Unlocking Happiness: How Extending Love toward Unfamiliar People Changed My Life

As I witness the chaos and conflict in the world right now, I can’t help thinking about how we can be more peaceful with one another, get along, and live in harmony together. 

I wondered how it’s possible to be so loving to our kind yet be cruel and indifferent towards someone we do not know. 

This reflection brought my attention to the principles I am learning in my meditation training and their impact on my life. 

My meditation teaches that everyone is fundamentally good. Like us, everyone tries to be happy and ease pain and suffering. 

To help us understand this way of thinking, Mingyur Rinpoche, the renowned Tibetan monk, talks about practicing love toward people you do not know.

In this post, I will share concepts of what it means to practice love for someone we don’t know (a neutral person) and how this practice has changed my outlook and helped foster a connection with a wide range of people. 

Extending Love beyond Judgements

I once had a grocery store clerk who completed the entire transaction without saying a word. He was grave and expressionless throughout the checkout process. 

Usually, I was used to saying hello and how are you, so being in that situation made me very uncomfortable around him. He was an older gentleman with a long beard. My mind ran through scenarios. 

Did he have a problem with brown people? Would he have greeted me if I was white? Regardless, I thanked him and left the store.

A part of me felt offended that they didn’t know how to treat their customers. However, my meditation practice of extending love towards neutral people taught me to look beyond the surface. It has taught me to send love and compassion to people I do not know. 

He may be having a difficult day, I told myself. Maybe I should have greeted him first instead of waiting for him to take the initiative. When I got to my car, I wished that he was free of whatever made him uneasy and hoped he would find happiness in his life. 

Like this clerk, we come across many such people in our daily lives. Someone might have rubbed you the wrong way at a party, cut you off in traffic, or more.

If we are not reflective on how we feel towards such people, it is easy to develop dislike, spin stories in our minds, and increase our suffering. 

Embracing Positivity in Others

Mingyur Rinpoche, the renowned Tibetan monk, explains that most people, in general, are good at heart. But we do not see that. We only see the negative parts. 

He says that if we have ten qualities, out of which nine are positive and one is negative, we only tend to see the negative one. We ignore the positive qualities and exaggerate that one negative quality within ourselves, others, and the world. 

To help us feel connected with everyone around us and view each other with love and compassion, Rinpoche asks us to bring one of two of them to our minds. 

He wants to feel that they, like us, are also seeking happiness. Like us, they are going through their share of problems. 

But this process of extending love to people we do not know does not come naturally to us. It needs to be practiced through meditation so we can gradually begin to experience each person differently.

Focusing on the good qualities of others will have an impact on how you experience them.

~Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

Meditation Guide for Connecting with a Neutral Person

Mingyur Rinpoche talks about how connecting with basic qualities in each of us leads to happiness. Qualities such as love, compassion, awareness, and wisdom all cause happiness.

Meditating for neutral people helps us connect with these qualities, ultimately leading to our happiness. To practice meditation for a neural person, follow these steps below:

1. Begin the meditation by sitting in a comfortable posture. 
2. For a few moments, rest as is without doing anything. In meditation, we call this resting in open awareness. 
3. Next, bring to mind someone who is a neutral person. It can be someone we see regularly but don’t have any strong opinions on—the person at the gym, someone at the office, etc. 
4. Reflect on how you wish to be happy. Though you don’t know this person, they too share the same wish of being happy and having well-being. 
5. With this person in mind, recite the phrase, ‘May you have happiness and its causes.’
6. If you feel restless, let go of the phrases and rest in open awareness. When ready, bring this person back to focus and continue with the phrase.
7. Let go of all the phrases to end the meditation and rest for a few moments. 

Transforming Perspectives & Expanding Our Love

Understanding this concept of practicing love and compassion towards everyone impacted my life profoundly. I have learned to look deeper and know that we all have the same desire to be happy. 

I have learned to practice sending love to people I see in the park and the people I meet now and then but do not know very well. 

With this view in mind, I am not too bothered when I hear neighbors express political views that may not align with mine. 

I look for things that bring us together rather than divide us. I look for things that people have in common, like the need for connection and happiness that we all have. 

When we start to view things this way, we will gradually learn to focus on the positive aspects of a person and ignore the negative ones. 

Practicing love towards neutral people, we do not know very well helps us open our hearts towards them. Eventually, we think of them fondly and feel connected to them. 

If we can transform how we feel towards one person at a time, even when we do not know them, we can collectively minimize conflict and move towards a more harmonious world. 

So, the next time you encounter someone unfamiliar, consider sending a little love their way and open your heart towards them. 

Resources:

1. To learn more about this meditation practice, check out the Joy of Living course at Tergar.org. 
2. To deepen your understanding of meditation and its benefits, check out the book ‘The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness’ by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.