We are inextricably linked by a spiritual connection not only with all people, but also with all living things.
Someone once said to me that in every human being lurks something very good and benevolent as well as something very bad and malevolent; and, depending on his mood, either this or the other manifests itself. That is absolutely true!
The sight of the suffering of others evokes, not only in different people but also in the same person, at times a limitless compassion, at other times a kind of satisfaction, which may intensify into a most cruel schadenfreude.
From my own experience, I see that I sometimes look at all beings with sincere compassion, sometimes with the greatest indifference, and sometimes with hatred or even schadenfreude.
All this serves as a clear indication of the fact that we possess two different and even diametrically opposed ways of perception. In the first, following the principle of isolation, separation and alienation, all other beings appear completely foreign to us, they are decidedly not our self. In this case we cannot feel anything in relation to them except for indifference, envy, enmity or schadenfreude.
But there is also a second way of perception, which I would like to call perception by a consciousness of one’s unity with everything. With this way of perception, all beings seem to us identical to our self, and therefore the sight of them evokes in us compassion and love.
The former separates us from each other by an impenetrable wall, the latter removes the wall, and we merge into one. The latter teaches us to feel in relation to every being that it is our own self, the former that it is not.
— Schopenhauer
All people share the same origin, are subject to the same law and are destined for the same purpose.
And therefore we should have a single faith, our actions should have a single aim, and we should fight under a single banner.
— Giuseppe Mazzini
We must always strive to find not what separates us from other people, but what we have in common with them.
— John Ruskin
Even if you wanted to, you cannot detach your life from humankind. You live in it, by it and for it. Your soul cannot free itself from the conditions in which it moves, because we have all been created to work together, like legs, arms and eyes. To act against each other, to feel angry at each other and to turn away from each other is to act contrary to nature.
— Marcus Aurelius
It cannot be said that monkeys, dogs, horses or birds are not our brothers. If we say that they are alien to us, then could we not also say that black Africans are not our brothers? And if black people are not our brothers, then neither are any other people of different color to us. So then, who is our neighbor? The parable of the Good Samaritan is the only answer to this: do not ask who your neighbor is, but become aware of your unity with all living things, feel compassion for and serve all living things.
