WSW 2: Equanimity Free of Attachment, Repulsion and Indifference

These are our aims, and we can look at it from the point of view of what I call “Dharma-Lite” or the “Real Thing Dharma” – like Coca Cola Lite or Real Thing Coca Cola. The lite version is the version that doesn’t take into consideration rebirth. If we don’t take into consideration rebirth, then these three aims become merely to improve things later in this lifetime – that would be the initial aim; and then the second aim would be to overcome all our recurring problems that happen in this lifetime because of our disturbing emotions, and so on. Then the third aim would be to reach a point at which we can help others as much as possible in this lifetime to overcome their problems as well. 

This is certainly a valid way of following the Buddhist path, and it can be very helpful, but it’s not the real thing. The main problem here is in terms of karma. When we look at the results of our behavior, and we look at the causes for what we are experiencing now, we find that that doesn’t work most of the time in this lifetime. So, if we don’t bring in future lives and past lives, then it’s very hard to explain this whole teaching on karma, which is very central here in this text. This is that if we are experiencing a certain type of difficulty, it is the result of acting in a similar way toward others as what is happening to us. We could understand that to a certain degree by not bringing in past lives, but that’s very difficult. For instance, if we’re experiencing that our relationships always break up, and we’re not able to stay with our friends and our relatives even though we might want to because circumstances are always causing us to part, then if we look at the karmic cause for that – the karmic cause is divisive language. In other words, saying nasty things to people about their friends so that it causes them to part from each other. We might not have done that so strongly in this lifetime, but when you look at the teachings on karma, it says that there should be a certain tendency to repeat that type of behavior in addition to something similar happening back to us. We cause others to end their friendships, or for them to part from their friends, and so as a result we experience parting from our friends. We should find a certain tendency there within ourselves to repeat that, even if it’s not so strong. In this way, we can approach the karma teachings just in terms of this lifetime but, as I say, it’s not really the strongest.

Also, when we think in terms of helping others, and taking on their problems, and trying to give them the solutions and freedom from it – which is a very central part of this text – if we’re only thinking in terms of this lifetime, it’s hard to really gain an equal attitude toward absolutely everybody. There’s one way of looking at this problem of how we relate to everybody, which is in terms of seeing that everybody in some lifetime has been our mother, or our father, or our best friend, or something like that – and that’s very difficult if we don’t take in the consideration of past lives. The Dharma-Lite version of that that sometimes I explain is that anybody could take us into their home and treat us like a mother – in other words, take care of us, give us a meal, give us a warm place to stay in the winter, and so on. Everybody is able to do that. I once went to Argentina, to Buenos Aires, and I have some very distant relatives there whom I had never met. I called them and I told them who I was, and they immediately invited me to their home, and treated me like a member of the family. They were very wonderful to me, and then I thought I could have called anybody and said, “Hello, I’m your cousin from the United States,” and they could have done the same thing. In that sense, everybody could act toward us like a mother or a father. But the problem here is, how do you relate, then, to the mosquito as being able to do this as well? If we really are thinking in the Mahayana way, in terms of helping everybody to reach enlightenment, then that includes the mosquitoes as well, not just human beings. So, there are limitations, if we approach this whole issue within Dharma on the Dharma-Lite level. Anyway, it really is up to us what we feel comfortable with.

I think most Westerners aren’t automatically able to feel comfortable with past and future lives. I don’t know, maybe some people are. But I think the way that we can approach it is in terms of saying that it’s not very simple in Buddhism. It’s not talking about some sort of solid soul that flies from one body into another, or a solid mind that’s going from one lifetime and flying into another body like that, but actually it’s a very sophisticated idea which is behind the Buddhist teachings on rebirth. We can say, “I don’t understand it now, but I have the confidence that it is something which is worthwhile to try to understand. I will assume, for the time being, that it is correct, and then see where that leads me to, and be open-minded to try to go deeper and deeper working with it and eventually try to understand it in its fullest sense.” In order to understand it, we have to understand the voidness of the self – in other words, the Buddhist teachings on how we exist as a “me,” as a person. That is not so simple to do, but we’ll get into that later on. 

Last time we were speaking about this initial level of motivation. We were talking about how important it is to recognize that we have a precious human life, that we have freedom from the most difficult situations in which we wouldn’t have the liberty to be able to work on ourselves and make progress in terms of working to overcome our anger, and attachments, and all the problems that come from them. We also have what I call “enrichments:” we have a lot of opportunities that make our lives very rich in terms of different methods that are available – Buddhist teachings, for example, and teachers, and people who make it possible for us to be able to study and practice. This is a wonderful situation, both on a personal level and on a society level, and we need to appreciate that. We also need to appreciate that it’s not going to last forever. When we appreciate our precious human life, that helps us to overcome feeling sorry for ourselves, and complaining all the time: “Poor me, I don’t have this, I don’t have that.” When we think how much worse things could be, we appreciate what we do have. When we think about how it’s not going to last, how we’re going to die for sure, and there’s no certainty as to when we’ll die – you don’t have to be an old person in order to die – then that motivates us to try to take advantage of the opportunities and freedoms that we have now before we lose them. Although, we need to be careful not to be a fanatic about that, because then actually it just makes us more uptight and we’re not really able to take advantage of what we have. We need to be a bit relaxed about that.

So, we think about how we have this precious human life, and it’s not going to last forever, and we want to take advantage of it. We think about, after we die, that it’s quite possible that we could have a more terrible rebirth than we have now, and so what we want is to be able to avoid that. In order to avoid that, we need, first of all, to have some sort of safe direction that we put in our lives. This is known as “refuge” in Buddhism. “Refuge” – I don’t really care for that term because it tends to be a bit passive, and we don’t mean something totally passive here of just looking for protection from higher beings. Rather, what it means is something more active. We want to put a certain direction in our life as is indicated by the Buddhas, and what they’ve attained; how they taught the Dharma; and the highly realized community that is very well advanced on the path and have realized, to a certain extent, the attainments of a Buddha, but not completely. That’s known as the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. We put that safe direction in our life – that’s usually called “taking refuge” – and when we do that, then basically it makes a huge difference because then our lives have some meaning, they have some direction. We are basically working on ourselves to achieve what the Buddhas have achieved, which is a removal of all their limitations, suffering and its causes, and the realization of all the good qualities that we have the potentials for. We can avoid things getting worse in the future – in future lives and in this lifetime as well. If we put this safe direction in our lives, we are actually doing something with it. I find that sometimes people really trivialize this whole issue of taking refuge and that really is a shame. It’s not something trivial at all. It really does make a huge difference in your life when you have some direction and you know what you’re doing, and you have some meaning to your life.

The actual way to avoid things getting worse brings in all the teachings on karma. These are going to be very central to our study of this text. Karma has to do with a very complex process that explains how we act and why we act in certain ways, and why we experience certain things. It is an explanation in terms of behavioral cause and effect. It says that everything has results; that if we act in certain ways, and whatever we experience, have causes, and these causes aren’t in terms of what other people do – although those are circumstances that support what happens to us – but the basic cause is within ourselves. Things happen as a combination of many causes and conditions, but what we can affect is basically within ourselves.

Karma can be used as a general term that covers the whole topic, and in common language it usually is used in that way. Or it can be used to refer to some very specific aspect of it, which is referring to the urges that come up or impulses that drive our minds to an object, and then consequently drive our speech to say something, or our bodies to do something. So, it’s an urge; it can be described as a mental urge. It can be described as a physical urge of energy when we’re speaking in terms of physical and verbal actions. But in any case, we act in certain ways based on these impulses, or these urges, and then, as a result of acting that way, it builds up a certain amount of positive or negative force, depending on whether we act destructively or constructively. This also builds up certain tendencies to repeat the type of action, or to get into situations in which similar things happen to us. These tendencies are going to be carried along on the mental continuum; they’re not something physical but sort of as an abstraction. Later on, when there are various circumstances and conditions – primarily grasping for this solid “me” – and then external circumstances, these tendencies are going to ripen. They ripen into what we usually describe in the West as a feeling to do something – you say it that way in English. “I feel like going to visit you;” “I feel like yelling at you;” “I feel like hugging you;” “I feel like helping you;” “I feel like hurting you.” That’s based on our various tendencies and habits to act that way. When we get that feeling, or wish, to act that way, that’s what ripens from the karmic tendencies, and then that can lead to an urge to actually act out what we feel like doing. Then we act it out, or we could not act it out. We certainly have the choice at that point. But this is the basic mechanism of karma. Because of our unawareness about how we exist and so on, and how things are happening in life, then the whole cycle just continues and goes on and on and on, and repeats.

We recognize, at this initial level, that if we are experiencing gross suffering of pain and things going very difficultly, that is coming from destructive behavior. If we want to avoid a repetition of that, we need to avoid the destructive behavior that is the cause. A very large part of the text is going to be giving many examples of that – things that we experience and the karmic cause. We can look at that simply in terms of ourselves – that I’ve been experiencing. To use this example that we mentioned at the beginning of the session this evening, I’ve been experiencing people leaving me, I’m not able to stay with my loved ones and so on, my relationships never work out. The karmic cause for that is using divisive language – saying nasty things to people about their friends and so on, causing them to part. Therefore, I will stop acting that way so that I will avoid this thing recurring.

Now, we can look at the text on that level, but actually the text is intended on a deeper level in terms of what’s called giving and taking. With this, we look at everybody who has that type of problem, and we take on that problem, and give the solution of avoiding, say, using divisive language, to everybody. We don’t just think in terms of ourselves in a limited way but are acting in a much larger scope without this self-cherishing of only thinking about “me, me, me,” and what I experience. If we do that on this level, this larger level, it helps us to overcome that self-cherishing and grasping for a solid “me” that is what’s causing this karma to ripen and causing us to continually build up more negative karma. It’s very meaningful to try to do this type of practice the way it’s intended in the text as a practice of giving and taking, in more of a Mahayana way. 

So, what the text is really talking about, on a deeper level, is to think in terms of everybody having the same problem. When we accept that I have this problem and I’m going to deal with it, that we don’t do that just in terms of me and my problem, but we do that in terms of everybody who has the same problem. Thinking in these larger terms of everybody who has the same problem, and that, “I’m going to try to solve the problem for everybody,” helps us to overcome the self-cherishing – the selfishness that says, “I don’t want to deal with your problem. It’s bad enough I have the problem. You deal with your problem.” When we have that selfishness – that self-centeredness and the grasping for a solid “me” that’s really behind it – that “I’m the only one” and “I’m the most important” – this is actually what is causing this whole karmic cycle to repeat over and over again. By taking on the problem of others and overcoming the selfishness – “I don’t want to deal with it” – and then giving the solution to everybody, this helps on more than one level. It helps not just on the karmic level but on the level of the causes for the karma to repeat. 

This first level of motivation is to think about future lives, particularly. We think about how we want to avoid things getting worse and, in order to avoid that, we put the safe direction in our life, and we try to avoid acting destructively. Then, the second level of spiritual motivation is to think about how no matter what type of future situation we might be in – whether it is a very happy one or an unhappy one, whether it has a lot of beneficial circumstances or not very nice circumstances – any situation is going to be filled with problems. We are always going to experience frustration. We don’t get what we want. Things happen to us that we don’t want: we get sick; we get old; we eventually have to die. We have to deal with the sickness, old age and death of our parents. All these sorts of things are going to be there. Even if we’re in the happiest state, eventually it comes to an end. This is really quite a problem – a much more all-pervasive type of problem. If we think about what the causes are for this, it’s not just thinking in terms of destructive behavior causing our gross suffering. Here we have to think of all the disturbing emotions and disturbing attitudes. These are going to be referred to in the beginning of the text, in which it is speaking about how we want to also take on the disturbing emotions of others and deal with them – other people’s anger, other people’s greed, and so on – not just our own. We extend our scope beyond just our own problems. We need to understand what these main disturbing emotions are that cause our problems to keep on recurring and recurring.

A disturbing emotion, or a disturbing attitude, is defined as one which, when we develop it, makes us lose our peace of mind. We lose our peace of mind, and it causes us to lose control of ourselves so that we basically act in stupid ways – ways in which we don’t really want to act. We lose our self-control. This is the definition of a disturbing emotion or disturbing attitude. For instance, when we get angry, we lose our peace of mind, and we lose self-control. We yell at somebody, or hit somebody, or do something really very stupid. Or, if we are very attached to somebody, then likewise we don’t have peace of mind. We’re always thinking about the person, and also we lose self-control and do all sorts of silly things that later we would regret. There is a whole long list of these disturbing emotions. We can go through them one by one.

First, we can speak about this whole spectrum of desire, greed, and attachment. Desire and greed are for something that we don’t have that we want to have. Attachment is when we have it, we don’t want to let go of it. This is based on a wrong consideration. We consider that the object is inherently attractive from its own side. It’s based on a misconception that exaggerates the good qualities of something. We exaggerate the good qualities of a person, or of food (some kind of food that we like), or money – whatever it is. We make it into something really fantastic, and then we think that that attractiveness of it is there from the side of the object, by its own power – inherently there, solidly there – and then we want it; or, if we have it, we don’t want to let go of it. It really is based on a gross misconception of the object of our desire or attachment. When we have that, then of course we don’t have peace of mind: “I always have to have this thing.” We’re worried that we’re going to lose it, we’re insecure in terms of attachment to a person, or a job, or something like that, and we tend to deny any of the negative qualities of the thing that we’re attached to – the thing that we want – we only see the good side. We certainly lose self-control, in terms of having any type of equilibrium about it. It can cause us to lie, and steal, and do all sorts of negative things – if we think about an extreme case. Even if it’s not an extreme case, it can cause us to ignore other people because we only want to be with this one and spend all our money recklessly on this person.

The next disturbing emotion is anger. Anger is similar to desire and attachment – it’s just the opposite of it. In other words, what it is doing is considering a certain object in an incorrect way. It’s considering it as, inherently from its own side, being unattractive, or something that is horrible, and then it wants to get rid of it. It wants to either be violent toward it, or reject it, or in some way get rid of it. It is based on a misconception that exaggerates the negative qualities of something. It either exaggerates the negative qualities or it adds negative qualities that aren’t there. We had a similar thing with attachment or desire: it exaggerates the good qualities, or it adds good qualities that aren’t there. In addition, the anger could deny or disregard any good qualities that are there, just as the attachment or desire could deny any of the bad qualities that might be there of the object. So, we get this type of anger. In general, anger could be directed at anything – a person, a situation, an object. But when we speak just in terms of persons as the object of our anger, we have a sub-category here, which would be hostility: “I feel hostile toward this person.” We get a certain type of anger directed at people. So, this is anger. That obviously also causes us to lose our peace of mind, and to lose any self-control that we might have.

Another disturbing emotion is pride and arrogance. Pride and arrogance is looking at either just ourselves in general, or some quality of ourselves, or some possession that we have, and it thinks that we are better in this regard than anybody else, or just a little bit better. There are many different varieties that we could have here. When we feel arrogant like that, when we feel that “I’m better than you,” then also we don’t have peace of mind. “I’m richer than you;” “I’m better looking than you;” “I’m more intelligent than you;” “I’m stronger than you” – whatever it may be. We’re not really relaxed; we’re uptight, and that also causes us to lose self-control, because we tend to try to show off to others. This then also causes problems in the relationship. It causes difficulties in interacting with other people. So, this is pride, arrogance.

There’s also, related to that, stinginess, in which we don’t want to share things that we have with other people. That also is quite similar: “I’m the only one that deserves this, and why should I give any to you?” In both cases – with that and with this pride or arrogance – we’re not seeing the equality of ourselves with others. “I’m better, so I’m going to not share with you. You don’t deserve it. I only deserve it myself” – this type of thing.

We also have jealousy. With jealousy, we can’t bear what somebody else has accomplished. This is envy, actually, much more. We can’t bear that somebody else has more possessions than we have, or that they have a better job than we have, that they are better looking than we are – this type of thing. That also makes us very uneasy. We don’t have peace of mind, and we aren’t really in control of our actions. We can also be jealous when, in a Western sense, somebody that we like doesn’t spend time with us; they’re spending time with somebody else instead. That also makes us really lose all control and lose any peace of mind.

There’s also naivety. Naivety is when we are naive about cause and effect. We are naive about the effect of our behavior on others, the effect of our behavior on ourselves. We’re naive about what our own situation is; we’re naive about somebody else’s situation. Being naive, we also don’t quite have peace of mind because we don’t really know what’s going on. We’re in our own little dream world, and obviously we don’t act in any type of considerate type of way. We’re out of control in that sense that we are basically just acting in a very self-centered sort of way – just according to what we would want – as opposed to what would be appropriate to a larger situation. So, we have these.

We also have indecisiveness – indecisive wavering. That can also be a very disturbing state of mind. We can’t decide: “Should I say this? Should I say that?” “Should I eat this? Should I eat that?” “Should I wear this? Should I wear that?” Then we also don’t have peace of mind, and we can’t actually do anything because we are crippled.

So there are many different disturbing states of mind, disturbing emotions, disturbing attitudes. There’s a whole big, long list of them. But these are the major ones. And they’re the real troublemakers when we experience them. They cause us to act in all sorts of destructive ways. Even if it doesn’t cause us to act destructively, and it might cause us to act in a constructive way – let’s say because I’m so attached to you, I’m going to help you in all sorts of different types of ways – it could backfire. It could lead to not being able to say no, which is destructive toward ourselves. Also, if we give too much, and help too much, it could also frighten the other person away. It could make them dependent on us and cause a very unhealthy relationship, and various problems come up. A relationship where we’re the one who always has to be the one who’s helping – that really is a control trip. If I’m the one who’s helping, I’m always the one that’s in control, and that also causes problems because it’s very self-centered.

All of these disturbing emotions, if we look at them more deeply, we find that what’s behind them is this grasping for a solid “me.” We imagine that we exist as a solid independent entity, and we believe that. Then we have self-cherishing – “I’m the most important one” – we’re only preoccupied with ourselves. Because of that, we then have great attachment. “I want to keep this;” I want to keep you, because I’m the most important one, so I should possess you. Don’t ever leave me.” We’re not thinking about what’s good for them, we’re thinking in terms of “me.” Or “I want this” is also a preoccupation with “me.” “I want you;” “I want this possession.” When we have anger or hostility, again we’re thinking about “me.” “I don’t like you. What I like and what I don’t like is the most important thing.” When we have pride and arrogance, that also is in terms of a preoccupation with “me:” “I’m so much better because of this or because of that.” When we’re jealous, we’re also thinking of this solid “me:” “Why didn’t I get it? Why was it you? I have to get this” – either your attention, or your better job, or anything like that. When we are naive, we’re just lost in our own little world, we’re just thinking about “me.” We don’t care about the effects of our behavior on anyone. We don’t care about the reality of your situation or even the reality of my own situation. I’m just in my own little dream world of “me.” When we have indecisive wavering – that also is a preoccupation with “me:” “What should wear I today? “What should I eat today?” – this type of thing. All these problems with the disturbing emotions we can trace back to this misconception about “me” – how I exist; and this self-cherishing – this preoccupation with “me.”

If we want to get rid of all the problems, and the uncontrollably recurring problems in terms of the ripening of karma that comes from this, and the whole cycle of rebirth which comes from this, then we need to basically get rid of this misconception – this grasping for a solid “me.” To do that, we need correct understanding. To gain that correct understanding, first of all, we need concentration. Without concentration, we can’t stay focused on it. To get concentration, we need discipline. We speak on this level in terms of building up discipline, concentration, and the understanding of reality. All of that is based on what’s called “renunciation.” Renunciation is this total disgust with all these uncontrollably recurring problems. If we take it on a deeper level, it’s disgust with uncontrollable rebirth: what a drag it is to always have a human body that is going to get old and is going to develop this ache and this pain, and has to be fed all the time, and put to sleep, and taken care of. So, much of our effort is based on feeding and taking care of this body. It really is quite amazing, if you think about it – all the food that we might eat in a year, let alone a whole lifetime. If you were to put that there in front of us, it’s really quite amazing. 

What do we turn it into? The Tibetans love to use this as an example. Put on one side all the food that we eat and, on the other side, all the excrement that we have produced and urine that we have produced. What are we? We are a factory for making excrement and urine. This is really ridiculous – the amount of time that we have to put into that. And you have to train, you have to get educated. It’s really quite a drag, the whole thing. Now, of course, there are the pleasures of life. One doesn’t want to deny that completely. But one also looks at this whole uncontrollably recurring cycle and you just have to go through it over and over and over again, and it really is boring, and so we decide, “I really want to get out of this, so that I can continue.” It’s not that we stop continuing, but we think, “I want to continue free of all of this.” As I said earlier in the previous weeks, it’s quite difficult to really imagine what that would be like – to have a non-samsaric body of light and all of this sort of thing. That sounds a little bit like science fiction. But in any case, according to the Buddhist teachings that is something which is quite possible to accomplish.

If we take a Dharma-Lite version of this, then we think just in terms of overcoming all these psychological and emotional problems that we might have in this lifetime, and I think for most of us that’s a bit easier to relate to. But in any case, I think that it is helpful, even if we don’t have the full Real Thing Dharma version, to not be so attached to this type of body and this type of life and have a more realistic attitude toward it. In other words, not to have this attitude of worshipping the body as beautiful and so on. It doesn’t mean to go to the other extreme and hate the body and hate this type of things that we have to do; but just be realistic about it and don’t over exaggerate the amount of time and effort that we put into looking pretty and all these other things. One wants to have a presentable appearance, of course, so that we don’t frighten people away. But we also don’t have to spend all our time with the mirror, making sure that we look so pretty.

The Tibetans always have very earthy type of sayings. One of the sayings that I always liked that one of my teachers, Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey, always used to say – I think it comes from some text, but I don’t know what text it is – was, “No matter how much you wash a piece of shit (a turd), you can’t make it clean.” Likewise, no matter how much we try to make our body look beautiful, still the nature of the body is that if you look inside, it’s not very pleasant.

So, we have this renunciation, this determination to be free. Based on that we would develop discipline, we develop concentration, and the understanding of reality – how we exist, how others exist, how everything in the universe exists – so that our behavior is no longer compulsive. This, I think, is the big word here: “compulsive.” Without any control, just compulsively we act out greed, and attachment, and anger, and jealousy, and so on. We want to get rid of that. We don’t want to get rid of it in the sense of some super-controller, policeman “me” that instructs, “I’m not going to do this.” But rather to get rid of it in a very natural way, so that it just doesn’t arise. This we can do with these various methods. That’s the intermediate level.

Then the advanced level, which is the level at which this text is discussing, is when we think, “I’m not the only one who has this type of uncontrollably recurring problems. I’m not the only one that is under the control of all these disturbing emotions and so on. Everybody is in the same situation. So, it is not going to be sufficient for just me to be free of these problems, and everybody around me is so miserable and having so many difficulties.” That would really be pretty difficult to support, when you really take the reality of other people seriously. After all, we don’t exist self-sufficiently; our whole life depends on other people working. It depends on other people growing food, making the buses and the subways, and having the roads, and having stores, and all this sort of stuff. We totally depend on others for our existence. So, for us just to be the king or queen, and everything is going well, and all these miserable suffering people are serving us – that really is not a very easy situation to support, unless we are totally naive and self-centered. But if we’re starting to work on this already, with this drive for liberation, then naturally we think of other people as well, and we see that other people are in the same situation, and so we all have to work to get over this together. This leads to this general flavor of the practices here, which is to do it for everybody.

Now in order to be able to do it for everybody, and help everybody, the first thing that we need is some sort of equanimity, with which we don’t just want to help the people that we like, and we want to ignore the people that we dislike and ignore strangers as well. Instead, we want to be open to helping everybody equally. Now, this is not at all an easy thing to develop. It’s actually very difficult, but as His Holiness the Dalai Lama says, if we just try to develop love and compassion initially for the people that we like, and then try to expand it, then really it tends to reinforce our attachment for the people that we like. It’s playing on that, and that’s a little bit dangerous. It is much better to start in a very general type of way with equanimity – the way that it’s outlined in the teachings. Then, although His Holiness doesn’t say this, I think the way that we’ve been doing it in our sensitivity training course is that then you can focus on individual specific people. Because if you leave it too general, then it doesn’t really move us emotionally. But if we are open to everybody equally, then you can start to focus on somebody that I like, somebody that I dislike, a stranger, and so on. This is the general way in which we would train.

To develop this equanimity, basically we think of three types of people. Somebody that we like, somebody that we dislike, and a stranger that we don’t know at all, so we neither like nor dislike. We think about this person that we like – why do we like them? Because they’re nice to us, they look nice, or we hope to get something from them – affection, or love, or whatever it might be. We think how this person could also cause us a great deal of suffering and pain. People that we are the most attached to, actually, are the people that can hurt us the most. If they drop us, if they ignore us, if they say something unkind to us, we feel the most pain. So, it isn’t that they are just nice people. Similarly, somebody that we dislike could change and become somebody that we like. Similarly, a stranger could turn out to be a friend. Every friend that we have started out as a stranger. Now, we could think of this just in this lifetime; we can also think of it in terms of past lifetimes. In a past lifetime, the friend might have been an enemy, the enemy could have been a friend, and so on. Thinking in this way, we try to develop an equal attitude of equanimity toward everybody, which is free of attachment, repulsion, and indifference. Those are the main things that we want to overcome.

The traditional way is to do this with visualizing and imagining these three people – someone we like, someone we dislike, and somebody that is a stranger – one by one. The first one – seeing that this person that we like could cause us a lot of pain and then viewing them without this attachment. Seeing the one that we dislike as someone who actually could be very nice to us; we might in fact like them in a different situation. Look at the situations of countries, and the alliances – they’ve changed very much over the years, so an enemy can change into a friend. Then view this person that we disliked with equanimity. The same thing with the stranger – seeing that they could become a friend. Then view the three of them together. For instance, if we were going to have dinner with all three of them at one table – how we could do that and be not drawn to one, and repelled by another, and want to just focus on this one. Actually, it’s a very difficult state to develop. But it’s something which is very important that we try to develop, so that we’re open to everybody and, when we actually do the practices that are outlined in this text, so that we can do it not just with people that we like but do it on this much larger scale toward everyone.

Think of, first, somebody that we like; then somebody that we dislike – don’t take somebody who has really hurt us very badly because that’s not easy to work with, but someone in general that we find annoying; and then a stranger – somebody that we don’t really know. We might have seen them in a store or something like that, but we don’t really know this person at the cash register at whatever supermarket we go to. 

I’ll lead you through the exercise. First, we start by quieting down and focusing on the breath for a moment. You can have your eyes either open or closed – whatever you find easier. Usually, these practices are done with the eyes open just looking down, because if you do them with your eyes closed, then it gets into the habit of shutting yourself off from the world in order to meditate. It becomes a bit of an obstacle when you actually try to apply these methods in daily life.

Then we think of somebody that we like. We think, why do I like them? Well, because they’re nice to me, or I like the way they look; I like how they act, or I am hopeful of things they might give to me, like love or attention – whatever it might be. We think that that’s not really a sufficient reason. They could hurt me very much, very easily, by ignoring me. So, we try to look at this person with a more level state of mind, without this attraction. They may be nice, but they may also hurt us very much. Basically, what we try to do is view them without this feeling of being like a magnet drawn to them – “I want to be just with you” – and ignoring everybody else.

Then we think of the person that we dislike. Why do I dislike them? Because they’re nasty to me or to someone that I like; or they have qualities that I really don’t like. But they’re not always like that. There are others that they are kind to. They could be kind to me as well. We could become good friends. So, there’s nothing inherent on their side that makes them a bad person, just as there’s nothing inherent on the side of the one I like that makes them a good person. Then we try to view this person that we’ve disliked, again, with equanimity – not feeling repelled by this person, not feeling that “I just want to run away and reject them.”

Then we think of the stranger – somebody that I hardly know at all. Someone that occasionally we might see in a store, or restaurant, or whatever, that we’ve never really spoken to. We might have ignored them all the time and not taken them really seriously as a person. But if we think about it, they could become a very good friend if we got to know them. We try to look at this person without indifference, without any feeling of just wanting to ignore them.

Then, finally, we look at all three of them together, if we can do that. It’s not so easy to imagine. But if you can, imagine all three of them at a table around us, having dinner with all three, and try to see them without attraction, repulsion, or indifference. Because after all, if somebody was nice to us yesterday and is nasty to us today, and another person was nasty to us yesterday and is nice to us today, really there’s no difference, is there? We try and look at all three without being disturbed, attracted, repulsed – just being open to all three. It’s not that we have no feeling; it’s just that we are equally open to all three. We let that settle.

It’s this equanimity which will act as a basis for being able to develop a warm, caring attitude toward everybody, in an equal way, so that when we think to try to help others, we won’t make this differentiation that “I’m only going to help the ones that I like.” Obviously, on a practical level, we can’t help absolutely everybody at the same time. So, on a practical level, we help those that we are able to help the most and who are receptive to us, but nevertheless there needs to be the willingness and openness to help anybody and everybody. Then, when we’re helping, we’re not under the influence of these disturbing emotions so much – attachment to this one, and anger and disliking of that one, and the naivety of thinking that this one, the stranger, doesn’t really count. Because when we’re attached to somebody, we want something from them, even if it’s just their attention and love. When we dislike somebody, also we want something from them. We want them to go away, basically. And the stranger we might not want anything from, but we certainly don’t want them to bother us. So, we need an open mind with equanimity toward everyone, in order to actually have the foundation for doing the type of practices that’s discussed in this text.

Next time we will continue with this basic foundation. I think one more class should do it in terms of working with love and compassion and so on, so that we actually do take interest in others and their problems, so that then we can actually get into the text itself.

Let’s end with a dedication. We think whatever positive force, whatever understanding, whatever positive experience we have gained, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause for really being able to help others and reaching enlightenment to be able to help them in as best a way as possible.