What I dislike, others dislike
Today, before you act toward someone, ask whether you would want it done to you.
- Read · about 2 minutes
It’s when a noble disciple reflects:‘I want to live and don’t want to die; I want to be happy and recoil from pain.Since this is so, if someone were to take my life, I wouldn’t like that.But others also want to live and don’t want to die; they want to be happy and recoil from pain. So if I were to take the life of someone else, they wouldn’t like that either.The thing that is disliked by me is also disliked by others.Since I dislike this thing, how can I inflict it on someone else?’…Furthermore, a noble disciple reflects:‘If someone were to attack me with harsh speech, I wouldn’t like it.But if I were to attack someone else with harsh speech, they wouldn’t like it either. …’SN 55.7 · “The People of Bamboo Gate” · tr. Bhikkhu Sujato (CC0)
From the text
The passage describes a noble disciple reflecting: I want to live and be happy and dislike pain, and so do others; if someone took my life I would not like it, and neither would they. What I dislike, others dislike too, so how can I inflict it on them? The same reflection is then applied to harsh speech.
In everyday life
This teaching asks nothing you cannot check for yourself. Start from what you already know: you want to be well, you do not want pain. Then take the one step that the passage takes, which is to assume the same of the person in front of you. 'Noble disciple' you can read here as someone practicing this teaching. The reasoning is deliberately plain. It starts not from a rule but from your own dislike of being harmed, turned around. The passage applies this first to taking a life and later to harsh words, which is where most of us will actually meet it. Today's sit is about arriving and settling in your own body, feeling for yourself what ease and discomfort are like. Carry that felt sense into the day. Before a sharp reply, a small dishonesty, or an unkind joke, run the one-line check the text gives you.
- Sit · 3, 5 or 10 minutes
Arriving and Settling
Sit upright on a chair or cushion, hands resting in your lap. Read each cue as it appears; between cues you may close your eyes or lower your gaze.
- Live · during your day
Before one interaction today, silently run the check: would I want this said or done to me? If not, change what you were about to say or do.
- Reflect · this evening
Did the 'would I want this done to me' check change anything you said or did today, and how?
Answer on paper, or in the app’s journal, which stays on your iPhone.