What kind of bones?

Here's one of my favorite stories from The Heart of the Enlightened by Anthony de Mello:

Plutarch tells the story of how Alexander the Great came upon Diogenes looking attentively at a heap of human bones.

"What are you looking for?" asked Alexander.

"Something I cannot find," said the philosopher.

"And what is that?"

"The difference between your father's bones and those of his slaves."

De Mello then makes this comment:

The following are just as indistinguishable: Catholic bones from Protestant bones, Hindu from Muslim bones, Arab bones from Israeli bones, Russian bones from American bones.

The enlightened fail to see the difference even when the bones are clothed in flesh.

I would add that there is no difference between American bones and Iraqi bones.

One of the most important awarenesses that I've had in my journey is that we are all more alike than we are different and that my job is to look for similarities, not differences. If I look hard enough, if I am willing enough, I see that each being's reality is somehow my reality as well. After all, all beings want to be happy and to be free from suffering. People do what they do because on some level they think what they do will make them happy. They may be very mistaken at times but that's the universal motivation. And since I, too, want to be happy, I have something profoundly in common with everyone.