Bodley Head, 2011
ISBN: 978-1847921581
Reviewed by Ian Mowll
___________________________________________________________________________________
I’ve always liked Karen Armstrong’s books. She writes with breadth and depth and gets through to the core issues of spirituality in the modern world. And this is true of this book too.
Compassion is an essential part of any living spirituality. As the author writes: The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical, and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves…The fact that this ideal has surfaced in all these faiths independently suggests that it reflects something that is essential to the structure of our humanity.
But compassion is not only an ideal to work towards, in our increasingly interconnected world, it forms a bedrock for our existence. As the author writes: …in today’s world, compassion in no longer a luxury but, in the words of Martin Luther King, ‘an absolute necessity for our survival’.
The book is split into twelve steps starting with the first step “Learn about Compassion” through to the twelfth step “Love Your Enemies”. Each step unpacks a unique aspect of compassion.
For me, one of the highlights of the book was its discussion of the axial age from about 900BC to 200BC. This was a time when people across the world were building towns and cities, they had more time to explore the interior life and curb their destructive impulses which were rife in those times of competing for resources. At this time, many spiritual traditions started to emphasise compassion, the author cites the following examples:There was Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism in the Indian subcontinent, Confucianism and Daoism in China, monotheism in the Middle East which gave rise to Christianity and Islam, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. This was the period of the Upanishads, the Buddha, Confucius, Laozi, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Ezra and Socrates.
As this emphasis on compassion occurred in so many different traditions, this suggests that compassion is part of our human evolutionary development. As GreenSpirit emphasises both compassion and our evolutionary journey, I find this both exciting and encouraging.
Each religion has something to offer. This book gives me a deeper understanding of the need to draw from the golden threads of each religion and the understandings of science to bring forth a global spiritual outlook that meets the needs of our times: deepening compassion in our lives, having respect for diversity and a commitment to care for the planet and all living beings.
I wholeheartedly recommend this important book.