Why Love Your Neighbor

Why should I love my neighbor like I love myself? Because it’s the most sensible thing to do. Loving your neighbor is the first and best choice among the three choices you have with regard to that person next door. The first choice is Love. The second is hate and the third is indifference.

Let’s examine each choice, beginning with the third choice. Perhaps, you don’t want to love your neighbor; because he is bad; but yet you wouldn’t want to hate him because you are a good person and you avoid negative emotions. So you are indifferent to your neighbor. But indifference or apathy is a cold emotion. Apathy is as negative as hatred. The line between hatred and apathy is very fine. If you meet your neighbor on the street and you ignore him, it’s hardly a good and decent thing to do.

The second choice – hatred – will harm you as much as it hurts your neighbor… which leaves you with the first and the best choice – To love your neighbor. Honestly, loving an irksome neighbor is not as hard as it seems. It simply means respecting the person and thinking of his needs and desires as much as you would your own.

You won’t be able to love yourself until you first love your neighbor. Whether we like it or not, a major part of our life will always centre on that of our neighbor’s. Ask yourself some questions and you’ll see from the answers how important your neighbor is for your own peace and happiness.

And you can’t just stop at loving your immediate neighbor: You’ve got to love your neighbor’s neighbor; too and your neighbor’s neighbor’s neighbor and….. The circle of love gets wider subsuming differences of community, state, nation, continents – encompassing the whole universe and beyond. Your heart is so big and so full of love, that its capacity to love is infinite; it’s Divine.

Inversely, your heart’s capacity to hate is limited. Try applying the Golden Rule o infinite love to hate and you’ll find yourself shattered. That’s because you don’t have a limitless capacity to hate like you have to love. For love gives you joy and power and victory and hate brings in sorrow and powerlessness and defeat.

Different religions propound love of your neighbor as an important part of their teaching. But you don’t have to be a religious person to love your neighbor….. Because love of your neighbor is a superb human emotion, not necessarily tied to any creed or religion.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with your entire mind.” This is the first and greatest teaching. And the second greatest teaching is: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” All other teachings hinge on these two teachings. This is how Christianity explains the Golden Rule of Love Thy Neighbor’

Hindus believe that one should never do to others what would pain oneself: Islam says not one of you is a believer until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself. Thy Sikh faith asks you to treat others as you would like to be treated. That nature is only good when it shall not do unto another whatever is not good for its own self is a precept of the Zoroastrian faith. Buddhists says, hurt not others with that which pains yourself. And Confucius said: Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you.

Do not be misled by what you see around you, or be influenced by what you see. You live in a world which is a playground of illusion, full of false paths, false values and false ideals. But you are not part of that world.                                                                             ----- Satya Sai Baba