Accustoming the Heart to Love
by Susan Downing
Not long ago one of my acquaintances was lamenting that she
found it so hard to deal with certain people in her life:
she felt they were treating her unfairly, and she felt very
angry about that. Even so, she didn’t want to just go
ballistic on them: “I want to bring love to my interactions
with them, but I don’t know how.” I hear this a lot. And
the people saying it usually look dejected. They seem to
feel they have already failed at compassion because they
cannot instantly summon up love for everyone around
them. They ask me, “Why is this so hard? Why can’t I be
nice to everyone?” And I reply, “Because we don’t
naturally feel like being nice to everyone.”
I am not suggesting that we shouldn’t be nice and sweet and
kind to everyone. What I mean is that we don’t
automatically come into this world filled with boundless
compassion and love for everyone around us. If you follow
His Holiness the Dalai Lama, you may have noticed that he
mentions love and compassion a great deal in his talks and
in his books, too. And he starts by pointing out that we
are not born knowing how to love all beings.
This is really great news, I think, for a couple of
reasons. Hearing this, we can take heart: we are not
hopelessly hard-hearted; we are just, well,
untrained. We’re like a not yet literate child who listens
as his parent reads him a book by making use of
unintelligible – to him – black shapes printed on a page:
he knows the parent has a skill he hasn’t yet acquired, but
he doesn’t feel like a failure just because he was born not
knowing how to read. Even so, he will have to master that
skill, because making his way through life will be really
hard without it. And he knows he’ll be able to make those
squiggles work for him, because he has lots of people – at
home and at school – to help him.
And that is the second point His Holiness always makes:
although we’re not born loving all beings around us, we can
learn to increase our capacity for loving others, gradually
accustom our heart to love, so that little by little, it
becomes not a conscious effort, but a habit of heart and
mind. And that’s great news, too, because not only can we
learn to be compassionate, His Holiness says, we need to
learn that skill if we want to be able to live happily and
help others do the same. He has gone so far as to say that
if you want to study Buddhism and are going to concentrate
on only one thing, focus on cultivating compassion
(bodhicitta, as the Buddhists call it,) because according
to Tibetan Buddhism, you cannot become fully enlightened
without it.
But how? I’m not going to say that it is an easy process,
learning to love our fellow earthlings. If it were easy, we
would all already be able to do it flawlessly, with minimal
effort. It takes concerted effort and, like learning to
read, tools and others with expertise to help us
along. Fortunately for us, Tibetan Buddhism has a whole
series of meditative techniques that will help us cultivate
compassion, even toward the most annoying coworker.
Personally, I like the Seven-fold Cause and Effect
instructions you can find in the Lam Rim, the Tibetan
Buddhist teaching which lays out the path to Enlightenment,
step by step. But what if you don’t practice Tibetan
Buddhism? Are you out of luck? Off the hook? Not at
all. Here is a way you can begin to cultivate love and
compassion in your very own heart:
Start with the folks you like and love, human or
otherwise. Be extra nice to them. Every
day. Remind yourself to do that when you get up in the
morning. Take care not to take them for granted: tell
your husband or wife or boyfriend or girlfriend or son or
daughter or sister or brother or mother or father or friend
how happy you are to see them, to hear from them, how much
you appreciate their friendship, love, support, guidance,
or help. Make a point of doing something sweet for them,
to appreciate them. It can be something small, such as
pouring them a cup of coffee without being asked, or making
sure the silverware is all straight when you set their
place at the table. Or giving your dog an extra long walk
even though you’re in a hurry, just because that’s what
makes him happy. Or thanking your family members when they
clean up the dishes after a meal, or when they have put in
a hard day’s work for the family’s benefit. Or giving them
your full attention when you are having a conversation,
or calling out of the blue just to say hi and wish them
well. Or just smiling at them for no reason other than to
let them know you are happy they are part of your
life. There is no end to this list. You can make up your
own additions to it every day, and keep practicing.
And guess what? Eventually, or maybe even a lot sooner
than eventually, you will not have to remind yourself so
often to act this way. Little by little, as your heart and
mind become accustomed to acting with attention, kindness
and love, even with people who used to drive you crazy,
you’ll become more and more skilled at it, like the child
who starts out reading Sheep in a Jeep and ends up curled
up in a chair one afternoon with Shakespeare. He’s become
word literate. And you’ll have become compassion literate.