The Compassionate Instinct

EKMAN: The problem of our time, of our century, is to achieve a global compassion; otherwise we run the risk that we will destroy ourselves. We are talking about influencing all the people in the world, who are, to a large extent, brought up in exactly the opposite way, with a national—or even worse, a tribal—concern and nothing beyond that. We are not starting on neutral territory; we start with a need to counter tribal-bound compassion. How do we do this? What are the first steps?

DALAI LAMA: (Translated.) The first step is to be able to educate people to see the downside of a completely individualistic rather than a global concern, to recognize the pros and cons, the benefits and the disadvantages, of compassion for all living beings. (

Switching to English.) Here, the narrow-mindedness to think of one’s own nation, one’s own country, one’s own tract. Or only the West—America and Europe—not thinking about Africa, Latin America, Middle East, or Asia. And the Asians say, “Oh, we’re Asia” there is a sense of rivalry with the West. So, what is the benefit of that? For us to think globally is a positive benefit: the economy, the environment, and also the political system. I think with politics, there is, how do you say?

JINPA: Rivalry.

DALAI LAMA: Rivalry, based on the national feeling, policy commitments, and concern about power. (Translated

.) The first step is to appreciate really and deeply the pros and cons, the benefits and the disadvantages of narrow-mindedness, nationalism, tribalism, provincialism, whatever it is, as opposed to a global consciousness, a unity of humanity. How do we do this on a global scale? Here it becomes very important to reflect deeply upon the interconnected nature of the modern economy, and how environmentally our fates are all intertwined.

This reality, I think, is totally different from the reality of the nineteenth century, eighteenth century, seventeenth century. At that time, the Western nations had more advanced technology than other people, and so they exploited some other countries. The reality was “we” and “them”—this was the basis. Today, the reality is much different. Everything is heavily interdependent.

EKMAN: So it would appear that the world has been changing in the last century to better fit a Buddhist view. In the sixteenth century, the Buddhists had the same view as they do today, but the world did not fit it. You could live your life without much regard for how other people on the planet were living their lives. Now it is a fact of life that what one person does has effects on others; we are all interdependent.

DALAI LAMA: A new reality. (Translated.) But the problem is that the politicians are not able to follow that trend. No.

EKMAN: I see what you are pointing to. There are two destructive forces to contend with.

One of them is historically grounded resentment. In areas like the Balkans, the hatred goes back for centuries; it is living your life now in terms of what happened to your father or your uncle. But facing realities today is not so easy to achieve. Much is based on equalizing the score for past resentments. Resentment—a long-term, harbored sense of injustice and unfairness—is a real obstacle.

Another obstacle is a concern with the short term rather than the long term. Politicians generally are only concerned with what happens in the short term, because that is what is going to affect them.

DALAI LAMA: Yes. (Translated.) On a global level, we need to have a deeper appreciation of how many of the conflicts and problems that we face today are really the consequence of an inadequate appreciation of the global dimension, and that this is the result of narrow-mindedness, of one form or another.

More than a century ago, Darwin had already pointed out the need for this kind of global sentiment. [Earlier in their conversation, Ekman had described Darwin’s views on the origin of compassion, which were remarkably similar to the Buddhist view.—Ed.] Even on the individual level, it may be helpful to bring to people’s attention the health dimensions of the more positive emotions, like compassion. How thinking more globally, thinking about others, provides an outlook within which the individual may no longer get caught up in the petty issues and problems that often become stumbling blocks.