“Traditionally it is said that the root of aggression and suffering is ignorance. But what is it that we are ignoring? Entrenched in the tunnel vision of our personal concerns, what we ignore is our kinship with others. One reason we train as warrior-bodhisattvas is to recognize our inter-connectedness — to grow in understanding that when we harm another we are harming ourselves. So we train in recognizing our uptightness. We train in seeing that others are not so different from ourselves. We train in opening our hearts and minds in increasingly difficult situations.”
~ Pema Chodron
Look below the surface, my friend, and you’ll see that we’re all doing the best we can from where we are with what we have. And those circumstances can be very different from person to person and even moment to moment.
Look deeper below the surface at our own uptightness and judgments and often we’ll find that the very things we accuse others of doing, we’re doing ourselves. This is what happens when we get stuck in our head, in our thoughts and judgments, and lose touch with the calm, clear, caring and compassionate energies of our heart.
Imagine yourself in their shoes, my friend. How would you want to be treated?