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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Vishvapani

Good morning. It’s easy to speak warmly of kindness and compassion. Of course, I would much rather be a kind person than an unkind one, and I can easily fantasise about being kind to everyone. But what about the reality?

One of Dostoyevsky’s characters says ‘the more I love mankind in general, the less I love people in particular.’ But Buddhism teaches that if we want to be compassionate, in truth and not just in our fantasies, we have to include the people we dislike.

I can’t think of anyone in my life I’d call ‘an enemy’, but there are certainly people who try to get their way at my expense, or who irritate, annoy or provoke me. There are chance encounters on the road with people who are rude or aggressive; and tensions with family members that never seem to be resolved.

I don’t think I’m alone in this. All our lives contain people we dislike, and if you’ve been treated badly by someone, you may have strong reasons for doing so. But anger and resentment can be a painful weight in our hearts and minds, and, as Buddhism teaches, they cause us to suffer.

Including difficult people in a wider sense of compassion doesn’t mean pretending to like them. But we can reflect that they are people, just like us, who want to be happy and avoid suffering. This brings a wider perspective and we can sincerely wish someone well, even if we don’t like them:

May I learn to put down my anger, rather than being driven by it.
May I recognise the humanity I share with the people I dislike.
May they be well, may they be happy, may they be free from suffering.