REVIEW: 12 Steps to a Compassionate life

BOOK REVIEW: 12 STEPS TO A COMPASSIONATE LIFE BY KAREN ARMSTRONG.

                                         A GUIDE TO COMPASSIONATE WORLD

                                          IBRAHIM BURIRO

Karen strong considered, without a slightest of doubt, one of the original thinkers on religion, in our day. Author of about two dozen books, mostly on religion. Her worldwide acclaimed books, one of them is, history of god, sold in million copies and is translated in more than 20 languages. In this latest book of hers “twelve steps to a compassionate life”. she goes though different religions and cultures, brings out the idea of how can we live peacefully, without pitying on each other. She often cites golden rule in this book “do unto others as you would have unto you, or, more simply, treat other people as you want to be treated”.

She illustrate with stories that all religions emphasize on compassion. With the help of these stories which are wonderfully written and makes book more readable, she tries to show how religion can play important role in making world more compassionate. She goes from sages to philosophers, and dig out ideas we desperately need in this violence ridden world. This books is part of project which she launched, wish for better world and step towards it. With the help of TED acronym for technology, entertainment and design, a private non-profit organization best known for ideas worth spreading, who gives award to those who made difference and think can made more contribution to it. She has made a charter for compassionate world which include twelve steps to make our lives peaceful and sympathetic with each other without any greed or reward in return. Twelve steps are mixture of almost all cultures, she has sort out ideas from each religion, and almost all of the religions one or another way encourage compassion. She cites different sages from all major religions who urges their followers toward compassion and reach out to others. Why religions? Because she believes most of the problems directly or indirectly people point towards religions. We rely on each other in globally connected world, what happens in East has profound effect on West or vice versa.

Our knowledge about others is limited she cites. And this this is one of the biggest problems of this era, as world is going to be inter-dependent, multi-cultural and we have to respect other peoples way of living. We hardly listen to others, because our egoistic and narrow view of the world limited only to ourselves she tries to show how this can be accomplished.   Karen exhort all of us to make space for others, not only in our speech, but, in our minds as well. She leans on disparate faiths and belief systems, and brings out wisdom which encourage compassion.  One of the things she cites is Dialogue, it’s a very important way of understanding limits of our knowledge about values we hold, Socrates questioned others value not to prove them wrong or humiliate them, but show them that, how their knowledge is limited.

 She writes at the end of the book that “to attempt to become compassionate being is lifelong project, it’s not achieved in a day- or, even in twelve steps. It’s a struggle that will last until our dying hour- nearly every day we will fail, we cannot and should not give up”.  Like a good book it leave it upon ourselves to decide what is better for us.  To make our world more Compassionate we need to start from our own, as when we talk about cleaning our house one starts with his own room. It’s a fascinate read, contains much wisdom about how to live with others. 
Second Semester August 2015 
This practical work was carried out under supervision of Sir Sohail Sangi