The case wouldn't be overweight if you didn't have so many shoes. How many do you really need? This pair, for example, I swear you never even wore them.
Each side has legitimate aspirations - and that's part of what makes peace so hard. And the deadlock will only be broken when each side learns to stand in the other's shoes; each side can see the world through the other's eyes. That's what we should be encouraging. That's what we should be promoting.
What is the empathy deficit? The inability of people to stand in other folks shoes. It's hard to empathize with people who have different values than you
A man of meditation functions differently. Whatever profession he chooses, it does not matter. He will bring to his profession some quality of sacredness. He may be making shoes, or he may be cleaning the roads, but he will bring to his work some quality, some grace, some beauty, which is not possible without samādhi.
The biggest deficit that we have in our society and in the world right now is an empathy deficit. We are in great need of people being able to stand in somebody else's shoes and see the world through their eyes.
You shall not steal! You shall not kill! Such words were once called holy; before them people bowrd their knees and heads, and removed their shoes. But I ask you: where have there ever been better thieves and killers in the world than such holy words have been? Is there not in all of life itself - robbing and killing? And when such words were called holy, was not truth itself thereby - killed?