Who is our neighbour ? There he is. We meet him in the street, at work, on the bus, or even over the garden wall. We also know him through different print media, the internet, different statistics, or even appeals for help. He is always there wanting us to turn towards him and make him realize what he is failing to realize right now. He may not know what he is missing. It is our responsibility to make him realize that. This is the challenge that is constantly being thrown towards us by our neighbour.
We are not human beings having spiritual experience. We are really spiritual beings having human experience. It takes a lifetime to come to know another person, and the knowledge is not gained once and for all, but by continuous adventures.
Every situation calls for a new response and every response creates a unique situation. In this responsiveness we not only come to know the other person, but we come to know ourselves also. We must have the imagination, the energy and the sympathy to experience our neighbour's life like we do about ourselves. We shall love them as we love ourselves, we shall want to do to him what I wish him to do for me. What we do to ourselves, we shall do to him as well, as a son of his parents, a husband of his wife, a friend of his friends. Any action which takes him for less would clearly be inhuman. We shall not be able to love ourselves until we come to love our neighbours as 'ourselves'. Whatever we do for our neighbour, it has to come from within ourselves as a spontaneous response. If we do something for him out of a sense of duty, we will surely miss him as a neighbour. We surely do not want him to show the same attitude towards us, a heartless, dutiful one. If we find any attitude of our neighbour not acceptable, then there must be something in us which is also unacceptable, unneighbourly. If we hate them, we would not be able to love ourselves, If we do not trust others, it shows that fundamentally we do not trust ourselves. If we are afraid of others, we should realize that there is much in us of which we are afraid of, and of which others have every reason to be afraid of. We are dissatisfied with others when we are dissatisfied with ourselves. Thus neighbourhood is a place where life is not worth living if we turn ourselves away from our neighbour.
We are not human beings having spiritual experience. We are really spiritual beings having human experience. It takes a lifetime to come to know another person, and the knowledge is not gained once and for all, but by continuous adventures.
Every situation calls for a new response and every response creates a unique situation. In this responsiveness we not only come to know the other person, but we come to know ourselves also. We must have the imagination, the energy and the sympathy to experience our neighbour's life like we do about ourselves. We shall love them as we love ourselves, we shall want to do to him what I wish him to do for me. What we do to ourselves, we shall do to him as well, as a son of his parents, a husband of his wife, a friend of his friends. Any action which takes him for less would clearly be inhuman. We shall not be able to love ourselves until we come to love our neighbours as 'ourselves'. Whatever we do for our neighbour, it has to come from within ourselves as a spontaneous response. If we do something for him out of a sense of duty, we will surely miss him as a neighbour. We surely do not want him to show the same attitude towards us, a heartless, dutiful one. If we find any attitude of our neighbour not acceptable, then there must be something in us which is also unacceptable, unneighbourly. If we hate them, we would not be able to love ourselves, If we do not trust others, it shows that fundamentally we do not trust ourselves. If we are afraid of others, we should realize that there is much in us of which we are afraid of, and of which others have every reason to be afraid of. We are dissatisfied with others when we are dissatisfied with ourselves. Thus neighbourhood is a place where life is not worth living if we turn ourselves away from our neighbour.
What we see in the world is only ourselves as we see ourselves in the deep and honest privacy of our own heart. Our attitude to our neighbours reveals what we are.
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