You Can Love Sentient Beings in a General way.

[yontenjamyang]

The guy who squeeze your off your lane, the Inland Revenue guy or even our enemy have reasons for doing what they are doing, be it the reasons are "right" or "wrong", it is a matter of perception and point of view. Remember, everyone have someone loving them and that being the case, we must then contemplate that then our view contradicts that reality. Why? If A and B both like C and we dislike C, then we must be the one that is wrong. Since, we cannot control A, B or C, but can only control ourselves, better we change our view to the positive or just remain open.
In this way, we have less problems.

[eyesoftara]

"Loving beings in a general way".I take that as the wish for all beings to be happy. It is something all of us can do but we must understand certain intricacies of "love".

Generally, we all love for the reason of selfishness. That is why we love our lovers, children, family more that strangers and certainly enemies. This kind of love is based upon the identification of a self at the central. This love is conditional. For example, if the lover do not reciprocate the love in a way expected, we will be angry. We cannot therefore call this kind of love, loving sentient beings.

Loving sentient beings by definition would then be derived from seeing all beings as equal. Equanimity. Since equanimity cannot be developed overnight, we can start to move our wish for others to have happiness ie "loving" to those outside our "loved ones" ie to our enemies and strangers. From human to animals and beings of other realms, improving step by step until we achieve equanimity ie seeing the interest of others to be the same as the interest of our "loved ones".

[psylotripitaka]

Just as all living beings are our Mother, so too are we a Mother of all living beings. In general everyone is our dear child, but especially, they are all our precious and wonderful spiritual children born from the womb-like emptiness of our own mind, so how can we even begin to think of going to enlightenment without taking them all along with us!

[eyesoftara]

Just as all living beings are our Mother, so too are we a Mother of all living beings. In general everyone is our dear child, but especially, they are all our precious and wonderful spiritual children born from the womb-like emptiness of our own mind, so how can we even begin to think of going to enlightenment without taking them all along with us!

But in these degenerate times, due to the conditions of the times, the distractions and the general non spirituality of beings, it is very difficult to "go to enlightenment without taking them all along with us!". That is term as "Boatman like Boddhicitta" ie bringing beings to the other shore (Enlightenment) and coming back for more without us being enlightened first.

The times requires that we adopt the "King like Boddhicitta" ie we become enlightened first and them comes back for beings. This analogous to swimming to shore/safety first in the midst of a shipwreck and them save the others. That is a more practical strategy for this times.

[Kim Hyun Jae]

Yes, we can love sentient beings in the general way but in modern society, do we all know what "love" really is? The most important thing is "do we know how to love our self?" If we know and learn how to love our self, then we would know how to love others in a general way too in our daily lives. Love comes from learning to forgive our self, to get go of the past burden, worries etc. Thereafter, we will learn how to love others generally.

[grandmapele]

It is one thing to talk of practicing being kind and compassionate to others. It is another to actually put that into practice when faced with obnoxious people. It is even more taxing when faced with downright ignoramuses and violent people. So, it would be more practical to love those closest to you first then move on to those not so obnoxious ones.

In all honesty, can you tell me that you can love someone who has beheaded another human being just because that person is not of the same faith, color, thinking, whatever without any fear? Don't try to sprint before you can even walk properly. When you can love your difficult child and demanding wife unconditionally without any negative thinking, and treat all in the family equally, then maybe you will want to expand further. Well, at least that's what I got from Pema Chodron's "Places that scare us"

[psylotripitaka]

Yes, we can love sentient beings in the general way but in modern society, do we all know what "love" really is? The most important thing is "do we know how to love our self?" If we know and learn how to love our self, then we would know how to love others in a general way too in our daily lives. Love comes from learning to forgive our self, to get go of the past burden, worries etc. Thereafter, we will learn how to love others generally.

Nice Kim. The opposite can also be the case, where learning to love others helps us learn to forgive and love ourself. So beautiful.

[psylotripitaka]

It is one thing to talk of practicing being kind and compassionate to others. It is another to actually put that into practice when faced with obnoxious people. It is even more taxing when faced with downright ignoramuses and violent people. So, it would be more practical to love those closest to you first then move on to those not so obnoxious ones.

In all honesty, can you tell me that you can love someone who has beheaded another human being just because that person is not of the same faith, color, thinking, whatever without any fear? Don't try to sprint before you can even walk properly. When you can love your difficult child and demanding wife unconditionally without any negative thinking, and treat all in the family equally, then maybe you will want to expand further. Well, at least that's what I got from Pema Chodron's "Places that scare us"

Dear Grandmapele,

It is true what you say, but it is especially important to gain deep experience of the Lamrim meditation of Equanimity. Many wisdoms arise from this meditation that help us change our way of discriminating others. In particular, equanimity from the 8 Verses of Training the Mind involves distinguishing between a person and their delusions. This is key to accomplishing powerful equanimity and genuine love even for those that challenge us. It is said that 'living beings have no faults; they have delusions and the delusions have faults'. This enables us to let go of strong categorization of people based on our own three poisons, thereby it is easier to forgive others and to feel love and compassion for them because we see how they are tormented by their inner enemies and forced by them to harm others. When through equanimity we feel everyone is equal regardless of how they act, we can easily redefine them as our precious kind Mothers. In short, starting by loving those closest to us is very helpful, but even more so when we have experience of equanimity first.

[Klein]

It's very easy to love sentient beings in a general way. But it's more effective to be specific in our visualizations. Send light to the guy who squeese you off on the highway. Send light to the Inland Revenue employee who questioned your tax return. Send light to the terrorist who thinks that killing others in the name of God will cause him to be reborn in heaven. Send light to government leaders who think that bombing others solves problems. Send light to your teenager who leaves his room a mess and gets mad when you comment on it. Send light to specific people you know and care about, people who are having problems, strangers, and people you don't like. Send it to hospitals, the Middle East, the inner cities, Ethiopia and areas having natural calamities. There's suffering everywhere. The light frees sentient beings from their suffering.

Sending light to people whom we dislike is a very good start to developing compassion and equanimity. I know of many people who find it very difficult to even look into the eyes of those whom they dislike. So I think it's easier to send them light during our visualizations. Being spiritual entails forgiveness because being spiritual means to be selfless. Hence, if there is no "self", what's there to be hurt in the first place.

It's very difficult to not react for now. But through conscious efforts, we will experience the change is us.