What is the reality of human beings and ” What surrounds them” has been an existential question. Though we will not take an “anthropocentric” approach to the existence, the limitation of being endowed with human consciousness does not let us directly perceive the reality of other lifeforms. We as yet do not know how to communicate with an Octopus who is endowed with an altogether different form of consciousness, and so are other life forms.

However, our Species have populated the earth. Perhaps, we form the significant amount of biomass and this transition has been brought in a few millions of years. So we begin with accepting the fact that our species have dominated the earth, thanks to the quality of our consciousness that can reflect on itself and abstract common symbols and signs from our varied experiences and can communicate those experiences with each other.

This power of reflective thinking and abstract thinking has endowed human beings with enormous power over not only the earth, but over the universe, but how we use this power can also determine the future of human beings, the earth, and perhaps the universe. The evolution of human consciousness is a remarkable event in the evolution of the universe itself and that we can comprehend is mysteriously incomprehensible.

Reflective thinking appears to be happening in our individual and private heads, but it is not so. A single reflective human being is not an independent agency. To become a human we need other human beings. This remarkable insight was the cornerstone of Darwin’s theory of evolution and it has become very clear that we are all part of the same tree of evolution and the same process of incremental gradual change taking place for millions of years. Human beings have a common origin and in the common process. The implication of this insight is that our pasts intertwined, nay, the co-arising itself is responsible for what we are.

Though ours is a common story of common ancestry, our consciousness invented the fiction of “self”: this fictional self is functional for our very survival. This sense and experience of self is just that fictional self, but the power of abstraction amplified this sense of self and given it a social self-locked in illusions of race, caste, nation, religion, and myriad social selves known technically as identities. Some identities can be pragmatically used to deal with social and cultural situations, but taken to extremities, they produce conflicts and suffering.

Corona Crisis is painful. Many lives are threatened and humanity has realised when one human is affected, the rest of us are affected. The beauty of this is reflected in many positive stories that we hear today. People coming out to help each other. Attitudes softening and feeling the pains of people living far from us. We know that we are vulnerable. We know that our lives are shaky. But that there are other human beings with us to help and receive help from us is remarkable.

Evolution is contingent and a chance. It was”uncertain” what we take as certain today. But a little reflection on human history will show that we were driven by love. Love for our tribe, our families, our nations, our religious group. Love is the basis of human instinct, but when it is glued to social identity it transforms into hatred for others. But when the same love is freed from the fictional self that love transforms into great compassion.

We need that Great love today. This Great Compassion saved us in the past. This will be our saviour today and in the future. This Buddha taught us as the eternal law.

Author – Mangesh Dahiwale, Human Rights Activist