CONCEPT OF MAITREE AND REHMAT IN SHIN BUDDHISM AND ISLAM

In Islam the word Rehmat means ‘The Loving’.God’s Rehmat is described as greater then that of the mother, the most loving and the most compassionate of all human qualities .This compassionate feeling for everyone alike is referred to as metta or maître or Karuna and Rehmat in Islam.This is from a passage in the Metta-sutta (teaching on love) in the Pali canon:
“Even as amother watches over and protects her child,her only child ,so with a boundless mind should one cherish all living beings,radiating friendliness over the entire world,above below , and all around without limit. So let him cultivate a boundless good- will towards the entire world,unramped free from ill will or enmity.Standing or walking, sitting or lying down, during all his waking hours,let him establish this mindfulness of good will,which men call the highest state.”
It is out of compassion , indeed , that the Buddha preached his Dhamma; his desire was to liberate people from suffering by enlightening them as to its cause, and showing them the means- the noble eightfold path – to eliminate that cause.It is clear,then ,that even in early Buddhism compassion was not just a cardinal virtue ,it went to the very heart of the Buddhist upaya,the ‘expedient means ‘or ‘saving strategy’.However ,it is not hard to see that ,in the later texts ,those from which the Mahayana branch of Buddhism derive, the stress on compassion goes well beyond anything found in the early texts.