This is
the famous one, following Gandhi: non-violence/non-injury in thought, word and deed.
Do unto others as you would have done unto you. This is like the other virtues
in that it requires constant alertness and sensitivity in all areas of life,
towards others, meaning other human beings, towards animals and even plant
life. And this alertness, this sensitivity, or always watching out for our
mental reactions based on like and dislike – things we have been taught or
conditioned to have a reaction to – is the solution to our lower natural
inclinations. If I have not opened my mind and my heart to others, only seeing
my own needs and not those of others, then I am egoic, a fictitious entity who
lacks appreciation of our common existence. A yogi asked the other day where
exactly does “you” end and “someone else” begin? Do we end at our skin? I tried
rubbing my hands together and then placing them a few inches from someone
else’s, and there was a charge that jumped from one skin boundary to the other.
So if our self-awareness has grown and expanded to such an extent that we
encompass others around us, we cannot possibly do violence or harm to them,
because they are part of us and we are part of them. For personal reasons I
chose Picasso’s painting of a Mediterranean window looking out to sea, with
the doves billing and cooing in the window, as a symbol of non-violence or
Ahimsa. And so we see that modern-day “environmental protection” and
sustainability is nothing else than what the Vedanta said millennia ago, that
no harm should be done to the creation, as any harm done to others will always
come back to us in manifold ways and hurt us as well. Human violence is only a
mental concept showing essential ignorance of the reality of the world.
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