Recently, I’ve been consciously trying to see people in the world as my “brothers and sisters.” There is something about that mental category that seems to put me in the right frame of mind to appropriately see, and treat, everyone I encounter.
A Thomas Merton passage comes to mind, from Zen and the Birds of Appetite:
“The self is not its own center and does not orbit around itself; it is centered on God, the one center of all, which is ‘everywhere and nowhere.’ in whom all are encountered, from whom all proceed. Thus from the very start this consciousness is disposed to encounter ‘the other’ with whom it is already united anyway ‘in God.’”
If it is true that we all united by the same Source, then we truly are brothers and sisters.
A similar idea, from a more traditionally Buddhist point of view, came out when I was writing A Great Tragedy:
“Things were good for this group of six and life had been kind to them until this point. Tony was, in fact, sometimes jealous of the members of this group and others like them – those who it seemed life had only smiled upon. Tony didn’t realize that each member of this group was subject to the same wants, desires, fears, and anxieties that Tony himself was subject to. He had yet to realize that they too, simply by virtue of being human, would experience suffering and pain, each in their own way. He had yet to see them as fellow sentient beings, brothers and sisters on the journey of existence. But they were. And Tony would understand that with time.”
With Tony, I’m hoping that, in time, I can naturally see others as my brothers and sisters.