Interview with Karen Armstrong

From an interview with author Karen Armstrong in Parabola Magazine. If you want to read more, click on the title above.

P: We're in a frightening place in world history. Your predictions about religious war have come true, and our whole environment is in a perilous shape. From your study of the origin of the great religious traditions, what really matters?

KA: The exercise of compassion is what matters in our world. The Dalai Lama says "my religion is kindness." Confucious said "religion is altruism". Dethroning yourself from the center of your world and putting another there. Now this requires intelligent thought. You really have to think and practice the golden rule about what the other person really wants rather than what you think he ought to want. When we speak to people we should behave as Buddha or Socrates did. Address them where they really are and not where we think they should be. We have to put ourselves in the place of another, and we have to be able to do this globally.

P: This state of compassion, of engagement, does take thinking.

KA: It does. It takes constant, flexible intelligence. Each case will be different so principles are really not the point. You have to be flexible to respond to each situation that arises, especially in a time where everything is changing so fast.

We have to investigate. We have to find out more about the world. I've had some extraordinary conversations with highly educated Americans who have asked me where the Palestinians have come from, as if they marauded in off the desert. I've had to explain Palestine. There is so much ignorance.

All the great sages have said that we must see things as they really are. Don't bury your head in the sand and say that environmental catastrophe isn't going to happen, for example. In the Axial Age, the prophets of Israel called those positive thinkers who thought that Jerusalem was not going to fall because God was with them "false prophets." You cannot achieve enlightenment that way. It takes information gathering and that does not mean being content with the little scraps of sound bytes that are handed out by politicians or Fox News.

De Verleiding van Flora

Jan van Huysum, Fruitstilleven
Koper, 21 x 27 cm
Eigenaar: Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen Mauritshuis, Den Haag

Jan van Huysum, Bloemen in een terracotta vaas, ca. 1730.
Olieverf op paneel, 80 x 61 cm
Eigenaar: Noortman Master Paintings, Maastricht

Afgelopen woensdag bezocht ik deze tentoonstelling in Museum Het Prinsenhof te Delft met mijn goeie vriendin Marlo die zelf de laatste tijd erg bezig is met bloemen die zij op de scanner bewerkt tot hele mooie kunstwerken.

© Marlo Broekmans, Geisha, 2005

Er stond in de inleiding dat het realisme waarmee perziken en waterdruppels geschilderd waren, ons zou doen kwijlen voor de doeken, iets wat nogal op mijn lachspieren werkte, maar de doeken hadden wel het effect dat we er heel dichtbij wilden staan om alle details te bekijken, zoals minuscule vliegen, wespen, rupsen en slakken die overal te zien waren, temidden van bloemen en fruit. We kregen zelfs een waarschuwing van een beetje boze security guard dat we er niet zo dicht op mochten staan, omdat zijn alarm af was gegaan. Oeps... Meteen voelde ik me een rebels schoolmeisje dat het perfect georganiseerde schoolreisje aan het ontwrichten was met een clandestiene amoureuze ontmoeting. Of zoiets dergelijks.

Al die vol liefde geschilderde bloemen- en fruitdoeken waren in ieder geval een echte lust voor het oog. Door zo intensief naar al die geschilderde details te kijken, iets wat je met echte bloemen en echt fruit maar zo zelden doet, ontstaat er een diepere verbondenheid met het wonder van de werkelijkheid die zich elke dag om ons heen manifesteert. Iets waar ik net weer over had gelezen in de boeken van Frederick Franck, De Zen van het Zien en Zen Zien Zen Tekenen.

Morning Poem by Mary Oliver

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again
and fasten themselves to the high branches ---

and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands
of summer lilies.

If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails
for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.

And if your spirit
carries within it
the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

from Dream Work (1986) by Mary Oliver

© Mary Oliver