# It's all you

> *Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.* --- Author unknown

On a long meditation retreat many years ago, I came face-to-face with something that forever changed my understanding of kindness. I'll lay it out as directly as I can, though I don't know how to do so without resorting to mystical-sounding language.

The fundamental nature of my mind is *intrinsic goodness; pure unconditional love*. Yours' is, too --- in fact, it *must* be, because I *am* you. I know that sounds strange, but I swear it's really true.

Let me start by sharing Thích Nhất Hạnh's poem "[Please Call Me By My True Names](https://plumvillage.org/articles/please-call-me-by-my-true-names-song-poem/)." I suggest you read it in its entirety, but here's a poignant section:

> I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.
>
> I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.
>
> I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his “debt of blood” to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

Doesn't that give you chills? You may feel something similar from reading sci-fi author Andy Weir's [The Egg](http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html) (or [watching it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI)). Lest you write this off as "just poetry," let me next share some words from Zen monk (and punk rock bass guitarist) Brad Warner:

> It's all me. Even if I want to put this realization down I can’t. Sometimes it’s excruciating. You know those morons that rammed those planes into the World Trade Center? That was me. The people that died in the collapse. Me again. Every single person who ever paid money for a Pet Rock? Me. **I don’t mean I identify with them or sympathize with them. I mean I *am* them. It’s impossible to explain any more clearly than that, but this isn’t a figure of speech or bad poetry. I mean it absolutely literally.**
>
> But the universe is sooooo much bigger than any of that. The sky is me, and the stars too, and the chirping crickets and the songs they make; sparkling rivers, snow and rain, distant solar systems and whatever beings may live there: it’s all me. And it’s you, too.

"Absolutely literally," he says! It's not just a nice idea; it's something that can be known directly and concretely. And seeing it clearly reveals an astonishing and heartbreaking game we've been playing with ourselves.

We may all be "pure love" at our cores, but we differ in how alienated we are from it in any given moment. The *less* alienated we are, the more directly we perceive our fundamental equality with others. We behave in ways that invite others back toward this realization. This is a manifestation of our love --- also known as *kindness.* Genuine kindness brings people *closer* to their light, and nudges reality toward unity; peace.

Kindness is not about being *nice* --- though in many circumstances that may indeed be its most natural expression. It's difficult to define what kindness *looks like*, because it can take on almost any shape depending on the situation. Sometimes it might look like [shooting someone](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dalai-gun/). The less "nice" the expression, however, the more careful we have to be that we're not just fooling ourselves. This is *much* trickier than it looks, for reasons that shall soon become clear.

The *more* alienated we are, the more we misbehave in one way or another. When it comes to our *own* misbehavior, we tend to justify it: we convince ourselves that it's not *really* bad, or that we had no choice. When it comes to others' misbehavior, our ability to recognize it as alienation depends on our own mental state as well as the nature of their misbehavior. Beyond a certain point, we cease to recognize it as mere alienation, and begin to perceive them as a *bad person*.

> *We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior* --- Stephen Covey (paraphrasing the [Fundamental Attribution Error](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error))

When this happens, we feel justified in behaving maliciously. Bad people deserve to feel bad, after all --- and it is our righteous duty to visit this upon them. When we're in this mode of perception, we conveniently overlook the obvious: malice can only drive someone *further* from their light. It also darkens the minds of everyone who witnesses it, including ourselves. And all of this darkness will *unfailingly* manifest in the world somewhere down the line.

We tell ourselves that this behavior is not only *acceptable* but *virtuous* --- after all, how could *fighting evil* ever be wrong? Our conscious minds calculate that despite whatever harm may result, our behavior is still a net good. But if you could introspect carefully enough in that moment, you would discover something *very different* going on beneath the surface.

Our malice is *designed* to make the world worse --- and somehow, it always gets the job done. This isn't something I can prove to you --- just like I can't prove that we're all one --- but it's something that can be known directly. Your mind's darkness *is* the world's darkness, viewed from a different angle. Turning your own mind dark --- which is the only way you can behave maliciously --- *necessarily* darkens the world. And at some level, you already know this, even when you pretend not to.

When *other* people behave this way --- that is, maliciously, while pretending that it's good --- we instantly recognize it as hypocrisy, and judge them harshly for it. But when it comes to ourselves, we refuse to recognize it. *Especially* not when other people point it out to us. The question is, why do we do it in the first place? Why would someone whose "true nature is love" act like this? The answer is remarkable.

Humans have a primal need to know our own goodness. After all, it's what we most fundamentally *are*. When we lose contact with our *absolute* goodness, we are forced to seek it *relatively.* This means that we are compelled to find people who we are clearly *better* than, and to keep the world mired in a state where such people continue to exist.

Imagine meeting someone stereotypically evil: the corrupt politician; the greedy banker; the ruthless CEO. When you treat them in a way that's dripping with contempt, how do they respond? Do they see the error of their ways and repent? Or do they write you off as a kook and dig in their heels? We act dismayed, but feel vindicated: we were *right* about them; *we* are the good guys. It is precisely this hit of self-righteousness that we are actually after.

And here's the kicker: because the whole point of this charade is to know our own goodness, it is imperative that we carefully hide our true motivations from ourselves. After all, what kind of person would *knowingly* darken the world in service of their own ego? So we must provide our conscious minds with a bulletproof cover story in which our actions are unequivocally good. Unfortunately, this just tightens the noose further: now we are not only knowingly worsening the world; we are steadfastly pretending *not* to know.

Round and round it goes: we see people acting badly, so we respond by being nasty, which makes them (and others) perceive *us* as evil, causing them to double down and return the favor. Meanwhile, everyone involved pats themselves on the back harder and harder on each round, while acting shocked that it's not working. We even turn it into a team sport, aligned by political, religious, etc. views. No wonder we're all so bruised!

The inescapable truth is that we cannot eat our cake and have it, too: we can either feel self-righteous, or we can heal the world, but we cannot do both at the same time.

> *My most recent mushroom trip (also the largest dose I've ever taken) I became fixated on a news story I had heard that week. About an 8 year old girl from a tribe in the Amazon, who was [tied to a tree and burned alive](https://www.survivalinternational.org/news/8033) in order to scare her people off their land so it could be logged. I realized that at the moment he did it, whoever lit that gasoline actually felt / thought more or less okay about what he was doing. And my mind was illuminated with dozens of the parallels between that man's malformed, horrific perceptual / behavioral state, and mine. I saw the same mistakes in value attribution, the same willful ignorance of the consequences of my acts and words. And there was nothing I could do to deny the similarity.*
>
> *Reminds me of something (I think) Duncan [Trussell] said on some recent podcast, quoting somebody else: it isn't the victim of violence you have to pray for so much. It's the perpetrator. They are the one who is more trapped in delusion, more estranged from love, etc.*
>
> (From an online forum. Emphasis mine.)

It is impossible to convey just how heartbreaking this epiphany is. Not in the modern sense of "distressing," but as in *splitting your heart open*. People are trapped in deep, dark caves of delusion, dying to find a way out. But these secret cries for help get so distorted through their confusion that it comes out looking like *evil*

We don't just discover that it's true; we discover that a deep part of us *always knew* that it was true, even as we pretended otherwise --- and that this same basic pattern keeps us all ensnared in the same horrific trap.

We don't magically become saints for having seen this, but it can mark the beginning of the end of certain destructive patterns.

> *Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.* --- Author unknown

Not *almost* everyone. *Everyone*.

> *Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.* --- Seng-ts'an, Third Zen Patriarch

If you take this edict absolutely seriously with every bone in your body, you will sooner or later discover its astonishing provenance. You only ever behave badly because you are separated from your light, and the same is true for "everybody else." The only way to undo this giant mess is through genuine kindness; seeing yourself when you look in others' eyes and responding accordingly.

After all, they literally *are* you.

###### tags: `kindness`