Regarding this Dhamma, it is not something that we can simply talk about or take another's word for it. We need to develop meditation so that the understanding arises clearly within oneself. It is not the case that merely by listening to another's explanation our defilements will disappear. When we gain some understanding we need to chew on it again so that we see it for ourselves with certainty: paccattam.
The unhappy are egoistic, spiteful, unjust, cruel, and less capable of understanding each other than fools. Unhappiness does not bring people together but draws them apart, and even where one would fancy people should be united by the similarity of their sorrow, far more injustice and cruelty is generated than in comparatively placid surroundings.
Understanding that which is foreign to you is fundamental to cultivating a sense of connection and unity with one another. We are ultimately trying to accomplish the same thing, which is survival and the thriving of a better world.
INTERPRETER, n. One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
You are this, which does not satisfy, so you want to be that. If there were an understanding of this, would that come into being? Because you do not understand this, you create that, hoping through that to understand or to escape from this.
Tolerance, openness and understanding towards other peoples' cultures, social structures, values and faiths are now essential to the very survival of an interdependent world.
They did not understand a single word of what he was saying, but that made no matter, for they put their heads on one side, and looked wise, which is quite as good as understanding a thing, and very much easier.