China Galland is the author of The Bond Between Women: A Journey to Fierce Compassion and Longing for Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna: A Ten Year Journey. She is also the Director of the Images of Divinity Research Project, an independent project sponsored by The Center for Women and Religion at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.

Colleen O'Connor: What gave you the idea for this book?

China Galland: I was thumbing through The New York Times, and I saw a photograph of a young woman standing very close to a tree. She was about my daughter's age, so I took a look. When I read the byline, it turned out that she was a young girl in Bosnia who had hung herself because the women were fleeing from the advancing troops who were taking women to the rape camps. I knew I had a decision to make. Was I going to turn the page and once again try to act like I didn't see something? Or was I going to get up and do something? So I decided to write this book. It's the record of the journey I took to understand how to transform my outrage into compassion in order to take action.

Why did you focus only on women?

It's not so much that I have a commitment to women's spirituality as that when I see another woman do something, it empowers me in a way that if I see a man do it, it doesn't empower me. I needed to be with women who were facing tremendous odds and infuriating situations to learn how they'd been able to transform themselves and their anger into some kind of compassionate action.

Your book covers a lot of ground, from Nepal and India to Brazil and Argentina. How did you begin?

I thought about Mother Teresa's sisters because I knew that they were compassionate, but I also sensed that there had to be a kind of strength to sustain the kind of actions that they do--to make a lifetime commitment to the poor and to the disenfranchised, and to live a life of poverty themselves. I thought Mother Teresa's would be a good place to start because in Kathmandu, they run the only old folk's home.

But while in Kathmandu, you discovered a lot more about fierce compassion than you'd expected.

In Kathmandu, I kept being confronted with the realities of child trafficking, the prostitution of children. And that's when I met Olga Murray, who was rescuing street children and setting up orphanages. Olga assured me that she didn't consider herself very spiritual. She wasn't particularly inward looking. She was Jewish, but by culture. She really considered herself an agnostic, and yet there she was, a living example of that passage in James that says, "true religion is this: coming to the aid of widows and orphans in their plight, and keeping oneself uncontaminated by the world." There's a kind of purity that Olga has about her because she's totally, completely, dedicated to these children.

What does that say about the connection between religion and good works?

I think a lot of people equate religion with dogma, but the spirit of it can be lived by people in all different manner of ways.

I think a lot of people equate religion with dogma, but the spirit of it can be lived by people in all different manner of ways. Yvonne de Mello, the woman working with the street children in Rio, was the same way. She didn't have any particular spiritual practice. Being Brazilian, she was nominally Catholic, but she didn't consider herself religious in any way. And yet she was out there, daily, working with street children, and had been for nearly fifteen years, setting up a school underneath the freeways.

The fierce compassion of these women is symbolized in your book by the ancient Hindu war goddess Durga, who rides into battle on a lion.

Yes, the story of Durga opens with the statement, "Once before, the world was on the verge of destruction. Once before, plants wouldn't grow, and the rivers dried up. Once before, people were starving and there was a war everywhere." It had such a contemporary feeling to it. That was a great relief; to feel that once before the human family had thought that we might be destroying the world. And that, at the end of the story, the world was saved by Durga.

By a woman, as you've said.

It wasn't until she pierced the heart of the Lord of the Demons--until the heart was opened--that the demons were destroyed.

Yes, by the feminine. When the world was threatened, when all the male gods were defeated by the demons that were destroying the world, it was the feminine with ten hands and arms that rose up, which symbolizes all her skills and the many means by which she has to defeat the demons--the demons being symbols for greed, hate, and all our human failings. The lion is a wonderful symbol of courage that she had. But here is where the story really needs to be read like a parable. She went through many battles, but it wasn't until she pierced the heart of the Lord of the Demons--until the heart was opened--that the demons were destroyed. This is the clue for us now. That the path through this terrible destruction going on in the world is through the heart. And following that path allowed me to see that, not only is the world being destroyed, but it's also being created and saved by a thousand acts of compassion every day.

You've made pilgrimages to the Black Madonna of Catholicism and Tara of Tibetan Buddhism, and you've experienced the ceremonies of Candomble, the Afro-Brazilian religion of spirit possession and nature worship. What commonalities exist between the many different religions you've explored?

The first thought that comes to mind is community, and this wonderful woman in Brazil, Mae Stella, one of the most highly respected maes dos santos, mothers of the saints. She is the leader of her terreiros, her spiritual community, in the Candomble tradition. When you asked that question, I just saw Mae Stella sitting in her long skirt and white eyelet blouse, with her community surrounding her. The common thread that all these religions share is community. She talked about her responsibilities as the leader of the community. She was married, but her husband is dead and she didn't have children of her own. She said this has turned out to be a virtue, now that she has ended up being a leader to the community for the last 30 years, because it allows her to be more available to all the people in her community. She's like a mother to all her people. Also, the primacy of love and lovingkindess is common to all the different belief systems I've seen. Whether they were Catholic priests or Buddhist monks, whether it was the Dalai Lama--whom I had the good fortune to interview and take teaching from--or Mae Stella the maes dos santos in the Brazilian tradition, I've always found people who were open to being inclusive, who were not frightened by differences and who were truly interested in the heart of their tradition. The heart of each of the traditions I've encountered is always about the unity of the Divine, and the infusion of the Divine in this world.

What can Christians learn from this Buddhist concept of fierce compassion?

Fierce compassion is another way of talking about the kind of love that Christ requires.

It's a fierce commitment to being compassionate. To try to put it in a Christian context, perhaps it's another way of talking about that fierce dictum of Christ, which is "love one another." The Bible says it's easy to love people who are kind to us, what merit is in that? This is the same exact teaching in Buddhism: it's easy to love those that we're fond of and who love us. The challenge is to love those whom we might call our enemies. So there's a kind of fierceness that's required in order to love--to truly love--one another. Look at someone whom we might consider an enemy, or an obstacle, or someone we don't like--what does it mean if one is to be truly Christian? That we still have to love them. How do you do that? That's very difficult. We have to remember that our enemies are not human. Our enemies are greed, hate, envy, jealousy. And I think this is where the Buddhists really have a great deal to offer, by making that distinction. We're required to love them, to be kind to them. So fierce compassion is another way of talking about the kind of love that Christ requires.

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