The root of all unhappiness
What is the greatest folly? Is it chasing vain glory? Lusting for power? No—it’s to hate your neighbour and call it anything but suicide.
If you’re new around here, welcome to Wisdom Wednesdays - where I share wisdom from history’s greatest minds.
What is the greatest folly?
Is it chasing vain glory? Lusting for power? No—it’s to hate your neighbour and call it anything but suicide.
It’s refusing to see yourself in your neighbour. It’s believing they’re your enemy.
This is the root of all our unhappiness.
If hatred festers in our hearts for our brothers and sisters, we’ve already committed murder. Those who seek happiness by hurting others will never find happiness in this life or the next.
Our unhappiness begins in our hearts when we falsely cling to our otherness, to our selfishness, to our pride, to our ego. Thinking we can wound others without bleeding ourselves out.
Oh, how foolish we are!
Don’t you see? Your neighbour is you, staring back through different eyes. Those parallel universes that physicists posit aren’t out there, instead, they’re staring back at you at grocery stores, bus stops, and evening walks.
What you despise in your fellow man, you hate in yourself.
The devil doesn’t just trick us. He blinds us, twists our eyes to see strangers instead of mirrors.
If your neighbour is you, how can you steal from her? Poison her body for profit? Smear her name? Destroy her livelihood? Pollute her rivers? Peddle pills that keep her sick?
That’s why the Silver Rule echoes across the Great Traditions: Never do that to another which you regard as harmful to yourself.
But the greatest command ever is: To love your neighbour as yourself. Do to others as you would have them do to you. So do this, and you cut the root of unhappiness.
Act from love, live in love, and you’re already in the kingdom of heaven. It doesn’t begin after death. No. We’re in it now. We’re blind to it because we insist on seeing our separateness and multiplicities.
Happiness begins with seeing mirrors and not strangers.
Till next week,
Peace!
You can support my mission of reviving beauty and wisdom by checking out the podcast, sharing this essay with a friend, or upgrading to a paid subscription on Substack.
Thank you to all those who are supporting my work!