Very powerful and clear Maha. All religions exist also as social phenomena that end up being interpreted to suit the needs of the interpreter. Interpretation tends towards being contextual and time bound and though I’m not religious, religions themselves all seem to arise out a universal understand of people being equal. Any other “interpretation” seems to me to be a distortion for special interest or “custom” established by power.

I grew up as a Unitarian and though I paid not much attention we did study all religions in Sunday School and never learned to favour one ideology/interpretation over another because they all said the same thing at their core.

I like Karen Armstrong’s (religious historian) comments on Compassion:
“Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.”

This quote comes from a section of a book subtitled “Wish for a Better World” which tells me it is a wish for balance in a reality of imbalance. A goal to be actively pursued rather than to be smugly content with.

The more people I meet on the net the clearer it is that this place represents and escape from the smallness of local powers. Where I worked the people in charge were the ones who could centred themselves in their smallness of a world and defeated everything. Maybe the first step in “liberating” them is step into a bigger world and leave them to their own self-regard?