Similarly, when our foot steps on a thorn the hand reaches down and picks the thorn out of the foot instinctively. Doesn’t it? The hand doesn’t go through this thing that if, you know, “I’m a hand, that’s a foot, why should I help the foot? Stupid foot, why weren’t you looking at where you were walking.” The hand doesn’t go through all this blaming and guilt trip, “Dumb foot, again, you stepped on something and I have to bandage you up. Look at how kind I am to you taking care of you, you stupid incapable foot yet again, so you better remember how kind I the great glorious hand, am.” The hand doesn’t go through that kind of trip. The hand just pulls the thorn out. But they are “other” aren’t they? The foot and the hand, they are “other.” They aren’t the same thing yet, one helps the other. Why? Because we conceive of them as being part of the same organism, our mind puts the hand and the foot together and makes it part of the same organism. In the same way if we stopped focusing so much on the individual “I” and thought more of the collective, that we are one group of sentient life, then helping another part of that identity becomes like helping our self, in the same way the hand helps the foot and doesn’t think twice about it.
-Venerable Thubten Chödron on Exchanging self and others
