In the neighborhood?<\/span><\/p>\n The Practice<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Love your neighbor.<\/span><\/p>\n Why<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n This practice might sound extreme or pushy, and I want to tell you what I mean by it.<\/span><\/p>\n Everyone has lots of neighbors, and they come in many shapes and sizes. Obviously the people living across the street are neighbors, but in some sense so are the people you live with. Friends, relatives, co-workers, all the people you know are neighbors. So are the people at the market or walking past on the street. Other living things are neighbors as well, such as cats and dogs, birds and bees, ants on the kitchen counter, and plants and trees. <\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s also a neighborhood inside each of us. The human body contains about 100 trillion cells \u2013 and at least as many microorganisms that are neighbors, too. Plus consider your mind. My own mind is like a village with many characters at different stages of biological and psychological evolution, chatting or arguing with each other. All the parts of your mind \u2013 the pushy internal critic, the playful child, the longing for lasting happiness, the calm voice that talks you off the ledge \u2013 are neighbors of a sort. <\/span><\/p>\n In the largest sense, the neighbors of your neighbors are your neighbors, which means that every living thing is your neighbor \u2013 and mine. Wow. Walt Whitman got it right when he wrote: \u201cI am large, I contain multitudes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n What should we do with our neighbors? Ignore or hate them? Or recognize and love them? <\/span><\/p>\n The latter is sure more moral \u2013 as well as much wiser in terms of cool clear self-interest. Mess with your neighbors, and they will mess with you. Treat your neighbor with respect and goodwill \u2013 in a word, with love<\/i> \u2013 while also standing up for your own fences, needs, and rights . . . and you\u2019re most likely to build a lasting peace with them, with benefits for both of you. <\/span><\/p>\n The value of loving our neighbors is true at all scales. As you may know, the longer quotation I\u2018m drawing on comes from both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, in which it is said, \u201dLove your neighbor as yourself.\u201d I understand this as both a moral instruction and a clear statement that what we do to our neighbors we do to ourselves. <\/span><\/p>\n If you hate or push away parts of yourself, they go underground and get smelly; the mind is like a septic tank, not a flush toilet. If you are a bad neighbor to people you know, you burn bridges and end up alone. In terms of your country and world, as Gandhi said: \u201cAn eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.\u201d And if humans drive neighboring plant and animal species into extinction, we poison the wellsprings of our own survival. <\/span><\/p>\n How<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ve written already about making peace with \u2013 in a sense, loving \u2013 the parts of your own mind; if you like, check out Forgive Yourself<\/span><\/a>, Embrace Fragility<\/span><\/a>, Know You\u2019re a Good Person<\/span><\/a>, Don\u2019t Beat Yourself Up<\/span><\/a>, and Trust Yourself<\/span><\/a>. I\u2019ll leave the topic of neighborliness with the human microbiome \u2013 all the little critters inside \u2013 to others who (unlike me) know what they\u2019re talking about. And I\u2019ve written a fair amount about relationships with our closest neighbors \u2013 friends, family, and co-workers \u2013 including Put No One out of Your Heart<\/span><\/a>, Accept Them as They Are<\/span><\/a>, Speak Wisely<\/span><\/a>, Admit Fault and Move On<\/span><\/a>, and Forgive<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n So I\u2019ll focus here on wider circles of neighbors: the other humans in a country and world, and our planet\u2019s other living things. <\/span><\/p>\n We begin with compassion. I once asked a teacher of mine what he was focusing on in his personal practice, and he said, \u201cI stop for suffering.\u201d It takes both benevolence and courage to keep your heart open to the pain of another being \u2013 especially those who have harmed you or others. Even if you can\u2019t do a single thing, your compassion is still real and still matters. <\/span><\/p>\n Next, we recognize injustice. We try to be strong enough to tolerate the alarm, moral disgust, and outrage that\u2019s natural to feel when hearing about hungry children, tsunamis and famines, and bombs falling on refugees to prop up a dictator. And big enough to recognize injustices suffered by our adversaries, whether at home or abroad. <\/span><\/p>\n Then we do what we can. That could be political action, such as encouraging more people to vote; for example, about 100 million Americans could have voted in the recent Presidential election but did not do so. Or it could be supporting a cause close to your heart. Personally, I feel strongly about the religious persecution and oppression in Tibet, and contribute to the International Campaign for Tibet<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n We can also take local actions related to global issues. For example, human activity currently produces about 100 million tons of carbon dioxide a day \u2013 40 billion tons each year \u2013 roughly half of which stays in the air to cause global warming<\/span><\/a> while a quarter sinks into and acidifies the oceans. Among other consequences, this will cause mass extinctions of plant and animal species. It\u2019s easy and eye-opening to calculate the \u201ccarbon footprint\u201d of your own household<\/span><\/a>. In addition to shrinking it, you can \u201coffset\u201d it<\/span><\/a> through organizations that plant trees or build clean energy projects; it costs just $30 or so a month to offset the footprint of a typical American household. <\/span><\/p>\n Loving your neighbors \u2013 all of them, the great and the small, seen and unseen, liked and disliked \u2013 expresses an inner freedom. Watching politicians on the news, sometimes I think to myself, \u201cYou can\u2019t stop me from loving you \u2013 or from doing what I can to defeat you the next time around.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n Hate in all its forms poisons the heart, while love protects and feeds it \u2013 and strengthens us to stand up for others and stand up to<\/i> others. The more bitter the times and the more divisive the conflicts, the more urgent it is to be neighborly, with clear eyes and a kind heart. Then in a deep sense you\u2019re at home wherever you go.<\/span><\/p>\n The post Love Your Neighbor<\/a> appeared first on Dr. Rick Hanson<\/a>.<\/p>\n Love Your Neighbor In the neighborhood? The Practice Love your neighbor. Why This practice might sound extreme or pushy, and I want to tell you what I mean by it. Everyone has lots of neighbors, and they come in many shapes and sizes. Obviously…<\/p>\n The post Love Your Neighbor<\/a> appeared first on Dr. Rick Hanson<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-one-thing"],"yoast_head":"\n<\/a>
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