Nobody’s a stranger. Regardless of race, gender, economic status: We’ve all been through this together, and we’re all suffering together. So do you want to keep on creating more suffering?

"It’s good practice, as you’re spreading goodwill [mettā], to think of all the beings in the universe and to think of the ones for whom you might feel resentment or the ones whom you might look down on. Then remind yourself of the Buddha’s teachings on rebirth: We’ve been to all of these places before. As he said, if you see someone who’s really wealthy, enjoying all kinds of pleasures: You’ve been there before. You see someone who’s really poor and diseased: You’ve been there before. In fact, whatever type of person you can think of: You’ve been there before.

This is one of the sad things about Western Buddhism: They’ve thrown away this really useful teaching on rebirth. It’s really great for empathy, it’s great for seeing through differences. It means that nobody in the world is a stranger, in the sense that the suffering they’re going through is not strange: You’ve been there. You’ve had that suffering, too.

They say that after the Buddha’s awakening, he surveyed the world with the eye of a Buddha, and he saw that all beings were on fire with the fires of passion, aversion, and delusion. That insight grew out of his second knowledge on the night of his awakening: seeing how all beings were reborn in line with their kamma, and how long it had been going on. Even though, after his awakening, he was now free from all that, he didn’t look down on the beings who weren’t free. Instead, he felt compassion, for he had been there, too. It was a combination of those two visions that propelled him to teach.

So when you think about these things, it helps you do good for other beings — with a sense, as I said, that nobody’s a stranger. Regardless of race, gender, economic status: We’ve all been through this together, and we’re all suffering together. So do you want to keep on creating more suffering?"

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Spread Goodness Around" (Meditations9)

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