While I realise that the author of the initial comment did not really intend to imply that Buddhists lack compassion per se, his use of language and definition of the word “compassion” were poorly chosen to convey that idea. Much about Buddhism and the Buddha himself is misunderstood in the West, even by Buddhists. While there are some excellent courses in Buddhism, a purely academic study of it (which I have undertaken) is not really enough to qualify one to claim an understanding of its principles, any more that such a study would of any religious belief.

Rather than comparing an historical figure like Gautama Siddhartha (coupled with an academic reading of his teachings) with a recent figure like Mother Teresa, it would be better, I think to compare Mother Teresa with recent well-known Buddhists such as Ayya Khema, or to look into the charitable works that are performed by Buddhist centres and in prisons and so forth. That would give a clearer indication of how the concept of compassion actually operates in current Buddhist practice.

The issue here is surely not about which religious belief “owns” the true nature of compassion, but about identifying those attitudes and actions that display it. In regard to this, it seems clear that no specific religion can lay exclusive claim to this behaviour; rather, it is something that is the common heritage of humanity – that which expresses the best in human nature. The religious belief (or lack of it) of those who practice it is entirely irrelevant.

However, if you are willing to wander outside standard Abrahamic God concepts you might have an argument that Buddhism might include something like God, albeit a God few Christians would recognize as such. It’s closer to Paul Tillich’s “god as ground of being.” This is a huge topic, however, and not one I have the energy to go into at the moment.

If you are interested in this topic, there’s an excellent essay by the Theravadin monk and scholar Nyanaponika Thera called “Buddhism and the God-idea” that I recommend. Theravada is the oldest school of Buddhism and tends to be more conservative than Zen.

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/godidea.html

“The point of the sutra about the arrow is also simple. The Buddha believed that we all have plenty of important things to do in life, and speculating, arguing and wondering about the metaphysical was a waste of time, and no good would ever come of it. He was a practical person.”

I agree with everything except your inexplicable resort to the words “”a waste of time.” The Buddha nowhere says these words, which are clearly pejorative in intention. He does not even imply them, in my opinion. Because he was a practical man as regards the possibility of answering such satisfactorily certainly does NOT mean that he thought that inquiring into those things such as God or soul or salvation, which may properly be said to be metaphysical inquiries, is unimportant or foolish. Animals are concerned with none of those matters, yet animals have concerns. Would the Buddha account that a virtue in the beasts?

No. Your almost reflexive dismissal of such notions is but another example of what I have called the “metaphysical smugness” of many modern Buddhists — though, I think, such dismissiveness is not a characteristic of the Buddha Himself, who would see such inquiries as a waste of time ONLY if one limited oneself to them as the wounded traveler seems bent on doing.

Greetings! Compassion is compassion, who could argue with a tautology; but Mr. Smith was distinguishing between Latin compassio and Prakrit karuna and was doing it in English. There are bound to be pitfalls here. All three tongues being Indo-European dialects notwithstanding, there may well be critical semantical distinctions that need to accounted for; as, for example, the fact that in Latin passus is the past participle of a verb (patior) whose core meaning is “to be patient” or “to endure [without complaint],” means but “to suffer” only in a sense that is now practically obsolete in English. My Sanskrit’s a bit rusty (and I never did study Pali), yet I seem to recall that some roots in “krn” give rise to words that indeed denote pain or suffering in the ordinary sense. So there is that.

The larger point, however, is that theology matters, whether the theologian is metaphysically prolix or reticent. The notion of God’s personhood is quite unavoidable here. His mercy towards the wretched of the earth is undeniably personal in Christianity. As Jesus Himself says “What you do for the least of these, you do for me,” the verse that Mother Teresa herself often cited as the source of her repeated claim on our attention that the unfortunate man is “Christ in terrible guise.”

It almost seems that what is being signaled here is that absent divine personhood, there is no human personhood. Differentiation out of the (Brahmanic) One, as is accomplished in the Trinity, may be the precondition, or at least a precondition, for there even being such a thing as an “individual” exhibiting a personality, i.e., a soul, a further vexed notion in Buddhism. The alternative, I submit, is Sabellianism, the heresy that the doctrine of the Trinity particularly confounds. Moreover, the doctrine of the Trinity is itself wholly a matter of revelation, having nothing to do with natural reason, as Aquinas stresses. Personhood, therefore, whether divine or human is a true mystery.

But that is all metaphysics. What is important to note, however, is that most of the above remarks would translate only very, very poorly into Buddhist parlance, which may be all that Mr. Smith is saying in the end.

I’m thinking you are making things way too complicated.

Compassion is compassion. Buddhism and Christianity teach that one should cultivate and practice compassion. It’s that simple. Sure, your reasons for becoming compassionate may be different from the next guy, but that doesn’t cause your compassion to be different.

The point of the sutra about the arrow is also simple. The Buddha believed that we all have plenty of important things to do in life, and speculating, arguing and wondering about the metaphysical was a waste of time, and no good would ever come of it. He was a practical person.

I realize his view on the metaphysical is very hard for Christians to understand, and usually causes them to declare Buddhism a non-religion. But that’s OK.

I think the problem with Mr Smith’s article is also simple. His definition of compassion is wrong, which results in a ridiculous conclusion, which he uses for the article title.

Indeed, if Gautama was compassionate when out healing the world (and from the descriptions above it does seem to apply) then shouldn’t the scientists be out seeking to measure that’s nun’s reactions when out doing the same. Do Buddhist nuns follow Gautama’s example here? I simply don’t know.

Now, if those scientists are seeking to learn what happens during meditation maybe “compassion” is the not the right word to express what they are measuring.

What has this to do with the present discussion? Just this: Christianity has never felt a doctrinal need for utter reticence about God. In Christianity God is an unashamedly personal being, while at the same time He is a being of whom little or nothing definite can be affirmed. Is Christianity confused here? Possibly. But I don’t think so. It’s just that, as with the wounded traveler tended to by the Buddha, we will all be dead before it may be explained to our satisfaction how a transcendent God may be a loving father. So then, because the compassion of Christianity is a direct response — namely an obligation that derives from — the personhood of God, the second personhood to be precise (i.e., the Christ), whereas the notion of divine personhood is largely absent in Buddhism, for whatever reason or reasons, communicating each faith’s understanding of compassion, each to each, will always be difficult, perhaps even impossible.