Coronavirus has created a crisis in developed countries like the UK. But the wider impact is being felt even more strongly in the developing world. How can we keep that wider perspective?
Thought for the Day, BBC Radio 4, 14.05.2020
Something remarkable happened with the onset of Covid-19. With half the world in lockdown, perhaps for the first time in history the whole of humanity was in roughly the same situation: facing the same threats and feeling the same fears. It reminded me of the impact of the first images of the earth from space which let us see the planet as a whole and sense how much we have in common.
For understandable reasons, the focus of most media coverage has been what’s happening in Britain. Even people like me who are relatively unaffected have been adjusting to home-working and extra childcare; while many others are suffering in their health, livelihoods or mental wellbeing. All the same, I worry that we’re losing the global perspective.
As a member of an international Buddhist community, I hear from friends in India who are helping the millions forced by the lockdown to leave the cities. Day labourers buy food today with the money they earned yesterday, so when the work stopped they started walking back to their villages through blistering heat. Many are Dalits, on the bottom rung of society, and I’ve heard about shortages, violence and discrimination at every step.
There are similar reports from across the developing world. The differences in money and resources mean that, in some ways, we were never really in it together. That’s true here, and even more globally.
But how can we manage our own lives and also reach out to our communities? How can we take in the international crisis without feeling overwhelmed?
There are no simple answers to these questions, but my Buddhist practice challenges me to face them squarely. The great medieval Buddhist teacher Shantideva asks us to reflect as follows:
“Others want to avoid suffering, just like me, and share my desire for happiness. So why should their needs be less important than my own? If my foot is hurting, the hand doesn’t hesitate to sooth it.”
Shantideva’s plea goes beyond empathy. One Buddhist term for what he has in mind is anukampa, which means ‘trembling with others’: sharing their struggles as if they were our own.
What then? It’s natural to start at home. It’s inevitable that our efforts will be inadequate. But that doesn’t mean we should stop caring, stop trembling with the sufferings of people everywhere, or forget the image of our tiny, fragile planet in the vastness of space, and all its struggling inhabitants.
