we often see him locked in meditation cross-legged in yoga yogic pose and indeed he did a lot of yoga and achieved enlightenment that way but there's a rather wonderful story about the Buddha that after he'd achieved enlightenment the inconvenient thought occurred to him as he was sitting in bliss the perhaps he should preach this doctrine and he thought it over and thought now I don't want to do that you know it's going to be very dispiriting for me it's hard work people have got to lose their egos and most people don't want to do that and it'll be too depressing I'm not going to do it at which point Brahma the Hutt God in the highest heaven uttered a terrible cry and he said then the world will be lost the world will be utterly lost and so the God came down from heaven and knelt before the enlightened man and he said because in Hinduism the enlightened man is higher than the gods and he said lord please preach your Dharma your teaching he said look at the world and in a very important phrase in the Pali scripture it says the Buddha looked at the world within the eye of a Buddha and saw its pain and for the next 40 years of his life until his dying day he tramped through the cities and villages of India helping people to deal with their suffering and so he and furthermore he insisted that his monks do this too they were not simply to bask in the glories of the serenity of the event in Nevada he said go forth monks in and heal the pain of the world and there were there came a great division in the budget Buddhist community over the years there were some arahants people who've achieved enlightenment who were just doing meditation but the majority said no and invented the ideal of the bonnet Bodhisattva who stayed in the world after enlightenment and continued out of compassion to help everybody from their pain assuming all kinds of different forms and look at that and that included animals too as well as as human beings so it that the impulse to achieve enlightenment was inseparable from the the practice of compassion and the Prophet peace be upon him did not I he had a wonderful vision in Mount Hira but he didn't spend his life in that cave but came down from the mountaintop and embarked on a an extremely difficult demanding and dangerous political career to bring the justice and compassion to the world so in the Charter for compassion we have started a a a circle of cities that declare themselves to be compassionate cities dedicated to the ideal of compassion and the mayor has to endorse this and to be working practically for something that the city needs I have to say that the best of our cities is Karachi streets ahead of the others and I once asked on a telecast thing what should Indian come what should it what should what should this compassionate City be like expect they were expecting would all be full of joy and peace and love I said a compassionate City should be an uncomfortable City it should be deeply uncomfortable to know that any one person in the world is suffering it should take the pain of the world that we see every night on our television screens and and let's ignore away at our hearts to create a better world in the UK now it's become customary when during the evening news for the newscaster when something upsetting is about to come on the news to say a warning you may find this disturbing as if to say now's your cue to switch channels or go out and get yourself a cup of tea or something so that you don't see this distressing sight and we have cocooning ourselves from the pain of the world in that way but we should see this pain as a spiritual opportunity because it will invade our beings trouble us I believe the Prophet once said that you can you'll correct me if I'm wrong but not one of you can be a believer if he can sleep when he knows that someone is hungry and that is that that should be the compassionate role not to hug one spirituality to oneself but to feel the pain of the world as if it were one zone and do ones best practically to alleviate it thank you I thank miss Armstrong on behalf of all of us for wonderful talk we have got 15 or 20 minutes for Question and Answer session I would request you to introduce yourself and if you can kindly give the question brief and concise thank you thank you dr. Armstrong that was wonderful my question is that compassion presupposes human suffering and it's an indication of a dysfunctional world you call it you cover that but it doesn't resist it and it is more dealing with the result rather than the cause so would you say what we need in this fractured world is compassion or the resistance to injustice well I I would see the two as entirely compatible basically that the justice is after what when you're seeking justice you are seeking the good of the other you're seeking for equity and fairness and always sorry always you start with injustice no state no civilization has ever achieved anything without suppressing vast amounts of the population that was true of the agrarian State which depended upon night at small aristocracy comprising about 5% of the population and their retainers and servants dominated 90% of the population kept them at serfdom and continued to take their surplus so that they they could not advance but from this you see this is the problem a historian say that without this iniquitous system we probably would never have advanced beyond a primitive positions sector because it created a privileged class with the leisure to create the Arts and Sciences on which our civilizations depended so we start off with injustice and from the very start even in wet ancient Mesopotamia you have mystics and poets crying out against this so it's not as though we start off in a clean slate as it were and and then we have to sort of preempt the bad stuff coming in basically where you all Ammar a Muir there's purpose there things that have gone wrong and it's that's the first noble truth of Buddhism existence is dukkha life is dukkha life is or it's often translated life is suffering but it's life is all right as something uncomfortable about it there's sickness pain death injustice and so then it is always a bit reactive I see don't see just I see compassion justice and compassion as synonymous really you desire justice for yourself then seek it also father's all others thank you so much for the wonderful session and I think a queue management for bringing you again here I love that I'm worried be a senior for a student at EKU my question is how to respond to the challenges of modernity especially materialism we can say or the unquestioned rationalism and scientism that is attacking the myths their religion created to bring humanity together thank you you see I mean rationalism started with all kinds of good ideals you know the French Revolution wanted equality Liberty but then we had the sanguine into a reign of terror and this is I think humanity modernity has certainly been problematic but so is every society before it modernity has its its own problems and there is too what what it's it's danger is that it is concentrating too much on the analytical and logical part of the brain to the exclusion of the right brain which is where compassion lies as well as poetry art and music because you you it's some periods of history you can see in the Renaissance they were very right brain people and then with science wearing and we're encouraging people to think you know the young people I'm sure not doesn't happen here a target Kahn University are discouraged from going into the humanities and going in for science and physics and all these things which are wonderful and have done huge things for human beings but we also need this other part of ourselves that breaks our heart in a way sometimes music is very much akin to sadness it's it's it there is a something when you listen to wonderful music there's a sorrow in it and to open your heart to the sorrows of the world and so modernity is problematic and we keep on saying thinking how wonderfully equitable we are but the sins of modernity been huge the Enlightenment began in Britain and we brought our weaponry and our scientific skills to the rest of the world too hideous effects really I mean you know you've been very kind to me here in Pakistan but I'm aware that things were not great and too much interfering but for just but there have been religious missionaries - who've gone round in the wake of the colonialist sort of decrying other people's faith and that's what we are I'm afraid we have a genius for taking something good and science is good it's done great things but then saluting it in some way constantly we have to keep in mind that we need both sides of our brain and allow ourselves to be troubled but anything was a bit too optimistic sometimes a sense that now we've got as justice and democracy and everything all will be well when it hasn't all been well as we see it it's been great and I'm very grateful to modernity I'm a woman you know normally and all my forebears would have been peasants in Ireland I was the first member of my family to go to university and I often think about my four bedroom I'm inherited a reasonably good brain what that was wasted there so modernity gives people huge opportunity but the other people as we know here in Karachi from the Charter is doing such wonderful work here I left out of that very nice that you could come again and I think last time David Robert David David Taylor yes yes he invited you my two questions one is there is compassion hardwired and number two if we look into the Anthropology then we observe through writing of Howard Zinn the peel the history of American people that the Native Americans were practicing compassion and how did they do that we have lost it did you say your first question hard what yeah certainly we compassion is in our brains it's in the right brain it's it enables a mother it developed evolutionary in evolutionary terms when when Homo sapiens was develop having giving birth to Hotaling helpless infants and so the mother was needed there to hold this infant and nurture it unlike turtles for example you just lay their eggs and go off into the sea human babies need a lot of nurturing and that they think triggered helped us to develop there's the compassionate elements in our brain it's part of us and every virtue and every art is simply developing something that is for which we're wired you know we we could we learnt Homo sapiens to walk on two legs and from this we've developed gymnastics and ballet my sheer hard work cultivating that initial initial gift and so that you know perform and a dancer can perform feats that are pop absolutely impossible for an untrained body similarly with compassion we've all got it there the Chinese say that it's one of the roots of humanity and there's a Chinese philosopher Mencius who said that if you see a child if a person sees a child standing on the edge of a well about to drop in he or she will immediately run lunge forward to to save it it would be a very odd person who just wandered persons that thought without a pang and thought oh that's a pity there's there's a pool there for us to do something but what we have to do is cultivate it just as we have to cultivate our dancing or and gymnastics and and other and other physical feats the Native Americans what happened to them they got run over by people like the British I think they're perfectly decent societies but we we I know we started arriving over there and then killed them all I mean they're still in and now they're in dreadful plight I mean it's Canada is much better about dealing with this I found but in the United States didn't they never mentioned this and they're pushed into some ghastly reservation and forced to run casinos and things that's enough to send anyone into sort of utter decline despair Roth I should think so that's you know we are we we oh we where we are overrun that way and cultures are taken away from us and our precious sanctities are scorned and frowned upon and we're slaughtered and we're likely to develop harsher harsher well it's a huge and a worrying worrying level of suicide among Native Americans right now thank you for taking my question my name is Severn minnow hi over there I'm dr. Severn me know with Habib University and social development and policy assistant professor I work in issues of emotional intelligence and a relational hygiene and my question to you is how do you cultivate this compassion in light of so much desensitization we don't feel anymore we are stuck in judgment with whether it is the Hajus Sierra's that are begging on the streets whether it is the the you know slaughter of mass industries of animals and and so it seems that when it's out of sight out of mind or that it is very convenient not to not to feel the burden of the predation of humankind in modern times we are the ultimate predator of everything and and so how do you fight that in light of a neoliberal economy that actually promotes that well thank you for that it's a very important question I think I touched on it when I talked about those newscasters telling us to switch over when unless we saw God forbid we should see someone's upsetting picture from Syria for example we need to see these pictures we and we live in the West in the West we do in a cocoon in the agrarian societies where as I say 80% of the population were suppressed and rendered virtual slaves and that persisted in every single civilization people did at least see the peasants toiling in the fields but we in the West are encouraged to keep the economy going to buy huge amounts of stuff and as one sociologist says we no longer seek transformation we change ourselves by changing our stuff by buying new things we attack college to go shopping and so we we never see the people who make a lot of these goods in sweatshops in in in poorer parts of the world we it's not it's hidden from us so we must take the opportunity of insisting that we look at unsung unhappy things that make the givers keep us awake at night and we've got our migrants in Europe literally dying nearly every day to get into Europe coming in from Africa or the Middle East on little tiny crafts and drowning in the attempt to get oh every day there are people driving this is a terrible plight and we flaunt our wealth in the agrarian economies this serves couldn't could not we're so separate from the aristocracy they could not imagine their lifestyles but we put ours online and flaunt our wealth and privilege and of course this is building up huge but now we must if we want to survive we've got to look at the pain of the world and not turn switch channels because we are inundated in many ways with images of suffering more than any previous generation you know on the evening news we see these things daily and it's easy just to sort of let it go out of mind but it should be a spiritual opportunity we should take one of those pictures one of those distressing images and let it return to it at various times during the day so that it starts to eat a hole in our consciousness and make us uncomfortable it's I think this is this is vital I think to the whole compassion movement and looking at the poor people we've got in our own streets in London and you have I know great poverty here in this country to look at it and make it let it trouble you that is the first step so that it knows away at your at your heart thank you dr. Armstrong it's a better to hear you speak again I had a question for you specifically in relation to the ceiling paradox between the need for compassion and the paradox of tolerance wherein for example we're often told that we cannot be tolerant towards intolerance so for example when there are extremists in Pakistan blowing things up in the name of religion or there's white nationalists like Richard Spencer how would you respond to you know this seeming like this flow essentially in the need for compassion in the face of people who are not going to be compassionate in any way that doesn't mean we will rush out and fling our arms around terrorists so it's condone what they've done what they've done is is is is wrong harmful evil and its influence and each one each person they've killed if there's a radius of pain for all that spreads out of course that must be but what we mustn't do is adopt a position of superiority as though we are not in that bracket and we we don't do that very often I remember after the Paris atrocity there Charlie M dog massacre if you remember that was a that was a that was a crime you know that it was just a crime to kill those people but I was appalled to see all those political leaders marching arm in arm linked arms in in the name of freedom of expression in Paris with all the scenes of the of the French Revolution and liberty but all behind us well I looked at David Cameron in my own prime minister at that time who headed a country that had for over a century supported regimes in muslim-majority countries that allowed their people no freedom of expression at all we we mustn't accept as we look back and say these are awful people we have to look at our own failings too and see how one thing can lead to another there's no condoning any ill saying what we've got to understand and love them and give them cups of tea but just stop that egotistic drive or virtue to say we would never do this and and think how that this whole mess has come about because I I think probably very few of us very few of us are Saints and very few of us are probably evil but well it can become so I've been evil at my life I thought evil things and I think if I had I think to myself if I hadn't had such a privileged life and been given so many opportunities that I could have become us some wicked person I would not say I'd become a terrorist but could I could have had children and and give me their lives hell or be that's teacher and punished me you know you could you could see yourself taking all that out on other people and you've got it's not just that I'm a bleeding-heart who think I already had a happy childhood but just don't let we don't know what went on in their heads and we have no business even to pronounce upon it but just think that you know it wouldn't be take much for force ordinary people to become criminals of the first order without privilege and and love and nurturing and all the things that someone like me and will all pass all of us here in this beautiful auditorium has yeah thank you very much for your insightful talk it has made us think a while I'm here oh good yes right I'm a pediatrician I would like your opinion about how you connect compassion with charity because a lot of times compassion is the practical way of showing compassion is by doing something charitable but in many religions charity is looked upon as a step towards getting to heaven or or or or earning a privilege in the afterlife which is very selfish I would say so how would you relate the tool and and kind of connect to make charity less egoistic let's say yeah I agree I the afterlife is a thing and I have been tirely agnostic about it I I'm not even very interested in it because by early childhood and my early years in religion were all about getting into heaven entirely I mean you know I read fear that I was going to end up in hell and all these good things I was going to do would get me into have would I pass the great it's all about me where's religion is about losing yourself yeah I think beyond the ego so I think that it's perfectly fine to hope to see your nearest and dearest in the next world and all the time right but don't make that the kingpin of the thing I know Jesus for example did not talk about the afterlife he talked about the kingdom of heaven but he was Jewish and Jews are rather agnostic about the afterlife and he believed that they heaven the kingdom of heaven or kingdom of God heaven was a juice was way of not saying God because Jose don't like to say the word God very easily so heaven was a synonym for God would be here on earth here and now he started his ministry saying the kingdom of heaven has already arrived you can have it now and I think once you start make it becomes nothing it can become religion can become nothing about ensuring your eternal survival in optimum conditions which is about ego about the endless preservation of ego let it go I think I think it means letting yourself go because I think about others and know I do all these Hellfire sermons and things and I think do great harm and make religion a sort of literally ego trip to the next world when what you should be doing is losing that ego as far as you can in giving it so that when you die on earth the world has been a better place because you've been in it a little bit that's the sort of immortality I think that we should if there's something else that could be a wonderful surprise and a joy - thank you dr. Armstrong ah hi this is Munira so we gathered that modernity is providing a lot of opportunities to practice compassion right but what about what to what extent do you think the gifts of modernity like nation-states policies politicization of religion hinder this practice of compassion look nation-states have been a disaster i think a part of modernity they're part of our economic development and they were needed to it's a fuel the national product it was before modernity it was impossible to have an a a national spirit because how would somebody living up in northern scotland feel they had anything in common or know anything about someone living down in the south of england or in this huge subcontinent how would you create a national spirit before there was modern media where you got to know one another in this way and it's a 19th century invention the nation-state and very early in the history of the nation-state the British historian Lord Acton was very prescient he said that the emphasis in the nation-state on ethnicity culture and language would make it very difficult for people who did not fit the national profile and he said with chilling accuracy that in some cases they could be enslaved or even exterminated and it was not long after that that the Young Turks massacred over a million Armenians in order to create a purely Turkic state they were not religiously motivated this was they were they were secular Compton atheists and nationalists Hitler and the Holocaust Holocaust and then Bosnia when we yet again we saw concentration camps on the outskirts of Europe and it's and what we're seeing at the moment I think is a disease of nationalism breaks it for example which I swear started out absolute insanity in many ways because we are now whether we like it or not global we are connected with one another as never before by the World Wide Web we're linked to one another inextricably economically when markets fall in one part of the world stocks plummet all around the globe that day and what I'm seeing at the moment is since that brexit vote is a real surge of dislike for the other rising up in my country I was a trustee of the British Museum at the time of the vote of the that wretched referendum and in the week after the results came out visitors to the museum were yelling at members of start of the museum staff who are clearly not Caucasian and telling them now you've got to go home this and you know we has become a kind of religion you you are still pretty much in tune with religion here in the subcontinent but in Britain you know it's the worst market for my books and but when I mentioned the Charter everyone glazes over and gasps smiles politely and changes the subject but our religion it's a football that's part of it where people get uplifted or join together in joy and exorcists but also the nation-state just had approached something called the last night of the Proms that the promenade concerts in the Albert Hall finishes with a gala night which it's great fun and it's fun to watch it lovely on the TV whereby you have beautiful music and then they start doing very British things we sing Rule Britannia of famous contralto will come and sing Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory and throughout the nation parks people watch it together on with huge parks on big screens and they're all singing Rule Britannia it's complete nonsense because oppressively a long time since Britain has ruled any waves at all and well being a land of Hope or glory and were either but we still do it and it gives us an uplift of our hearts well within us and we feel at one with that it is a kind of religion and as a kind of that's perfectly harmless I mean we all know we're finished especially with brexit but we know with our hearts but we it gives us a sense of community and all the rest of it though you see in the brexit period sit post brexit peep the great awful slogan has been let's make Britain great again my home was flooded terribly fled the whole the whole neighborhood was flooded by a burst water main pipe we're all evacuated in Islington from our homes at 6 o'clock in the morning by the police and were given refuge in a pub which it's very early the morning opened its doors to us it's pitch dark and we all neighbors staggered in soaking wet greeting one another wearily and somebody said of our near neighbour I hope it all goes into Boris Johnson's house he's lives just around the corner from us and one woman who we didn't know said he is my hero she said let's make Britain great again and we all went ahhh and slunk away but that slogan has been shouted out but I you know some of us journalists we're getting together and saying we should really educate the public as to what happened when Britain was great again and then he wasn't all wonderful that there were things done that were not great just as with every Empire things have been done that were not great we need not to idealize the past in this list nationalistic way but to see ourselves realistically as human beings who fail who have aspirations that we long for that love to come together but that sometimes we get it wrong I think we have time for only two last questions hi dr. Armstrong I'm here yes thanks thank you for sharing your thoughts I'm just gonna narrow the focus from the world view to a personal focus we all have very loud and unkind inner critics do you think that the journey to offer compassion to the world starts with offering compassion to the self or is offering compassion to the world akin to the disintegration of the eye look if thank you it's a very good question I wrote her book called 12 steps to a compassionate life now as good Muslim as a good audience will not know the origin of that it's the program of Alcoholics Anonymous that help people to wean themselves from alcohol by going through a 12-step program and I did it because we are all addicted to our hates and pets hates prejudices and we can't over get rid of them overnight we need to wean ourselves from them gradually step three is compassion for yourself because unless you learn about what you know you can cause your shadow side that darker side of oneself your you can suppress it [Music] doesn't mean you say oh well that's okay it's just by shadow side you've got to be aware of this but not think that this is some appalling evil just take it we're all fallible we're all soils floor deeply flawed human beings every single one of us has thoughts and feelings which we wouldn't share with our nearest and dearest things that we're ashamed of and that has and you have to sort of embrace say that's it that's it but then you have to go on you can't just stop there but you have to take that and because if you don't you're if you deny your knowledge of that and just simply suppress that and stamp on it and say I'm not like that at all you're a very like to be harsh on other people and click pick on their faults as a way of when people say I really hate people who do that in the other you can often guess they've got they have that tendency themselves just so it's got to be you've just got to accept it with a realistic wry smile and a smile because that is who you are and you try your best with this flawed piece of machinery that you're you're operating with I think but then you've got to go on and use that experience with your dealings with others when you see oh isn't she awful that said she she's always doing this she's you she has a Sadler side so have you and put yourself in that position too and go on in outreach here so certainly it's compassion for the self is essential and you know and sometimes you know I spend my youth beating myself up because of my all my imperfections you know all my faults we in my convent we had to sort of recite our faults to the community aro every two weeks and all this kind of thing and really it just embeds you in the ego that you're supposed to transcend you just can't go round and round and round in a wrap run of how faith you failing you are just take it gently and you know we've all had hurts and we've all we all react in certain ways in which we shouldn't react because of things that we're done to us and so we just have to say yes I've this a bit of damaged goods in many ways but and take it be kind to yourself because beating yourself up about is there's another form of ego just let it go and then reach out to others my name is ovis I work for the news media just wanted to ask you I was just going through the list of people who have signed the Charter for compassion it's it sounds of a brilliant idea but there are only a few politicians in that list have you given up on politicians or especially in this time of Trump's and Moody's do you think the politicians would allow such activities to go on a huge scale and be successful look I have not a great fan of that signing idea that will sign people up and they will have a million signatures and all that but you know people sign things you know so easily what does it mean you know your things are always coming up on the web do you like this yes tick and off you go and so it goes on I so this is I'm not so I wasn't that wasn't one of my great objectives I was much rather we're doing things as you are doing things here in Karachi working rather than just listening up a lot of signatures because what does it mean what you want wants is commitment not just sticking in a box but no I haven't given up on politician sight not at all I you know and we've had some rather good one that's in the past the trouble with modern politics modern democratic politics is that you have bet you would home strong in a sense buy the whole thing about getting elected next time and that means that I very often people hold back from courageous policies because they want to be re-elected I mean you're always told in the United States no good speaking to any senators for the next two years because they're on the election trail so I'm not giving up on them you know and because I've you know met some wonderful politicians but you know but it's the same a lot of church people have signed the Charter and I have they done anything for it no so it's the signing up isn't it wasn't that we were reaching out to people it would be lovely if politicians embraced the Charter and said what can we do to make a more compassionate world I don't see it happening at the moment but who knows you can get people you see and I don't think you should we can dismiss the importance and impact of moral charisma if you think of Gandhi or Martin Luther King for example or Nelson Mandela they at the point is that these people were not Saints they were people with shadow sides and their faults but they worked for something and look what an impact they had and I think politics if we had some politicians now I do think that if there been someone of the caliber of someone like King or Mandela in the Middle East things could be could have been different and think to think big thoughts and to think moral thoughts and to be morally committed that's hard thing to do in modern politics but what never gives up on anybody but signing the Charter here or there is it's neither here nor there as far as I'm concerned what I'm concerned is with committed action like what's going on here in this very University we shall all thanks Karen for wonderful talk thank you very much all of you I'll request mrs. the hill way to come to the stage to offer a small gift to miss Armstrong I will now again request Amin to come to this stage we would like to on behalf of the charter present a plaque to the Children's Hospital for as a token of appreciation my request up to Barbara and team to please come on stage and also the Charter team please [Applause]

Channel: Aga Khan University

Views: 4,214

Rating: 4.7402596 out of 5

Keywords: special lecture series, charter for compassion, akusls

Id: leDVpho6rn8

Length: 79min 52sec (4792 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 26 2018