Beyond religion - 2. Our common humanity

• We need clear understanding of what unites us all, our common humanity. What makes us human?
• Our body, ultimately stardust
• Our conscious experience: pain and pleasure
• Francisco Varela: sentient beings distinguish from plants by the ability to move.  The ability to respond to our surroundings with conscious experience is mind
• Human experience is composed by
• Five senses
• Subjective experiences of sensations: pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, or combination
• All sentient beings look for pleasant and avoid unpleasant or painful experiences.  Human beings have evolved to the highest complexity.
• Human mind includes on top of thoughts, imagination and memory, feelings and emotions.  We have a strong capacity for remembering, beyond animals, and toproject thoughts into the future.  Moreover, a powerful imagination and high communication capacity trough symbolic language.  Our pinnacle is the rational thinking, to critically evaluate and compare real and imaginary situations.
• Instinctive capacity for empathy, beyond some limited experience of animals.  We respond to others' suffering, and we share the joy of others' triumph over adversity.  everyone prefers see others smiling rather than frowning
• As socials animals, our survival and flourishing depends on being part of the community, therefore we need empathy.
• We all seek for happiness, no one wishes troubles (NB: why people climb mountains, cross oceans?).  For humans this is a complex issue. In this quest, humanity reached many achievements including religion, and also created many problems: war environment degradation.
•  In the quest for happiness and avoidance of suffering we are fundamentally equal.  The Dalai Lama relates to everyone based on this understanding that generates a natural closeness with anybody. => we are human beings