There is a connection between all that exists on the planet. All of the people are dependent on each other, and all the plants and animals depend on them. They are all a part of one organism. There are “energy threads” of love and kindness that allow everybody to live in happiness and joy. If people were to break these threads of love by using hate, hostility, deceitfulness and greed, then they would bring suffering and sorrow upon themselves. By hurting even one person, they can cause destruction and misfortune to many people.
What is love? What does it mean that I love someone or something? I love what brings me pleasure. This is clear. If something brings me suffering, I hate the source of my suffering. I draw closer to someone I love, I desire to establish a connection with that person, to be together. But the moment I discover that possibly, this is not so good for me, I start to cool off and move away.
Love is a sensation of pleasure from an object that gives me pleasure. If I am a desire to receive, then I must look for someone who gives me pleasure.
We are “installed” into this life. You find yourself in a family; you didn’t choose the family. And yet, there are all kinds of influences on you. Everything that you are, your character is shaped by the values of your mother and your father, your community, your school, your set of friends, and everything that develops in you in terms of your personality, what you value, what you dream, what you suppose the limitations of things are, they’re all defined for you by that situation. In other words, if you are going to have a dream about what your life is going to be, it’s going to be one of a number set before you. It’s like choosing items on a menu. And even when you leave that sort of situation of your school and the heavy influence of your parents, and you step out to make your way in the world, you still find that that organization and pressure of society is still affecting a person.
For the savage, undeveloped person does not regard egoism as a bad attribute, and he thus uses it openly without shame or restraints. He steals and murders in broad daylight wherever he finds it possible. The somewhat more developed person senses some measure of his egoism to be evil, and he is at least ashamed to use it in public, to steal and kill openly. But in secrecy he still commits his crimes.
The even more developed feels his egoism to be a loathsome thing indeed, until he cannot tolerate it within him and rejects it completely, as much as he detects of it, until he cannot enjoy the labour of others. Then begin to emerge in us the sparks of love for others, called altruism, which, in general is the good attribute.
And that too evolves in him gradually. First there develops in him the love and desire to bestow upon his family and next of keens, as the verse goes – “thou shall not ignore you own flesh”. When he develops further, the attribute of bestowal expands in him to the people around him, which are his town’s men or his nation. And so he adds, until he finally develops love for all humanity.
