Thomas Hammon

“TREAT EACH HUMAN FRIEND BY THINKING THAT:

• He’s our friend who was born to be old, become ill, and die, together with us.
• He’s our friend swimming around in the changing cycles with us.
• He’s under the power of defilements like us, hence sometimes he errs.
• He also has lust, hatred, and delusion, no less than we.
• He therefore errs sometimes, like us.
• He neither knows why he was born nor knows nibbāna, just the same as us.
• He is stupid in some things like we used to be.
• He does some things accordingly to his own likes, the same as we used to do.
• He also wants to be good, as well as we who want even more to be good — outstanding — famous.
• He often takes much and much more from others whenever he has a chance, just like us.
• He has the right to be madly good, drunkenly good, deludedly good, and drowning in good, just like us.
• He is an ordinary man attached to many things, just like us.
• He does not have the duty to suffer or die for us.
• He is our friend of the same nation and religion.
• He does things impetuously and abruptly just as we do.
• He has the duty to be responsible for his own family, not for ours.
• He has the right to his own tastes and preferences.
• He has the right to choose anything (even a religion) for his own satisfaction.
• He has a right to share equally with us the public property.
• He has the right to be neurotic or mad as well as we.
• He has the right to ask for help and sympathy from us.
• He has the right to be forgiven by us according to the circumstances.
• He has the right to be socialist or libertarian in accordance with his own disposition.
• He has the right to be selfish before thinking of others.
• He has the human right, equal to us, to be in this world.
If we think in these ways, no conflicts will occur.

Buddhadāsa Indapañño
Mokkhabalārāma, Chaiya
22 May, 2531

(With confidence in Buddhadasa Bhikku’s great compassion and humanity, a Thai Buddhist has taken his permission for granted and translated the above message into English, with kind help from an American bhikku.)
26 June, 2536”

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