Passions are private and personal. Compassion is public and impersonal, an imbued and universal power which cannot be pluralized, commodified or run up a flag pole and saluted. It’s a love song, a gift of the heart, and it’s singing now.
The man who is primarily private, who keeps most of himself for himself, wakes up one day to find that his outer relationships are husks.
Private derives from the Latin privare, for bereavement.
We do not see anything as it is. We see everything as we are. It is an em-bubbled existence—private, personal and contradictory. Eventually, the bubble pops. Now, what happens when that happens?
Kindness is not personal. It’s like health—an activity of consciousness.
Consciousness is not personal. Love is not personal. We are individual expressions of the same consciousness. If we are ‘in love’, we are in love with ourselves.
Is there a concept more sterile and tome-ish than that of a family tree?
The tribal mind is what takes us to war. It’s why humans kill humans.
We cannot really know what is going on inside another person. Each individual inhabits a private world.
The great kindness is not something we do but something we don’t do. We withhold judgment.
Men's Work 