Goodwill for All

Every day we have to set our intention, that we have to have goodwill for everybody. If you have ill will for anybody, you’re probably going to mistreat that person. You may say they behaved very badly, they deserve to suffer. Well, that’s going to be their karma. You don’t have to get involved, because you want to make sure that your karma is good. So if you can harm other people, if you have any kind of thinking that would lead you to harm other people, you’ve got to root that out of your mind.

Remind yourself that most people, if they do suffer from their bad actions, don’t usually make a connection between the two. They blame their suffering on somebody else, something else. So they never learn. What you want is to have them come to their senses voluntarily and, if they’ve been really misbehaving, for them to change their ways. And you’d be willing to help them in that direction if you can.

Otherwise, you’ve got to maintain your goodwill. As the Buddha said, you should look after your goodwill the way a mother would look after her only son. Back in those days, they didn’t have social security; they didn’t have a social net. If a woman had one son, she was going to depend on that one son. So she wanted to make sure that he survived, because her survival would depend on him.

So think about the goodness of other people in that way. The people who have been behaving really badly—if they have some goodness, focus on that. That nourishes your goodness, so you can protect your goodness. Your goodness will survive. And if they have no goodness at all to them, then you have to really feel sorry for them because they’re digging a deep, deep hole for themselves. In neither case is ill will called for.

So try to develop thoughts of goodwill every day. Think of all beings, of all kinds, in all directions. Anybody you meet in the course of the day, you want to have goodwill for that person. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to do what they want you to do. We’re not going around trying to please people or be Buddhist doormats. Sometimes what’s good for that person may be something they don’t like at all. But as long as your motivation is good, your motivation is skillful, then what you do for that person, you hope, will lead them to do good in return—not necessarily good to you but do some goodness out in the world.

In that way, you take care of what is your responsibility. You don’t use other people’s misbehavior as an excuse for your misbehavior, because it’s not really an excuse. Your actions are your treasures. If other people are throwing their treasures away, that’s no reason for you to throw your treasures away. So take good care of them. Have goodwill for yourself, goodwill for everyone around you.