What Does Oneness Require of Us?

This morning, while speaking with my students in my office hour, a poem came to mind.

It is a poem by Thich Nhat Hanh called Call Me by My True Names. I have returned to it many times since first reading it months ago. Each time it feels different, as though life itself has rearranged the meaning of the words.

Today it landed differently again.

Perhaps because of the world we are living in.

War in Iran.

Escalating tariffs and economic retaliation.

The slow erosion of international law.

The language of enemies becoming more common than the language of neighbours.

It is easy in moments like these to speak about oneness as a spiritual concept. We hear the phrase everywhere: We are all one. It rolls off the tongue easily. It appears in books, meditation retreats, and inspirational quotes.

But this morning another question arose in me:

What does oneness actually require of us?

Not as a philosophy.

Not as a comforting idea.

But as a way of living.

The Difficult Truth of Oneness

In Call Me by My True Names, Thich Nhat Hanh writes from a place that few of us are willing to go. In the poem he says that he is both the victim and the pirate, the starving child and the one who profits from suffering.

It is an uncomfortable poem.

Because it refuses the easy division between good people and bad people.

It insists that the human story runs through all of us.

When we say we believe in oneness, what we are really saying is something much more confronting than we often realize.

We are saying:

• That the capacity for kindness lives in every human being.

• That the capacity for cruelty does too.

• That the systems we condemn are also systems we participate in.

• That suffering anywhere cannot truly be separated from our own lives.

Oneness dismantles the illusion that we stand outside the world’s problems looking in.

It tells us we are inside them.

Together.

The Comfort of Separation

It is far easier to live as though we are separate.

Separation gives us clarity.

Heroes and villains.

Us and them.

Right and wrong.

Our modern world runs on these divisions.

Politics thrives on them.

Media amplifies them.

Social media rewards them.

Outrage is easier than understanding.

Blame is easier than reflection.

Separation allows us to point outward and say: The problem is them.

But oneness quietly asks a different question:

How am I part of this story?

Not in a way that produces shame.

But in a way that produces responsibility.

Living Oneness Instead of Talking About It

If oneness is real, then it cannot remain a spiritual slogan.

It must shape how we live.

Oneness requires us to pause before dehumanizing another person, even when we disagree deeply.

It requires us to notice when language turns people into enemies rather than fellow human beings.

It requires us to understand that every system—economic, political, environmental—is a web of relationships that we are already part of.

Living oneness means recognizing that our actions ripple outward in ways we cannot fully see.

What we buy.

What we say.

What we tolerate.

What we challenge.

Every one of these choices participates in the world that is unfolding.

A Different Kind of Courage

We often imagine courage as confrontation.

But the courage required by oneness is different.

It is the courage to remain human in a world that constantly invites us to become hardened.

The courage to resist the easy comfort of hatred.

The courage to recognize that the line between harm and healing runs through every one of us.

Living from oneness does not mean we stop opposing injustice.

Quite the opposite.

It means we oppose it without forgetting the humanity of those involved, including our own.

This is harder work.

But it is also the only path that does not reproduce the very divisions we claim to oppose.

The Question That Remains

So the question I found myself sitting with this morning was not whether oneness is true.

Many spiritual traditions, ancient philosophies, and even modern science point toward the deep interconnection of life.

The real question is this:

If we truly believed we were one, how would we live differently?

How would we speak?

How would we act?

What would we refuse to participate in?

And what would we choose to build instead?

These are not abstract spiritual questions.

They are daily ones.

Because if oneness is real, then every moment is an opportunity to either deepen the illusion of separation…

or remember who we actually are to one another.