November 12, 2009 is the scheduled global launch of the Charter for Compassion. This afternoon, at the office of the Education for Life Foundation (ELF), a group of Filipinos will “join the conversation” about it.
What is this charter anyway? What does it seek to accomplish?
The original idea came from a former Catholic nun, Karen Armstrong, who made it her TED wish, and invested her 100,000 dollar TED prize to start the process.
After leaving the convent, she thought she would have nothing to do at all about religion, having had enough of it. But an assignment from the BBC brought her face to face with various expressions of religion, including virulent fundamentalist varieties, but also a common thread in every religious tradition, popularly known as the Golden Rule – “Do not do unto others what you do not want done to you.”
She is a much published scholar on religion, and she has traced the Golden Rule back to Confucius. I like her anecdote about a well known rabbi, contemporary of Jesus. A pagan promised to convert to Judaism if the rabbi could explain the whole of Jewish religion while standing on only one leg. The rabbi stood on one leg and said, “Do not do unto others what you do not want done to you. That is the essence of our religion. All the rest is commentary.”
Unfortunately, most organized religions tend to emphasize doctrine and beliefs about God, afterlife, and other dogmas that have generated debates and controversies, including violent conflicts.
What the Charter for Compassion seeks to accomplish is to remind every religious tradition of this core message and value, and to promote it, in word and deed.
The final version of the Charter has been written by a multi-denominational group who have received suggestions from all over the world. Here is the text, which I downloaded just now. You can learn more about the Charter, its history, the process and prospects, at the TED site.
Charter for Compassion
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. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.
It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism, or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others – even our enemies – is a denial of our common humanity. We acknowledge that we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion.
We therefore call upon all men and women ~ to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion ~ to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate ~ to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures ~ to encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity ~ to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings, even those regarded as enemies.
We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensible to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community.
Any charter, like any vision-mission document is not self-implementing. But having a charter is a good start to talk and think together about the various ways we can live it out. Hence the tagline: “Join the conversation.”
For us in the Philippines, one initial challenge is translating this into our national language. Our informal brainstorm had us floundering for a while. “Charter” has been too much associated in recent months with “charter change” and suspect political motives.
Then someone remembered “Kartilya” which evokes Emilio Jacinto’s Kartilya ng Katipunan. That perked us up. What about compassion? The closest concept seems to be “Pagmamalasakit.”
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