Pity on a Man without Money
According to Hajime Nakamura, a deceased Japanese professor on Buddhism, wrote that love likes what is beautiful and does not like what is ugly but pity does not matter whether a target is beautiful or ugly.
He appreciated pity higher than love since pity means to have compassion for a man who is sad and to feel sadness together with the regretful man.
Men ordinarily love money, but they rarely love unhappy men without money. And, without being told to love such men by their superior or master such as Christ Jesus, they most probably would not love unhappy men without money. But a generous and merciful person with pity should spontaneously feel sorry and have the same sadness as that of unhappy men without money, without being told to do so by their superior or master such as Christ Jesus.
Love becomes stronger when it is directed to a close target than when directed to a distant target. Anybody loves his own children more than children of other men. Only when one is ordered by his or her superior or master such as Christ Jesus, he or she would really love unhappy persons who are distant or strange for or unfamiliar to him or her. But a generous and merciful person with pity should spontaneously feel sorry and have the same sadness as that of the unhappy persons.
In this context, the love Christ Jesus encourages or orders Christians to have is not simple pity. the love required by Christ Jesus should be more profound than natural pity.
However, through religious training, education and practice, a man may come to have pity the Buddha focused on. Through training, education and practice, he may come to become a generous and merciful man to be able to show spontaneously pity on any unhappy man. This must be the main aim for religious training.
But, Christ Jesus did not tell to train oneself to be able to have pity on unhappy men but simply ordered people to love their neighbors. The love Christ Jesus encouraged or ordered people to have must be realized by anybody, even if he or she does not have any natural pity, compassion or mercy, as long as he or she believes Him and His divine authority.
Although a man who is following the teaching of Christ Jesus might think that he is not loving a neighbor, an unhappy man or a man without money he is showing compassion to but he loves Christ Jesus, the Son of God, the effect must be almost similar to natural pity, compassion or mercy of a trained Buddhist or a natural kind man.
It is because what the God concerns must be a fact that a neighbor, an unhappy man or a man without money is loved or pitied, but be not what the man loving or pitying such a man thinks even if so secretly in the bottom of his mind.
If a scholar who has discovered this kind of truth or builds a theory of this sort but does not like the truth or the theory, only if he practices the teaching of Christ Jesus because of his fear on wrath of the God, Christ Jesus should appraise him more than those who would not love or pity a neighbor, an unhappy man or a man without money for any reason, such as love to somebody who happens to be an enemy of such a man, by suppressing their natural pity, compassion or mercy.
Matthew 11 King James Version
11 Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
12 And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.
13 For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John.
14 And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come.
15 He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.