(3) Dalai Lama Virus Conversation: The Compassion Catalyst
This is the third of several blogs posts written from a definite Christian standpoint and interacting sympathetically and respectfully with the Dalai Lama's 'Time' article: "'Prayer Is Not Enough.' The Dalai Lama on Why We Need to Fight Coronavirus With Compassion".
The first blog in this series can be read here: https://fidzbit.blogspot.com/2020/04/2-dalai-lama-virus-conversation-prayer.html
The article can be read in full here: https://time.com/5820613/dalai-lama-coronavirus-compassion/.
Both Christianity and Buddhism emphasise responding to human suffering, like this coronavirus pandemic, with compassion. Believers from both faiths would agree that to pray without helping, where we have the resources to do so, reveals a hollow hypocrisy in our religion. But where does compassion originate in Buddhism and Christianity? What motivates and catalyses compassion?
"We Buddhists" the Dalai Lama says, "believe that the entire world is interdependent". What happens to one person can impact everyone. If one person catches a virus they can quickly pass it on to others. Likewise, one kind act can spread with "the potential to help many". This places a responsibility on everyone to play their part, whether by working "on the front line" or staying at home and social distancing. The Buddhist emphasis on interdependence is maintained by downplaying or even denying perceived boundaries and separations. Step back far enough and even the distinction between land and sea seems to disappear:
"Photographs of our world from space clearly show that there are
no real boundaries on our blue planet."
This is a significant point of difference from a Christian worldview. The first pages of the Bible present a world in which the great variety of living things are dependent on each other and ecologically interconnected. But the Bible emphasises differences too. Creation is dependent on God but it is also distinct from God: the Creator and the creation belong in completely different categories. Likewise, in each of the days of the creation story the world takes form through division - the light from the darkness, the heavens from the earth, the land from the seas, the plants, stars, sun and moon, the birds, the animals, and human beings. All interconnected but all distinct. The creation of Adam and Eve highlights both elements - they are created from the same flesh, made into distinct man and distinct women, then united and harmonised as a family. For a Christian the interdependence of the living things is seen in different beings living in harmony - not by denying that there are differences.
From a Christian point of view, the Dalai Lama's concept of interdependence is often recognised as a form of pantheism. This is a point at which Christians and Buddhists can frequently misunderstand each other. Many Buddhists dislike the term pan-theism because importing the word 'theism' seems to imply a Western concept of a personal God, as though a personal God was spread throughout the cosmos. That idea is foreign to Buddhist thinking. On the other hand, Buddhists ascribe characteristics to a monistic foundational reality which Christians believe belong to God alone. Only God is completely and perfectly united without any division or distinction.
So although our compassion responses could be very similar in practical terms, they have a very different source in Christianity and Buddhism. For example, when Buddhists show compassion to other living, sentient beings, the two parties are part of the same underlying altruistic unity. Whereas in the Christian dynamic compassion begins with a God who is altogether unique, making a great variety of things which are altogether different to Himself and loving them. A world in harmony requires these distinct things to act appropriately towards each other and, where that breaks down, wrong division occurs. The basis of the Christian message is that human beings have divided themselves from God by sinful thoughts, words, and deeds, but that in Jesus Christ God has shown compassion to us in order to restore harmony:
"And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds,
Jesus has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present
you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you
continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of
the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven"
(Colossians 1:21-23).
The high demands of a Buddhist ethical response requires that you recognise your basic 'sameness' with every other living thing and respond with compassion. The high demands of a Christian ethical response requires that you follow God's example and respond with compassion even towards those who are different and divided. Jesus said:
"Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may
be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the
evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you
love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors
do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than
others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
You therefore must be