Psychologist Paul Ekman believes that Charles Darwin may have been inspired by Tibetan Buddhism. Says Ekman,
The Buddhist view, like Darwin, said that the seed of compassion is in mothering, global compassion: focus on others as mother. When I see you suffer it makes me suffer, and that motivates me to reduce your suffering so I can reduce my suffering. The Dalai Lama says compassionate acts help me more than the person I help. That’s identical in Buddhism and in Darwin’s explicit writings
Darwin knew something of Tibetan Buddhism, but there’s no established link between his views and Buddhist thinking. However “his view on the nature of commpassion is identical in almost the exact words to the view of Tibetan Buddhism.”
