GOODWILL

How to send thoughts of goodwill to people you find it so easy to despise? It's a question I suspect many of us stew about at a time when we have nothing but ill feelings toward those whose influence so profoundly affects our lives. The natural... well, instinctive response is the opposite of goodwill. There is some part of me that feels initially gratified when I give vent to the anger, animosity, and vindictiveness that sometimes overwhelm me. It creates the illusion of actually doing something about a situation over which I have no control. And it's easy to gloss over the uncomfortable truth that those feelings are more toxic to myself than to those toward whom I direct them.

The rationale for sending out thoughts of goodwill--quite aside from sparing myself the toxicity they generate within--is relatively simple: in the words I have heard on many occasion from Thanissaro Bhikkhu, whose teachings I enormously admire and seek to manifest in my life, "the world would be a better place if everyone were to find true happiness."

In light of this, I ask myself (to take the prime and most obvious example) whether the man who currently occupies our White House could be "truly happy"? He seems to enjoy wielding the power that has been given him, and grasping for more of it every day. He commands more wealth and material possessions than I could possibly imagine. He basks in the adulation of those many who worship him without criticism or question, and the obedience of the minions with whom he surrounds himself, and who obey the least of his commands.

If happiness consists in everything he has, then he would surely be a happy man, and it is perhaps presumptuous on my part to project my own sense of happiness upon him. But my definition of the word would exclude the kind of success that he apparently enjoys. My definition would have to do with freedom--freedom from wants, from attachment, from delusion. Freedom from the contingencies and demands of ego. Freedom from stress and tension, from fear and animosity. Freedom, if it were possible, from the kind of suffering we humans experience so greatly in our daily lives. I could also not be "happy" if I were the cause of suffering or harm to any of my fellow beings.

So if I send thoughts of goodwill out to those that I dislike (and I don't have to like them! I don't have to respect them or admire them!), if I wish for their happiness, it is with this idea of happiness in mind. We would all be better off if the man who occupies our White House were to be free from wants, attachment, delusion; if he were to be free from stress and tension, from fear and animosity. How much better would we all be off were he free from the contingencies and demands of a fragile and demanding ego.

What I see is a man who is suffering from the overweening and eternally exhausting demands of his own narcissism, a man who lacks a strong center of integrity and authenticity, a man incapable of empathy or compassion, a man trapped in the world of his own delusions. If I send him thoughts of goodwill it is not merely for his personal benefit, but to free us all from the tyranny of suffering he imposes on himself and projects upon the world.