“A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.”
Albert Einstein
It is easy to call for wise, loving and caring action when those choices need to be made by other people than the people or identities we feel closest to us. But what happens when the letting go or risks of these choices have to be made or taken by those we hold nearest to us?
How to widen that circle of compassion for those we feel some aversion towards and call for accountability from those we care about or from the groups/labels we identify with?
How about gifting those we feel aversion towards the understanding we give to those nearest to us and seeing the similarities between the situations we experience and those experienced by the people we feel aversion towards.
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”. – Albert Einstein
What if the words and concepts we use to classify X vs Y change to include both? What if instead of Russia vs Ukraine, or US vs Vietnam, we moved to a higher dimension called planet, where countries wouldn’t exist? What if we were to think ourselves as global citizens interconnected through our food, energy, water, supply chains, nickel, semiconductors, social media? Under this perspective, would bombing a city, destroying the fields, the infrastructure, the people that build, maintain and plow them make any sense?
What if after we remove the country labels we ask what is behind the actions of the few people from that part of the globe choosing to do this? Also, as we ask this, assume no one is 100% evil, as none of us is. We all have a Buddha nature, a soul. If we saw those nearest to us in those we feel self-righteous about and asked why is this happening? What is behind this? How can we prevent this from coming to be, once again? Maybe this widened circle of compassion and higher level perspective could allow us to pull out what is behind from its root.
