The Saint 67
belongs to him; he watches serenely as his inferiors are promoted
beyond him. He simply does his best, and if his highest hopes for
improving the lives of the common people do not come to fruition,
then he accepts matters with tranquility. He knows— the idea is at
the heart of much of the East’s wisdom— that we must judge our-
selves by our intentions and not (as the pragmatic West often insists)
by results.
His reward? The reward of the gentleman is an unblemished
reputation and the most desirable state of spirit, the state of serenity.
The Confucian gentleman achieves peace. He arrives at the inverse
of the burning turbulence in which the warlords live. He is one with
himself and he is whole. For he has found the secret of the Soul:
kindliness, generosity, thoughtfulness, a life dedicated to others.
However agitated the world around him may be, the gentleman, like
the Master who showed him the way, is perpetually at peace.
How does the ideal of compassion arise in the West? How does the
conception of human beings as being equally worthy of love and
kindness arise in Palestine after it emerged in India and China fi ve
hundred years before? Surely Jesus, a spiritual genius of the highest
order, may have arrived at the compassionate ideal on his own.
Throughout the Gospels he displays almost unfl agging originality
and an often fi ery in de pen dence of mind. Based on experience and
refl ection, Jesus may have come to celebrate compassion above
the other virtues without the infl uence of any teacher or set of
doctrines.
But it’s also possi ble that some practical form of transmission took
place. Maybe merchants or warriors or itinerant scholars wandering
the world, as the Greek Herodotus did, somehow traversed the great
stretches between India and what the West now calls the Holy Land.
Perhaps whole religious groups— call them cults if you like— made
the journey West over the Silk Road seeking freedom to pursue their