How altruism is part of our spiritual DNA

“May I be a guard for those who are protectorless,

A guide for those who journey on the road.

For those who wish to go across the water,

May I be a boat, a raft, a bridge.”

The Way of the Bodhisattva.

 

On the evening of July 21, 1941, as Operation Barbarossa, the codename for Adolf Hitler’s massive invasion campaign of the Soviet Union, was underway, a 47-year-old Franciscan priest stepped forward from a line of concentration camp prisoners at Auschwitz to offer his life in exchange for another’s.

“I am a Catholic priest,” said Father Maximillian Kolbe in perfect German, “and I ask permission to take the place of that prisoner.” He pointed to Francis Gajownicek, a fellow Polish inmate, who just a few minutes earlier had begged the Nazi soldiers to spare him from the death squad for the sake of his family.

There was the briefest of pauses, then the camp commandant, Colonel Fritsch, yelled at Kolbe: “Hand in your shoes.” Prisoners who were about to die did not need shoes.

The next order addressed to the 10 condemned men was: “Left turn” and they were marched off to the “hunger bunker”, a dark underground cell where they were to be left to starve to death. As each man died, his body was carted away by the other prisoners.

However, after two weeks, Father Kolbe, along with three other prisoners, was found to be still alive. An exasperated Fritsch ordered them to be “finished off” and on August 14 at noon a German nursing orderly entered the bunker. He injected deadly phenic acid into the arms of the three remaining prisoners but, when he came to Father Kolbe, he found him leaning against the wall praying quietly. As the orderly approached, Kolbe gently extended his arm.

The four bodies were later thrown into the furnace and the ashes of Maximillian Kolbe, mixed with those of 3 million other victims, were scattered over the beautiful countryside surrounding the grimness of the Auschwitz death camp.

Where man destroys, the earth heals. Nature has its own way of honouring those who have fallen in war for each spring this area is blanketed with a stunning array of white and red flowers.

In the Gospel of St John the Evangelist, Chapter 15, verses 13–14, we are reminded by Christ that the greatest love one man can extend to another is to lay down his life for his brother, as Father Kolbe did that summer’s day nearly 70 years ago.

For many people, altruism remains the most perfect form of love.

 

Serving others

Often referred to by behaviouralists and psychologists as “agape altruism” (divine selflessness), the basic principle of altruism is this: man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification for his existence and that self-sacrifice is the highest of moral duties, virtues and values.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, altruism is loosely defined as an “unselfish concern” for the welfare of others. “To love at all,” writes CS Lewis in the closing pages of his work, The Four Loves, “is to be vulnerable.”

The British scholar and novelist who has captivated generations of children with his Chronicles of Narnia series is one of the most influential and enduring spiritual writers of contemporary times. Lewis died in 1963, but his writings on altruism remain as fresh and as illuminating today as when they were first penned more than half a century ago.

“Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken,” he remarked. “If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable … The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”

Lewis’s idea of locking your heart away may not seem compatible with altruism but he adds that it is probably impossible to love any human being “too much”, which is why altruistic love is the pinnacle of human emotions.

 

The natural way

There is no doubt that altruism is but one of the many faces of love a human being may confront during his or her lifetime. Yet it is also, in a strange and inexplicable way, the most natural facet of the entire dynamic of love. What mother, for instance, would hesitate to protect her child when faced with a life-or-death situation? The media relates tales of mothers who have rushed frantically back inside burning homes to rescue children from the flames or who step, without hesitation, in front of oncoming trains to pluck infants from certain death.

Although this concept of love has an ancient history in terms of philosophical or ethical thought, the term altruism itself was not coined until the 19th century when sociologist and philosopher, August Comte, shaped this selfless concern for others into a major topic for psychologists, evolutionary biologists and students of ethical thought.

Altruism, stated Comte, was not to be confused with goodwill or respect for the rights of others, nor does it stem from a sense of duty or loyalty. These are not primary behaviours, he argued, but are consequences that altruism makes impossible. The primary motivating factor behind the unique sentiment of altruism is, at all times, self-sacrifice. In this particular context, for the psychologist the self becomes the standard of evil; the selfless is seen as the standard of good.

In essence, the issue is not whether you should or should not give that dollar to a beggar. The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dollar.

Put even more succinctly, the issue is whether the need of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral principle of your existence or whether this compassion has no room whatsoever in your life, as Lewis has written.

Is man a sacrificial animal? Am I really my brother’s keeper?

Any man of self-esteem will answer: “No.” Altruism will answer: “Yes.”

 

Buddhism

Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good and any action taken for one’s own benefit is evil. It is that clear-cut. Hearts cannot be locked away in closed, airless and dark caskets. They are meant to be broken as the Tin Man discovered when he finally obtained one from the mighty Wizard of Oz. Thus the beneficiary of such selfless, loving action is the sole criterion for altruistic behaviour.

In a religious context, altruism figures prominently in Buddhism where the qualities of love and compassion are utterly fundamental. “I consider compassion to be the basis and supreme support of humankind,” says His Holiness the Dalai Lama in his book, The Spirit of Peace. “This eminent quality that induces us to love our neighbour, to come to his aid when he is suffering and to forget ourselves for his sake is one that only human beings are capable of awakening. And whenever they do so, they are the first to derive happiness from it.”

In comparison, a love that is based on attachment is considered by Buddhists to be both precarious and limited. In fact, in this theology love based on attachment is of no real help at all. Today, you may be in love but tomorrow you may feel quite different. True compassion is free from attachment and is expressed spontaneously and unconditionally, like that of a mother who expects nothing from her child in return.

“It is such a demanding form of love,” remarks the Dalai Lama, “that it gives birth to an indomitable desire to make all beings happy. It strives ceaselessly to ensure that everyone is free of suffering and of everything that brings about suffering.”

For the Buddhist, love has as many forms as hearts that hold it yet in the end the personal must give way to the impersonal, the selfish to the altruistic. This is metta — love that is completely at peace.

This is where we see the birth of karma, the Buddhist law of cause and effect. “As I am,” the Buddhist monk proclaims, “so are these. As these are, so am I.” By identifying himself with others, the follower of the Eight-fold path to Enlightenment can put himself in the place of the lowest, most degraded and most hopelessly “lost” of his fellow human beings, for the Buddhist understands. Such compassion is the basis of morality and the essence of the Four Noble Truths, which is the cornerstone of all Buddha’s teaching.

The Buddhist feels with and for each of his fellow human beings because he believes we are really one with each other. Compassion is the touchstone that divides men into good and evil. For the Buddhist, compassion is no mere Band-aid. It is altruism in action. It is the voice of the cosmos in the ear.

 

Christianity

In Christianity, altruism figures prominently in the teachings of Christ. The annual Lenten passage followed by Roman Catholics every Easter tide is totally focused on altruistic love. “I am the good shepherd,” Jesus tells his followers in John 10:11. “And I am willing to die for the sheep.”

During the Easter Triduum, the power of the crucifixion for all Christians lies in the selfless sacrifice and subsequent resurrection of the Son of Man — through his death the human race has been liberated and death has been crushed. For all Christians, this fact — and this fact alone — represents the enduring power of the Cross over the darkness of the night. That Jesus Christ should offer his life as a sacrifice for our sins.

Through the parable, The Good Samaritan, all Christians are reminded that to be a neighbour to others you must go beyond friends and family to extend welcome and mercy to the outcast — even to one’s enemy. “Who is my neighbour?” the irritated lawyer asks of Jesus. In response, Jesus tells the crowd the story of the Good Samaritan. (Luke 10 25–37)

A man, said Jesus, was travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho. On the way, he met with robbers who beat him, robbed him and left him by the wayside half-dead. While he lay on the road a priest came along and passed him by. Then a Levite saw him and also passed him by. When a Samaritan came along, he was moved with pity and stooped to help him. He poured oil and wine on the man’s wounds to clean them, then bound them up and, setting the man on his own animal, he brought him to a nearby inn and took care of him. As he was leaving, he gave money to the innkeeper, telling him that when he returned he would pay whatever else was due.

At the end of the story, Jesus asked the lawyer: “Which of these three do you think made himself neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The lawyer answered: “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus said to him: “Go then and do the same.”

As officials in the Jerusalem temple, the prime concern of both the priest and the Levite would be to maintain ritual purity. There had been a shedding of blood and, if the man was dead, they would disqualify themselves from any temple service until undergoing the proper ritual purification, a time-consuming practice. They both avoided the problem by crossing over to the other side of the road. The only one who responded mercifully was the outsider of two closed societies, the Samaritan.

To the people of Jesus’ day, this parable was a searing lesson in compassion. The clever lawyer would know that a neighbour is defined as one’s countryman and is limited by ethnic background but the parable breaks through this interpretation. The neighbour is the one who acts compassionately towards another, ethnic divisions notwithstanding.

Through this parable, Jesus is saying that love does not consist of being moved by another person’s distress. As long as we refuse to love one another, we are not loving as God wants. The story of the Good Samaritan is not just about kindness; it is about having compassion for a fellow human being. It is almost entirely Buddhist in its approach to altruistic love.

 

Modern altruism

On one occasion, Martin Luther King pointed out that love is not satisfied with comforting those who suffer. “To begin with,” he said, “we must be the Good Samaritan to those who have fallen along the way. This, however, is only the beginning. Then, some day, we will necessarily have to realise that the road to Jericho must be made in such a way that men and women are not constantly beaten and robbed while they are travelling along the paths of life.”

Today, the altruistic sacrifice of oneself for the other seems to be a very old-fashioned notion but that is what love undeniably leads to. Using the Latin scarum facere, meaning to make sacred or holy, we are all challenged to make something holy by reconnecting it to the whole.

Internationally acclaimed author, Richard Rohr, a Franciscan of the New Mexico Province, explains it thus in his book Job and the Mystery of Suffering: “When we go beyond the call of duty, when we lay down our life for our brother or sister, those for whom we make such a sacrifice are able to believe our love and believe that they can do the same … (Altruism) is the re-mending of a broken world, while paying the price for the mending thread ourselves.”

 

Altruism abounds

Altruism is not confined to either Buddhism or Christianity; it is a Universal concept. In Sufism, altruism is known as i’thar and is the notion of “preferring others to oneself”. For Sufis, this means devotion to others through complete forgetfulness of individual concerns. Personal sacrifice for the sake of the greater good is all that matters.

Muslims consider those practising i’thar as abiding by the highest degree of nobility. A constant concern for Allah is said to result in a careful attitude towards people, animals and other things in the world. The 13th century Turkish Sufi poet Yunus Emre explained this philosophy as: “Yaratilam severiz, Yaratandan oturu” (“We love the creature because of the Creator”).

In Judaism, altruism is defined as the ultimate desired goal of creation. The famous Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook once said that love is the most important attribute in humanity. The Jewish mystical teaching, the Kabbalah, defines God as the force of giving in existence.

Today many Kabballists believe the purpose of creation is to establish an altruistic social framework to lift human beings to a state of complete compassion.

 

The science of altruism

If altruism is living by giving, what effect does the practice of it have on human beings and is altruism specific to certain types of people? A raft of scientific studies has shown that altruistic behaviour not only changes the brain but that some of us may find altruism easier to practise than others.

In a recent experiment at Germany’s Bonn University, people with a minor gene variation were shown to give away twice as much money, on average, to charitable causes than others with another variation of the same gene. The gene, known as COMT, contains building instructions for an enzyme that acts on the neurotransmitter dopamine (which is associated with positive emotions). This, in turn, triggers certain other chemical messengers in the brain.

The researchers soon discovered there are two distinct variations of the COMT gene, COMT-VAL and COMT-Met, and that they occur with about the same frequency in people.

The variants differ in only a single building block but, in those with the COMT-VAL variant, the associated enzyme works up to four times more effectively. In an experiment involving prize money and the chance to donate it to charity, the German researchers found that those with the COMT-VAL gene were discovered to be twice as likely to donate it as those people with the COMT-Met variant. The breakthrough study, which was published in the medical journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, represents the first time scientists have been able to find a possible link between a particular gene and altruism.

While some of us may have an inbuilt neurological ability to be more compassionate than others, love is not the exclusive domain of the few. Altruistic love is humble — it is not proud; it is the power that protects us and the medicine that heals us. It “bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things”. (1 Corinthians 13:4–7)

 

 

Claire Porter has been a freelance investigative reporter for the past 30 years. She has a special interest in the dynamics of human healing. Her first book 70,000 Veils — The Miracle of Energy is available from O Books.