Compassion is the key in Islam and Buddhism and Judaism and Christianity. They are profoundly similar.
Interpretation
Compassion is a fundamental value shared across major world religions.
In this quote, Karen Armstrong highlights the centrality of compassion in the teachings of Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity, suggesting that despite their differences, these faiths share a common thread rooted in empathy and kindness towards others. This perspective encourages an understanding of the interconnections between different belief systems and emphasizes the importance of compassion in fostering unity and peace among diverse cultures and communities.
In practice
During an interfaith dialogue, this quote can be used to illustrate the common values shared by different religions.
Yet a personal God can become a grave liability. He can be a mere idol carved in our own image, a projection of our limited needs, fears and desires. We can assume that he loves what we love and hates what we hate, endorsing our prejudices instead of compelling us to transcend them.
When violence becomes imbedded in a region, then this affects everything. It affects your dreams, your fantasies and relationships, and your religion becomes violent, too.
Far from being the father of jihad, [Prophet] Mohammad was a peacemaker, who risked his life and nearly lost the loyalty of his closest companions because he was determined to effect a reconciliation with Mecca
Yes, all fundamentalists feel that in a secular society, God has been relegated to the margin, to the periphery and they are all in different ways seeking to drag him out of that peripheral position, back to center stage.
Religion is a search for transcendence. But transcendence isn't necessarily sited in an external god, which can be a very unspiritual, unreligious concept.
Religious ideas and practices take root not because they are promoted by forceful theologians, nor because they can be shown to have a sound historical or rational basis, but because they are found in practice to give the faithful a sense of sacred transcendence.
Could God exist if nobody else did? No. Thatβs why gods are very avid for worshipers. If there is nobody to worship them, there are no gods. There are as many gods as there are people thinking about God. In choosing your god, you choose your way of looking at the universe. There are plenty of Gods. Choose yours. The god you worship is the god you deserve.
It is sometimes said that we drink our religion with our mother's milk.
The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.
I used to watch the world as if it was a performance and I would realize that certain things that people did moved me, and certain things didn't move me, and I tried to analyze, even at that age, six and seven and eight, why I was moved by certain things they did
If prosperity is regarded as the reward of virtue it will be regarded as the symptom of virtue.
When conscious activity is wholly concentrated on some one definite purpose, the ultimate result, for most people, is lack of balance accompanied by some form of nervous disorder.
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