Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa!

“Samaritan”, for me, is a symbol of all that I want to exclude from my little agape! Jesus by sitting and chatting with the Samaritan woman and ready to receive a drink from her suggests that I should break those little barriers I erect between others and me, sometimes in the name of morality, faith, and religion!

This spirituality of inclusion that Jesus left behind has been very carefully manipulated, in the past and in the present for the exclusion of many – continents, religious communities, even committed Christians but with different sexual orientation.

Christians, I see, continue to define their identities in terms of exclusion! Much of the Christian theology, liturgy, hagiology and so on have been developed contrary to the spirituality of Jesus. They express and affirm a distorted Christian exclusivism.

Fortunately, we have better examples of inclusion in other religions. One such is the Dalai Lama calling Mother (now Blessed) Teresa a “Bodhisattva”, an enlightened person, somewhat a synonym for Buddha, who is committed to the salvation of others. It is bigger than the Christian notion of “saint”. In this I see a Buddhist attempt to include and celebrate a Christian soul. But I am yet to see a similar Christian attempt to include and celebrate a so-called non-Christian.

And as an Anglican Christian I find it frustrating to see hardly any coloured saints, except the apostles and may be three other - a Chinese, a Japanese, and an African mentioned in the Anglican long list of saints!

Jesus broke down barriers and established the rule of the compassionate God! His was a spirituality of inclusivisim similar, or greater to that of Dalai Lama! But can Christians learn inclusion of others from Dalai Lama?

Compassionate Listening

Frequently people of "faith", and “no faith”, forget they must listen to one another. In their eagerness to speak their "faith", or “no faith”, they "plug" their ears and fail to recognize that the other also possess something "sacred and precious". Failure to "listen" can easily slip into "belittling" the "faith" of the other. This is the first gun shot for a major war in which the victim is not just the "other" but my own "faith" too!

Buddhist Emperor Asoka more than two millenniums ago proclaimed: "He who does reverence to his own sect while disparaging the sects of the others wholly from attachment to his own, with intent to enhance the splendour of his own sect, in reality, by such conduct inflicts the severest injury on his own sect." The late philosopher-president of India, S. Radhakrishnan, believed that religions are at their best when they accommodate the other. Other poets and philosophers too have confirmed this.

The very first step towards such accommodation is "compassionate listening". "Faith", or “no faith”, is relevant to our contemporary Canadian life, which is multi-cultural and pluralistic in religions, only when it can "listen" to the other, and "listen with compassion".

Listening to the “faith”, or “no faith”, of others is encouraged, not with a view of an "altering our religious allegiance”, but to transform our own "faith" from within, so that we may be compassionate towards one another. In the process of listening, it is possible that some may change their “faith”, or “no faith”. That’s a risk we must take in the name of a Compassionate God desiring more human compassion.

This reason for listening is hinted in Hafiz’ poem titled "An Old Musician." He asks: "How should those who know of God meet and part?" For which his answer is: "The way an old musician greets his beloved instrument and will take special care as a great artist always does to enhance the final note of each performance."

Khalil Gibran also provides not so different answer in his humorous parable titled "The Philosopher and the Cobbler." It reads: "There came to a cobbler's shop a philosopher with worn shoes. And the philosopher said to the cobbler, "Please mend my shoes." And the cobbler said, "I am mending another man's shoes now, and there are still other shoes to patch before I can come to yours. But leave your shoes here, and wear this other pair today, and come tomorrow for your own." Then the philosopher was indignant, and he said, "I wear no shoes that are not mine own." And the cobbler said, "Well then, are you in truth a philosopher, and cannot enfold your feet with the shoes of another man? Upon this very street there is another cobbler who understands philosophers better than I do. Go you to him for mending."

The purpose of listening is to walk in someone else’s moccasin, giving a little time to mend your own boots, a broadening of your perspective.