Karen Armstrong, prophets & sages
This afternoon I went to a talk on The Great Transformation, the latest book by Karen Armstrong. It was an OK talk, though quite short. She started talking at 2pm, started taking questions at 2:30; and finished up for book-signing at 3pm. I think perhaps it was the shortest talk I've ever paid money to go to. It's a shame because it would've made a better talk with another 30 minutes. Ultimately I decided I would read her book, but I'd wait for it to come to the library, since I didn't feel like plunking $40 on it.
The topic was the time-period from 900 BCE to roughly 200 BCE, called "the Axial Age" by historians because of its transforming effect on civilization. The time-period saw the rise of philosophical rationalism in Greece, monotheism in Israel, Confucianism and Daoism in China; and Hinduism and Buddhism in India. Her talk was about the major similarities between these religions and philosophies. While they had different emphases, her thesis is that all argued for the importance of compassion over violence, the importance of dropping one's ego, and of working on seeing reality as it is, as fully as possible.
These faiths and philosophies also share a strong notion that it's a lot of work to do these things, but one will reach a more enlightened state the more one works at them.
She said that Western institutionalized religion does an awful job at presenting the teachings of its prophets, instead emphasizing the creedal rules that have built up after the prophets had left. She said we don't need new prophets or sages; we've got quite enough who we've been ignoring already.
She suggests that Christian churches are bound up in institutional ego, a sorry state that is opposite all of the prophets' teachings. She quoted a Catholic thinker, I wish I remembered who, saying "while you cannot define God, if you travel in the diametric opposite direction from ego, you will find God there as well."
She spent a while talking about the importance of the golden rule, which she said originated with Confucious. The last time she spoke here, in 2004, she talked about Hillel, the great Jewish Rabbi, who was asked by a Gentile to stand on one foot and recite the whole of the Torah. He stood on one foot and said, "Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. That is the entirety of the Torah. The rest is commentary." She said the Buddha was asked what one thing a disciple could do every day, all the time; he answered that thing is to follow the golden rule. So, this was her example of the one thing we should take to heart most closely.
While I agree with this statement, she made it very clumsily, in such a way as to confuse the golden rule with "don't offend others." I have a big problem with this. Not offending others is a good secondary rule, along with "be nice". But on a deep level, sometimes we need to be offended. If I'm faced with a learning experience that includes offending me, I'd prefer being offended to not learning. Besides, being offended just bruises my ego, which shouldn't be in the way, to begin with.
A talk I heard earlier this month on CBC radio put this argument very well, that compassion is important, but it doesn't stop at being "nice"- it also requires empathy, holding both your perspective and the other person's perspective to figure out the compassionate response.
The larger problem with her thesis as a recommendation for society today is that on the whole, people are too lazy to take the time and energy. People are accustomed to the lite version of faith and philosophy that doesn't require doing anything challenging, especially outside the hour they've allotted to it once a week. It's tremendously hard work to be compassionate, and I don't think people can do it very effectively with our civilization in the state it's in.
The topic was the time-period from 900 BCE to roughly 200 BCE, called "the Axial Age" by historians because of its transforming effect on civilization. The time-period saw the rise of philosophical rationalism in Greece, monotheism in Israel, Confucianism and Daoism in China; and Hinduism and Buddhism in India. Her talk was about the major similarities between these religions and philosophies. While they had different emphases, her thesis is that all argued for the importance of compassion over violence, the importance of dropping one's ego, and of working on seeing reality as it is, as fully as possible.
These faiths and philosophies also share a strong notion that it's a lot of work to do these things, but one will reach a more enlightened state the more one works at them.
She said that Western institutionalized religion does an awful job at presenting the teachings of its prophets, instead emphasizing the creedal rules that have built up after the prophets had left. She said we don't need new prophets or sages; we've got quite enough who we've been ignoring already.
She suggests that Christian churches are bound up in institutional ego, a sorry state that is opposite all of the prophets' teachings. She quoted a Catholic thinker, I wish I remembered who, saying "while you cannot define God, if you travel in the diametric opposite direction from ego, you will find God there as well."
She spent a while talking about the importance of the golden rule, which she said originated with Confucious. The last time she spoke here, in 2004, she talked about Hillel, the great Jewish Rabbi, who was asked by a Gentile to stand on one foot and recite the whole of the Torah. He stood on one foot and said, "Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. That is the entirety of the Torah. The rest is commentary." She said the Buddha was asked what one thing a disciple could do every day, all the time; he answered that thing is to follow the golden rule. So, this was her example of the one thing we should take to heart most closely.
While I agree with this statement, she made it very clumsily, in such a way as to confuse the golden rule with "don't offend others." I have a big problem with this. Not offending others is a good secondary rule, along with "be nice". But on a deep level, sometimes we need to be offended. If I'm faced with a learning experience that includes offending me, I'd prefer being offended to not learning. Besides, being offended just bruises my ego, which shouldn't be in the way, to begin with.
A talk I heard earlier this month on CBC radio put this argument very well, that compassion is important, but it doesn't stop at being "nice"- it also requires empathy, holding both your perspective and the other person's perspective to figure out the compassionate response.
The larger problem with her thesis as a recommendation for society today is that on the whole, people are too lazy to take the time and energy. People are accustomed to the lite version of faith and philosophy that doesn't require doing anything challenging, especially outside the hour they've allotted to it once a week. It's tremendously hard work to be compassionate, and I don't think people can do it very effectively with our civilization in the state it's in.