That which gives life is the same in all.
All living things are afraid of suffering, all living things are afraid of death; see yourself in every living being, do not torture and do not kill, do not cause suffering and death.
All living things want the same thing as you, all living things value their life; see yourself in every living being.
— The Dhammapada
All that you see, all that contains the divine and the human—all that is one: we are all limbs of one great body. Nature made us kin, fashioned us from the same material and for the same purpose. It invested us with mutual love and made us social and amiable; it affirmed within us a striving for justice and a sense of duty; it has established that it is better to perish than to destroy; it has ordained that one’s hand must always be ready to provide aid. We were born in order to unify. Our union is like a stone arch, which would collapse if the stones did not support one another.
— Seneca
A human being can only find happiness in serving his neighbor and, thanks to this service, he becomes one with the foundation of the life of the world.
I can sense and am vividly aware of my unity with other human beings. I can sense (albeit weaker) the same unity between myself and animals. I have an even weaker sense of it between myself and insects and plants, and my awareness of this unity completely disappears with respect to microscopic and telescopic beings. But the fact that I do not have a sensory organ to perceive this unity does not prove that it does not exist.
There is but one path of life, and sooner or later we shall all meet on this path. The knowledge of this path is too clearly laid in our hearts, the road is too wide and too obvious for us to fail to reach it. At the end of this road is God, and he calls us towards him, and it is so painful to look at people when they walk past this road, following the road of death.
The path of life is wide, but many do not know it and walk the road of death.
— After Gogol
Drive away from yourself everything that prevents you from sensing your connection with all living things.
