Categoria: Idiomas

Sofer with those who suffer: the actuality of compassion

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

Leonardo Boff

A cloak of suffering and pain covers the whole of humanity, threatened by Covid-19. The culture of capital, in which we live, is characterized by individualism and a crying lack of cooperation. The Pope, on the Italian island of Lampeduza, seeing hundreds of Africans arriving by boat from Africa and being unwelcomed by the local population, said almost in tears: “Our modern culture has robbed us of compassion for our fellow human beings; we have become incapable of crying.

It seems that the inflation of instrumental and analytical rationality has caused us a kind of lobotomy: we have become insensitive to the suffering of others. The current president is the most tragic proof of this indifference. He has never visited a hospital overcrowded with people contaminated by Covid-19, many of them suffocating to death.

The pandemic made us discover our deep humanity: the centrality of life, the interdependence among all, the solidarity and the necessary care. It made us more sensitive. It brought back compassion.

Compassion is the ability to feel and share the passion of the other, to whisper words of hope into the ear, to offer a shoulder and say that you are there for them come and go, to be able to cry together but also to encourage each other.

Compassion is a transcultural human feeling. It can be found in all cultures: everyone bends over the fallen and bends down before the dignity of the suffering of the other.

Some time ago an ancient Egyptian tomb was discovered with this inscription, full of compassion: “I was someone who listened to the widow’s complaint; I was someone who wept for a misfortune and consoled the downcast; I was someone who heard the sobbing of the orphan girl and wiped her tears; I was someone who had compassion on a desperate woman.

Today the relatives of those killed and affected by Covid-19, which left in its victims severe sequelae, call us to live this better side of our humanity: compassion. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in his Summa Theologica that compassion is more excellent than love for one’s neighbor; the latter is directed toward the other; compassion is directed toward the other who suffers.

From quantum physics, contemporary cosmology, and bioanthropology we learn that the fundamental law of all things and of the entire universe is not competition and the triumph of the most capable of adaptation, but the cooperation and synergy of all with all. Even the smallest and weakest has the right to live, because it has its place among all beings and carries within it a message to be heard by all. In this field, compassion among all beings other than humans also applies.

The following legend is told about St. Francis, who was especially compassionate with lepers, with the worm that could not make a hole in the hard soil of the road and who was compassionate enough to remove it and bring it to the damp earth, or with the broken twig:

He found a boy who was carrying in a cage doves to be sold in the market. He begged him: “Good child, give me these humble and innocent little doves so that they will not be killed and eaten by men. The boy, touched by St. Francis’ innocent love, gave him the cage with the doves. Whispering, St. Francis said to them: “my dear little sisters, foolish and simple, why have you let yourselves be caught? Behold, I am coming to set you free. He opened the cage. Instead of flying out, they went lining up on his chest and in his hood and did not want to leave. St. Francis took them to the hermitage and told them, “multiply as your Creator wills. They had many chicks. They did not leave the company of St. Francis and the friars, as if they were domestic. They only took off and flew away when St. Francis blessed them and let them go.

As can be seen, compassion, along the lines of Buddhism and Arthur Schopenhauer’s “Fundamentals of Morals” (1840), all founded on unlimited compassion for all beings, is not only important for those who are currently suffering, but for all of creation.

Let’s conclude with the inspiring words of the Dalai Lama: “Whether you believe in God or not, whether you believe in Buddha or not Even if you can’t help them with money, it’s still always worthwhile to express moral support and empathy. This should be the basis of our action. Whether we call it religion or not is the least of our concerns” (Logic of Love, 1998).What matters is compassion.

Leonardo Boff wrote Principle of Compassion and Care: the encounter between East and West, Vozes 2009.

The voracity of capitalism brought Covid-19

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

                                    Leonardo Boff

I have been supporting the thesis that Covid-19 is a counterattack of Mother Earth against the system of capital and its political expression, neoliberalism. It brought to its knees, humiliated, the militaristic powers that with their weapons of mass destruction could destroy life on the planet. If the war against the planet continues, it may no longer want us. A more lethal virus, immune to any vaccine, could lead a large part of the human species to its end.

Such an eventuality is not impossible because this system of death of beings of nature and human beings, in the words of Pope Francis, has a suicidal tendency. It would rather risk death than renounce its voracity.

This short story, taken from Len Tolstoy (1828-1910), told to the peasants of his farm Isnaya Poliana with the title How much earth does a man need, may make us reflect.

“There was a peasant who worked on a piece of land that was not very fertile. He worked hard but without much fruit. He envied his neighbors who had bigger land and more abundant harvests. He was extremely annoyed by the heavy taxes he still had to pay on the little land and the meager earnings.

One day he thought a lot and decided: “I will go with my companion, far away from here, in search of better lands.  He learned that many leagues from his home, there were gypsies who sold land very cheaply and even for ridiculously low prices when they saw someone more needy and willing to work.

This peasant, eager to own more and more land to farm and become rich, thought: “I’m going to make a pact with the devil. This one will bring me luck,” he said to his wife, who wrinkled her nose. He warned her:

“My husband, beware of the devil, no good ever comes of making a pact with him.

 But, at her husband’s insistence, she decided to accompany him to carry out his ambitious project. With that they set off, taking few belongings with them.

When they arrived at the gypsies’ land, the devil was already there, all dressed up, giving the impression of an influential land merchant. The peasant and his wife politely greeted the gypsies. When they were about to express their desire to acquire land, the devil, unceremoniously, immediately stepped forward and said:

“Good sir, I see that you have come a long way and are seized by a great desire to own good land to plant and make some fortune. I have an excellent proposal for you. The land is cheap, within reach of your pocket. I make you the following proposal: you leave a reasonable amount of money in a bag here beside me. If you walk through a territory for a whole day, from sunrise to sunset, and are back before the sun sets, all the land you walk through will be yours. Otherwise you will lose the money in the bag.

The peasant’s eyes, shone with emotion and he said:

“I think it’s an excellent proposal. I have strong legs and I accept. Early tomorrow morning, at sunrise, I will run, and all the territory that my legs can reach will be mine.

 The devil, always malicious, smiled all smiles.

In fact, very early in the morning, as soon as the sun broke through the horizon, the peasant started to run. He jumped over fences, crossed streams and, not satisfied, didn’t even stop to rest. He saw before him a laughing green plain and immediately thought: “here I will plant wheat in abundance. Looking to the left, a very flat valley opened up, and he thought: “here I can make a whole plantation of linen for fine clothes.

 A little breathless, he climbed a small hill, and behold, a field of virgin land appeared at the bottom. Then he thought: “I want that land too. There I will raise cattle and sheep and fill my donkey with money.

And so he traveled many kilometers, not satisfied with what he had conquered, because the places he saw were attractive and fertile and fed his unrestrained desire to own them too.

Suddenly he looked up at the sky and realized that the sun was setting behind the mountain. He said from himself to himself:

“There is no time to lose. I have to hurry back, otherwise I will lose all the land I have covered, and the money on top of that. One day of pain, one life of love,” he thought as his grandfather used to say.

He started running at a speed too fast for his tired legs, but he had to run without noticing the limits of his strained muscles. He even took off his shirt and dropped the bag with some food in it. He kept looking at the position of the sun, already near the horizon, huge and red as blood. But it had not yet fully set.  Even though he was very tired, he ran more and more and could no longer feel his legs from so much effort. Sadly, he thought: “maybe I have run too far and might lose everything. But let’s go ahead”.

But when he saw the devil standing solemnly in the distance, with his bag of money beside him, he took heart again, certain that he would arrive before the sun went down. He gathered all the energy he had and made a last effort. He ran, without thinking about the limits of his legs, as if he were flying. Not far from the finish line, he threw himself forward, almost losing his balance.

Then, exhausted and without any strength, he collapsed on the ground. And he died. His mouth was bleeding and his whole body was covered with scratches and sweat.

 The devil, maliciously, just smiled. Indifferent to the dead man and greedy, he looked at the bag of money. He even took the trouble to make a grave the size of the peasant’s and tucked him inside. It was only seven palms of earth, the smallest part that fit him of all the land he walked. He didn’t need more than that. The woman, as if petrified, watched the whole thing, weeping copiously.

This tale reverberates the words of João Cabral de Melo Neto (1920-1999) in his work Morte e Vida Severina (1995). At the farmer’s funeral, the poet says: “This grave you are in, measured by inches, is the smallest bill you took in life; it is your share of this latifundium”.

Of all the attractive plots of land that he saw and wanted to own, in the end, the avid peasant was left with only the seven palms for his grave.

Is this not the fate of capitalism and neoliberalism?

Leonardo Boff wrote: Covid-19: Mother Earth Strikes Back at Humanity: Warnings from the Pandemic, Vozes 2020. 

Current government’s Bolsonaro has brought death to indigenous people

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

                                                      Leonardo Boff

The contempt that the current president shows towards the indigenous people is notorious. He considers them sub-people and on December 1, 2018 he stated quite clearly: “our project for the Indio is to make them equal to us”. And he advanced further: “there is not going to be a centimeter demarcated for indigenous reserve or for quilombolas”.

The most perverse thing was not to approve the Proposal of Constitutional Amendment (PEC) that should bring them drinking water, the basic inputs against the Covid-19. It is a purpose of death. Days ago, in this month of June, in a peaceful demonstration of several ethnic groups, they were received in Brasilia with repression, rubber bullets and tear gas. There is a total abandonment of them, to the point that 163 villages of different ethnicities have been contaminated and there have been 1,070 deaths.

A connoisseur of the history of the Amazon, Evaristo Miranda, whose title is a revelation: Cuando el Amazonas corría hacia el Pacífico, (Vozes 2007) tells us: “one thing is certain: the oldest and most permanent human presence in Brazil is in the Amazon. Some 400 generations ago diverse human groups occupied, disputed, explored and transformed the Amazonian territories and their food resources” (op.cit.p.47). They developed a great management of the forest, respecting its uniqueness, while modifying its habitat to stimulate those plants useful for human use. The indigenous and the forest evolved together in a profound reciprocity.

The anthropologist Viveiros de Castro said it well: “The Amazon we see today is the result of centuries of social intervention, just as the societies that live there are the result of centuries of coexistence with the Amazon” (in Tempo e Presença 1992, p.26).

It is also relevant to note that in the interior of the jungle, with its hundreds of ethnic groups, an immense space (almost an empire) of the Tupi-Guarani tribe was formed from 1100, before the arrival of the Portuguese invaders. It occupied territories ranging from the Andean foothills, forming the Amazon River, to the basins of the Paraguay and Paraná rivers, some of them reaching as far as the Gaucho pampas and the Brazilian northeast. “In this way,” states Miranda, “practically all of jungle Brazil was conquered by Tupi-Guarani peoples” (op.cit.92-93).

In pre-Cabralian Brazil there were about 1,400 tribes, 60% of them in the Amazonian part. They spoke languages of 40 trunks subdivided into 94 different families, which led anthropologist Berta Ribeiro to affirm “that nowhere on Earth has a linguistic variety similar to that observed in tropical South America been found” (Amazônia urgente, 1990 p.75). Today, unfortunately, given the decimation of indigenous peoples perpetrated in the course of history and recently by garimpeiros, miners, extractivists (mostly illegal), there are only 274 languages left. This means that more than a thousand languages have been lost (85%) and with them ancestral knowledge, worldviews and unique communications. It has been an irreparable impoverishment for the cultural heritage of humanity.

Among the many tragedies that led to the disappearance of entire ethnic groups, it is worth remembering one that few know about. Don Juan VI, admired by some, in a royal letter of May 13, 1808, ordered an official war against the Krenak Indians of the Rio Dulce Valley, in the states of Minas and Espírito Santo. To the military commanders he ordered “an offensive war that will have no end but when you have the happiness of lording it over their habitations and making them feel the superiority of my weapons… until the total reduction of a similar and atrocious anthropophagous race” (L.Boff, O casamento do céu com a terra, 2014, p.140).

Why do we remember all this? So that we realize that these exterminating actions continue even today, and we must resist, criticize and fight the criminal policies of the current government, genocidal of indigenous people and of the Brazilian people itself, which has left more than 510 thousand people to die.

The main perpetrators and their accomplices will hardly escape facing the International Tribunal for Crimes against Humanity in The Hague. The outcry is not only Brazilian but international. For such crimes there is no time limit. Wherever they are and at whatever time, they will not escape their severity, zealous, as they have proven to be, of the sacred dignity of the human being.

These native peoples are our masters and doctors when it comes to the relationship with nature of which they feel part and great caretakers. Now that with Covid-19 we are perplexed and lost, not knowing how to move forward, we must consult them. As an indigenous leader, survivor of the criminal war of Don Juan VI, Ailton Krenak, says, they will help us to avert or postpone the end of the world

If we follow the path of destruction of our common home, exploiting it limitlessly and without any scruple, that destiny could be the tragedy of the human species. But we have the hope that made the indigenous people survive to this day. We also hope to survive, transformed by the lessons that Mother Earth has been giving us.

*Leonardo Boff has written El casamiento del cielo y la tierra: cuentos de los pueblos indígenas de Brasil, Mar de Ideias, Rio de Janeiro 2014; El doloroso parto de la Madre Tierra: una sociedad de fraternidad sin fronteras y de amistad social, Vozes 2020.

The principle of compassion and the Covid-19

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

                                            Leonardo Boff

Through Covdi-19 Mother Earth is moving a counterattack against humanity as a reaction to the overwhelming attack it has been suffering for centuries. It is simply defending itself. Covif-19 is also a sign and a warning to us: we cannot wage war on her as we have done up to now, for she is destroying the biological basis that sustains her and all other life forms, especially human life. We have to change, otherwise it might send us even more lethal viruses, perhaps even an indefensible one against which we could do nothing. Then we would be as a species seriously endangered. It is not without reason that Covid-19 has struck only humans, as a warning and a lesson. It has already led millions to their deaths, leaving a via-sacra of suffering to millions more, and a lethal threat that could strike everyone else.

The cold numbers hide a sea of suffering for lives lost, loves broken, and projects destroyed. There are not enough tissues to wipe away the tears of the dear relatives or friends who have died and who have not been able to say a final goodbye, or even to celebrate their mourning and accompany them to the grave.

As if the suffering produced for a great part of humanity by the prevailing capitalist and neoliberal system, fiercely competitive and uncooperative, was not enough. It has allowed the richest 1% to personally own 45% of all global wealth, while the poorest 50% get less than 1%, according to a recent report by Crédit Suisse. Let’s listen to the person who best understands capitalism in the 21st century, the Frenchman Thomas Piketty, referring to the Brazilian case. Here, he says, we have the highest concentration of income in the world; the Brazilian millionaires, among the richest 1%, are ahead of the oil millionaires of the Middle East. No wonder the millions of marginalized and excluded that this disastrous inequality produces.

Again the cold numbers cannot hide the hunger, the misery, the high mortality of children and the devastation of nature, especially in the Amazon and other biomes, implicated in this process of plundering natural wealth.

But at this moment, by the intrusion of the coronavirus, humanity is crucified and we hardly know how to take it down from the cross. It is then that we must activate in all of us one of the most sacred virtues of the human being: compassion. It is attested in all peoples and cultures: the ability to put oneself in the place of another, to share their pain and thus alleviate it. 

The greatest Christian theologian, Thomas Aquinas, points out in his Summa Theologica that compassion is the highest of all virtues, because it not only opens the person to the other person, but it opens the person to the weakest and most in need of help. In this sense, he concluded, it is an essential characteristic of God.

translatorWe refer to the principle of compassion and not simply to compassion. The principle, in a deeper (philosophical) sense, means an original and essential disposition, generating a permanent attitude that is translated into acts but is never exhausted in them.It is always open to new acts. In other words, the principle has to do with something belonging to human nature. For this is how the English economist and philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790) could put it in his book on the Theory of Ethical Sentiments: even the most brutal and anti-communitarian person is not immune to the power of compassion.

Modern reflection has helped us to rescue the principle of compassion. It has become increasingly clear to critical thinking that the human being is not only structured on intellectual-analytical reason, which is necessary to account for the complexity of our world. There is something deeper and more ancestral in us, which appeared more than 200 million years ago when mammals burst into the evolution: the sensitive and cordial reason, which means the capacity to feel, to affect and be affected, to have empathy, sensitivity, and love.

We are rational but essentially sensitive beings. In fact, we build the world on emotional ties that make people and situations precious and valuable. We do not only inhabit the world through work, but through empathy, care and love. This is the place of compassion.

The one who has worked better than us Westerners is Buddhism. Compassion (Karuná) is articulated in two distinct and complementary movements: total detachment and essential care.detachment means letting the other be, not framing him, respecting his life and destiny. Caring for him implies never leaving him alone in his suffering, getting affectively involved with him so that he can live better by bearing his pain more lightly.

The terrible thing about suffering is not so much the suffering itself, but the loneliness in suffering. Compassion consists in not leaving the other alone. It means to be with him, to feel his suffering and anguish, to tell him words of comfort and to give him an affectionate hug.

Today, those who suffer, cry and are discouraged by the tragic fate of life need this compassion and this deep humanitarian sensitivity that is born of sensitive and cordial reason. The words spoken that seem so ordinary gain a new sound, reverberate inside the heart and bring serenity and raise a small ray of hope that everything will pass. The departure was tragic, but the arrival in God is blessed.

The Judeo-Christian tradition testifies to the greatness of compassion. The God of Jesus and Jesus himself show himself to be especially merciful, as revealed in the parables of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37) and the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32).

More than ever before, in the face of the devastation wrought by Covid-19 on the entire population, without exception, it becomes urgent to live compassion with the suffering as our most human, sensitive and solidary side.

Leonardo Boff wrote with Werner Müller the book Compassion & Care Principle, Vozes 2009; Covid-19 Mother Earth Strikes Back at Humanity, Vozes 2020.