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
Second Semester August 2015
This practical work was carried out under supervision of Sir Sohail Sangi
