In plain words
To correct this in ourselves, there is a chance for us to take up a fine example in our life. Our teeth suddenly bite our tongue. When they bite it, we neither punish the teeth nor coax and soothe the tongue. We do not punish the teeth a little, saying, ‘O hard teeth, why did you torment this soft tongue so?’, nor teach the tongue a lesson, saying, ‘Through your carelessness you have come to this pain.’ What is the reason? Because both are in our own keeping, because we believe both are ours and hold them dear, we wish for the welfare of both, and one sets about thinking, ‘It is nothing but my own carelessness’; one never sets about punishing those limbs at all, or criticising them, or teaching them a lesson. We only try to see that this act, which happened through some mistake, does not happen so again in future; we never set about punishing these limbs at all. We need to believe that all the people in this vast world, too, are limbs within the Ātma. For the limbs in this Ātma there is no room at all to hate one another, or to criticise one another, or to swell with pride, saying, ‘I am great, you are great.’ Just as we bear it when one limb of the body hurts another, in the very same way, when the people in the country hurt one another, we must make the effort to bear that too. For us, kinship is merely a matter of bodies alone, enmity of bodies alone, sonship of the body alone: such a relationship is all that is being made; but between Ātma and Ātma there is no relationship of any kind, no difference. This very thing
Who are friends, who are enemies? Who is the poet, who the actor? Who is God, who the servant? Do you have the wit to find it out? Once you know it, is there any doubt? Where a head has no wit, what is wrong in calling it a monkey!