Reclaiming Religious Pluralism
Compassion as Strength
by Anum Mulla
When we talk about compassion, which by definition is found in aspiring to alleviate another’s suffering, it is far too often viewed as a path that only implores people to be kind. Some societies are socially conditioned to the idea that compassion is synonymous with fragility and a lack of strength, interpreting that value as a “softer approach” to addressing conflict.
From an empirically scientific perspective, our internal faculties of empathy and compassion are the foundation for human connection, without which we would be unable to understand ourselves or the world beyond us. These attributes are inherently wired into every aspect of our cognition and consciousness. What it really takes to be compassionate is an unbelievable capacity to be courageous, and this is perhaps the truest testament to the immeasurable amount of emotional strength we as human beings can possess.
When we cultivate these qualities, we also cultivate emotional awareness and resilience, a broader practice which gives us the potential to experience empathy not only for our in-group but also for our out-group, helping us overcome our implicit and explicit biases. By doing so, we create space for shared concern and compassion, allowing ourselves to engage with others with an appreciation for diverse worldviews - truly setting the foundation to build bridges.
Cultivating Compassion in South Asia
A resiliency informed training, CIT (Compassionate Integrity Training) was developed by the Center for Compassion, Integrity, and Secular Ethics (CCISE) to help people nurture empathy and compassion into skills that enable them to make more informed decisions at personal, community, and systemic levels. These trainings have been implemented across various sectors, including with incarcerated individuals across USA, for educators across multiple continents, for young changemakers working toward the UN SDG's, for humanitarian aid workers, and with corporations to increase emotional intelligence among their staff.
Our team facilitated CIT for educators in South Asia, bringing together formal and informal educators from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Creating space for individuals from multiple faith traditions across South Asia was certainly territory to tread with deep sensitivity and caution. These countries possess unique geo-political issues that are historically intertwined and still unfolding.
We conducted this training with two different groups online in 2021 and 2022 over ten weeks through a set of three series:
Series I: Self Cultivation - Explores knowledge and skills related to the inner workings of an individual. It begins with practicing abilities to self-regulate our physical and emotional states of being, then moves on to developing self-compassion through the identification and nurturing of one’s core values.
Series II: Relating to Others - Focuses on improving our relationship with others through the process of strengthening pro-social attributes such as impartiality, common humanity, forgiveness, gratitude, empathy, and compassion.
Series III: Engaging in Systems - Challenges us to recognize the interdependent nature of the world, as well as the interdependence of the systems we are involved in. The focus here is on the value of a ‘systems perspective,' and on strengthening the ability to discern the most effective way to bring about constructive change within systems.
Taking on a program that speaks to how we interact with the systems we are engaged in from a human values perspective could not ignore the regional conflicts participants were experiencing. In hindsight what unfolded was an unintentional case study of how we can attempt to foster regional compassion in times of inherent religious intolerance. When we started our training there were deeply disturbing political situations unfolding in Myanmar and Afghanistan. A group of 80 participants, who did not necessarily hold the same political and religious points of view found themselves in a space of dialogue about their understanding of ethical discernment. They were able to use skills of emotional self-regulation while participating with a sense of deep and active empathic listening to come to a better and more compassionately informed understanding of each other’s realities.
CIT training participants
The training is rooted in the principle of secular ethics and was formed on the depth of wisdom from sources such as Beyond Religion, by the Dalai Lama, and neuroscientific findings from the Trauma Resource Institute. With the geopolitical issues as a backdrop, we found that stepping out of our religious contexts enabled participants to revisit compassion as an inherent human virtue and a unifying foundation for all faith traditions. Contextualizing compassion in this light served as a precursor to skillfully activating their sense of common and shared humanity, paving the way for constructive dialogue to bridge political and religious divides. In the words of two participants:
“CIT South Asia has come at a time when Myanmar is going through so much conflict and divide. As of this day, this training has given me skills to survive and cope positively and I do hope when things settle down in our country again we can bring CIT to the communities here.”
- Theingi Oung, Specialist for Appropriate ICT for Secondary Education (Myanmar)
“CIT South Asia gave me an insight on human values for social and emotional flourishing. It has improved my ability to have empathic concern which is essential for a war zone country like Afghanistan, which has been suffering for 44 years, in complex and proxy conflict, which has a direct impact on my daily life and collective flourishing.”
- Mohammad Afzal Zarghoni, Researcher, Peacebuilder, Fellow at KAICIID, (Afghanistan)
Sustaining Compassion for Religious Pluralism
This brings us to what may seem like an oversimplified and perhaps even obvious conclusion. However, when we arrive at an understanding of the human disposition being fundamentally rooted in a biological foundation of compassion, and recognize it as the touchstone of each faith tradition, we can ask ourselves: Can cultivating compassion be the first step in bridging obstacles that lie on the path of religious pluralism?
What we're witnessing unfold across South Asia today, where religious divides have been at the forefront of shaping most of the countries in the region, falls into what we can identify as historically repetitive cycles. As we reflect on the continuous and increasing emergence of religiously motivated conflict across the globe, it becomes clear that therein lies the misunderstanding that shrouds the idea that all faith traditions are rooted in compassion. This lack of clarity proves to be the reason for much ongoing debate and contention, and perhaps reclaiming it could be an antidote to the scarcity of religious pluralism.
Photo: Unsplash
The fragility of the global social fabric oscillating between religious tolerance and intolerance, being further cemented in the latter, implores us to reconstruct the path ahead - a monumental task not for the weakhearted. In order to evade our socially constructed in-group, implicit, and explicit biases, which stand as roadblocks to living in a more tolerant world, we must deepen our understanding of a common and shared humanity. As simple as it may sound, this is the first step in actualizing compassion as a skill to enhance our efforts to coexist in a world where religious pluralism is the norm and not the exception.
The attrition of religious pluralism has become increasingly disconcerting. Revisiting the ethic of compassion across different faith traditions is perhaps the only way to open dialogue to reconciliation. Denying our internal abilities to use compassion as strength is a grave injustice in recognizing the true human disposition we arrive with into this world. While we can hold societal, cultural, and political environments responsible for shaping the way we think, it would be a great disservice to our genetic makeup to assume that there is no space for a more compassionate understanding of our shared humanity to bridge these intolerances.
Shifting the focus to strengthen religious pluralism through recognizing compassion as our shared human experience can serve as an important reminder to all of us. Compassion is what unequivocally activates our humanity, and holds tremendous power to connect us even in times when the dichotomy of the human mind creates barriers to divide us.
