Strangers Drowning By Larissa Macfarquhar Essay - 1996 Words

While the classic consequentialist and the Bodhisattva concept are very different, they promote almost the same ideology with the exception that the Bodhisattva demands self-sacrifice. In terms of the duty to prevent/eliminate bad things (suffering) and do it in a way that seeks to maximize good and extend efforts to all, such situations are extremely demanding of the moral doer. Neither view commits to any notion of empathy, but relies on rationalizing, sacrificing, and orienting towards results. In Larissa Macfarquhar’s book, Strangers Drowning, she provides character studies of various real-life extreme do-gooders and of some could be considered moral saints. One of them is a Buddhist monk, Nemoto, who dedicates his life to a cause of helping people who want to commit suicide. He is a moral saint in the sense that he draws no barrier for when this work ends and begins. He works tirelessly by taking on the suffering of these individuals he is trying to help, taking calls any hour of the day or night, and helping anyone who wants it. He learns a very important aspect that actually changes the empathy he feels into a separation of himself an the other. In order for him to help, and truly help, he needed to stop empathizing so much and start sympathizing with emotional distance from the other. This is a similar concept in the Bodhisattva method because while empathy breaks a barrier between ‘self’ and an ‘other’, it makes working for their benefit nearly impossible. The