Karen Armstrong article in Washington Post

Labeled as one of the great "religious historians," Karen Armstrong had this to say about what works for her in this Washington Post article:

In her own life, she refers often to the Indian word dukkha, or suffering. "Buddha would say that life is suffering. There is no why to it. Suffering and unsatisfactoriness. Indians say, 'Start with the pain of life and let it crack you open.' " In the story, Buddha was shielded from suffering until three gods came in disguised as old age, sickness and death. "Then his heart was broken. He realized that life was dukkha. That's what I felt when I was looking at my mother. That life was dukkha."

What works for her, she says, is to "allow the pain to break you open. Then you can begin your quest. Because that's when you can learn compassion. If you shield yourself from suffering as a lot of our society is set up to, then it's hard to relate to suffering in others. Once you discover what it is that gives you pain, then you must refuse under any circumstances to inflict that pain on others. It's quite easy to numb yourself instead of looking at it as a spiritual opportunity."

She also says something rather gradiloquently, almost naively, dubious:

The sages of today's Western world, Armstrong says, "have been scientists -- people like Freud, Newton, Einstein, Bill Gates. They've done wonderful things for the world, cured many diseases. But all this has made the inner world difficult for us. It's made religion more problematic. We don't know where to stop. We've created weapons that can wipe out the world; we're destroying our environment. We can't seem to call a halt to it."

I kind of understand Freud, Newton and Einstein as sages (what with science having won the "reason" and "knowledge" wars over religion long ago)-- certainly sagacious, learned intellectuals, but Bill Gates?