LAHORE – Not only did the rare occasion of having a foreign literary figure speak to a local audience in an open discussion, attract people, but the fact that it was Karen Armstrong who was the speaker delivering a speech on her newest book, called ‘Twelve Steps to A Compassionate Life’, was what intrigued the audience the most. Students and professionals, both, along with several others from different walks of life attended this seminar at a local hotel.
Published locally by the Oxford University Press, the book revolves around what Armstrong opines to be some of the most integral aspects of leading a life that is full of compassion and tolerance. Armstrong’s lecture therefore also spun around these points. While she highlighted that the first few steps to walk towards tolerance of anything always comprised learning about compassion and what it was, looking at your own surroundings and yourself and keeping a significantly compassionate viewpoint about yourself. Only after this came empathy for others.
At the apex of her lecture, as more and more people started to gather and her discussion grew heated, Armstrong went on to establish some of the very basic themes of what her book was about. The seventh step to a compassionate life was about understanding the Socratic thought of ‘how little everyone knew,’ about anything at all. “How little it is that we as people know about anything,” said the London based thinker, who has gone through much personal upheaval and change of thought since after she became suicidal and left her nun-hood.
Armstrong had suddenly become aware of the ignorance present in the nuns that she knew and the restriction imposed upon them to question anything outside of what they were shown. Desperate with disillusionment, she turned towards a phase of becoming highly suicidal but later she resumed life and has since then thought of many aspects of religion and its teachings about peace. Her focus has always remained on the three monotheistic religions, and has now been honoured with building a bridge between the three and removing misunderstandings.
In knowing little, therefore, Armstrong highlights that a personal who keeps reminding oneself that he is not all knowledgeable, will eventually try to seek more and more information. “Socrates, one of the greatest philosophers till today, always leaned towards stopping in life and asking himself, ‘How dare I think I know it all’,” she said to the audience. “Doubt, and the admission of ignorance is the key to humility and modesty.”
The discussion had already merged into the next step from how little we knew, to how to speak to one another.
Learning to listen, she explained welded into this, “How often do we listen, really, and are our dialogues actually those or do they turn into aggressive diatribes instead?” Islam, she said taught Muslims to listen as the Quran was itself a sonorous script. It also taught Muslims not to jump quickly at any meaning and conclusion. “Our discussions, at least in the West, are extremely aggressive and we push the other to talk. It is not a good idea to be dogmatic to this extent when so many of our ideas have failed and we have not come to the conclusions of any of our problems.”
“The political language of hate that is being spread should be stopped, and we should never be so dictatorial as to stereotype any individuals or any cultures. Each culture is as complex as is each individual,” she said. “I could give several examples of the 1960s and 1970s when mass social movements changed the way we spoke to each other,” she continued.
“Especially about gender and races; we must have consideration for each other.” The next chapter of the book, ‘How to deal with the enemy’ was an issue which was more practical in terms of what is happening in the world today, and here too, Armstrong, the writer could think of no better example than what happened in the Greek story of Achilles and Hector, during the Greek-Trojan war. Achilles (Greek warrior) had killed Hector (Trojan) his enemy, after his friend Patroclus was killed. Instead of leaving Hector at that, Achilles, usually a mild tempered man mutilated and dragged his enemy’s body around his friend’s grave and refused to give up his body to his family out of spite.
One night Hector’s father in a disguise manages to reach Achilles tent, and then throwing off his disguise he kneels in front of Achilles and weeps. On seeing the old man weep, Achilles is reminded of his father and they both weep together. “Once they have wept together,” explains Armstrong. “They have bonded, and seen each other and are now divine in each others’ eyes. Suffering belongs to everyone but to feel each others’ pain is what bonds even enemies. Today I am sure there would be a handful of people in the US who will be ready to share the plight of their enemies after the 9/11 attacks. She explained that the tragic theatre that the Greeks displayed on stage induced people to weep and it was mandatory for all Greeks to come and watch. At the end of the tragedy, the audience was told to ‘Weep – for Oedipus, who had killed his father and mistakenly married his mother, for Heracles who in a spout of rage killed his wife and children’. Weeping together was a kind of civic bonding which helped them understand each other’s pain.
“Today though I have delivered several lectures about what the Muslims in the eastern world are facing and tell people in my land and in my half of the world to consider this, I can say there have been changes in the way people think. The hardcore remains hard, but ideas and outlooks are changing.”
Concerning Pakistan being at the frontline of the war on terror, and a rise in religious intolerance and radicalism, Armstrong remembers her own experiences and says that even though things are difficult in Pakistan, methods to tackle the problem must be found, perhaps through self discovery. “You have to face your fears. When you are afraid, you tend to back into a corner and lash out. When you respond to hate or violence in the same way, instead of overlooking it, the whole picture escalates.”
She gave the example of attempting to overlook sick agendas of certain groups in the world that try to instigate religious fury by drawing cartoons of holy figures, etc. But she says this is exactly what those groups want to see. Muslims or any other community whose personal beliefs are threatened will have to control themselves and ignore this radicalism. “Ask yourself the Socratic question,” concluded Armstrong. “Try to be the change in yourself. There is always a way out of violence and into compassion.”
