How to Open Your Heart to Everyone
The wisdom of impartiality
Can you imagine living in a place where everyone was friendly toward everyone else?
Everyone! Not just people perceived as favorites or friends.
That might seem like a pipe dream in these war-stained times. Yet ancient Buddhist wisdom says this vision of an enlightened society is possible if we collectively train our minds and hearts in compassion.
Among the many facets of compassion, we’re encouraged to establish these four qualities first, as described by the highly regarded spiritual teacher, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche:
- Boundless Love: “The wish that all others may have happiness.”
- Boundless Compassion: “The wish that they may all be free from suffering.”
- Boundless Joy: “The wish that all who have some happiness may keep and increase it.”
- Boundless Impartiality: “The recognition that all beings are all equally deserving of love, compassion, and joy, and not more or less so just because of the good, bad, or nonexistent relationship you may have with them in the narrow perspective of the present.”
When these qualities are developed to their fullest, they are known as the Four Immeasurables or Four Boundless Attitudes, meaning that we extend them to all without bias.
As you cultivate these qualities and make them more immeasurable, negative emotions like anger, attachment, jealousy, and partiality gradually diminish.
Equanimity replaces reactivity, so you feel more spacious, relaxed, and joyful. You exude warmth, friendliness, and clarity in your relationships, communications, and interactions as well.
Clearly, the compassion you extend to others benefits you as much and perhaps at times even more than it does others. That’s why the Dalai Lama repeatedly advises us to be “wisely selfish.”
By doing so he believes wholeheartedly we can change the world:
“If we make consistent effort, based on proper education, we can change the world. We are selfish, that’s natural, but we need to be wisely selfish, not foolishly selfish. We have to concern ourselves more with others’ well-being, that’s the way to be wisely selfish. We have the ability to take the long-term benefit into account. I think it is possible to make real change in this century.”—the Dalai Lama
Impartiality is the first step on the path of compassion. Let’s explore it together.
The Intelligence of Impartiality
Impartiality is sometimes called equanimity, lack of bias, or impartial equanimity.
Normally, when you speak of the Four Boundless Attitudes, they’re listed as love, compassion, joy, and equanimity in that order. However, when you practice them, equanimity comes first.
Why is that?
Without impartiality the other three qualities of love, compassion, and joy will be limited in scope, reserved only for those you hold as your dearest friends and relatives.
Impartiality means feeling the same degree of benevolence towards everyone, regardless of whether they appear to be a friend or enemy. It means letting go of aggression towards adversaries as well as giving up our obsession with family and friends.
That doesn’t mean impartiality is a bland state devoid of feeling. Quite the opposite if you’re also committed to love, compassion, and joy. Consider the Dalai Lama’s friendly, humorous, and caring demeanor as a perfect example of how it might be to embody impartiality.
The Fleeting Perception of “Friend” and “Enemy”
Impartiality is predicated on the idea that our perception of “friend” and “enemy” is highly changeable.
Take a moment to recall for yourself instances when you’ve become estranged from a good friend or have developed a close-knit relationship with a former enemy.
Divorce can be one of the best examples of love gone sour. You may now feel hatred toward the partner you once cherished so much. And, when it comes to family, it’s not unusual to feel alienated from your children or parents at one or more points in your life.
Thus, the notion of “friend” or “enemy” has no permanent basis whatsoever. It’s just a fleeting perception that is likely to change as circumstances do.
Consider this ironic twist: In Eastern religions, it’s believed that those closest to us have been reborn into our lives due to “karmic debts” we’ve incurred as a result of negative actions in the past.
If this is the case, your most beloved may have been your worst enemy in a past life and done you wrong on multiple occasions.
Regardless of whether this is true or not, you can see the flimsiness of the concept of “friend” and “enemy” by examining your own life. Think of all the suffering and disappointment you’ve endured by attaching too strongly to the belief in the permanency of “friend” or “enemy.”
“Consider carefully what you mean by friends and enemies. When you look into it, it is obvious that there are no such things as permanent, enduring friends or enemies. Those you think of as friends have not always been so. Indeed, they may well have been your enemies in the past, or they could become your enemies in the future. There is nothing certain about it. Why should you be so compulsively attached to particular people? Are not all your relationships temporary? In the end, whatever may happen during your life, the time will come for you to die. Then you will have no choice but to part from everyone, regardless of whether you feel attachment or aversion for them. But everything you have done in your lifetime, all those actions motivated by attachment and aversion, will have created within you a force that will then propel you to the next life, in which you will experience their result.” — The Heart of Compassion by Dilgo Khyentse
The long-term consequences, you see, of indulging in preferences is not a positive one. Instead, wouldn’t it be wonderful to feel close to everyone?
Treat Everyone Like Family
Buddhism offers a second rationale for the practice of impartiality.
It proposes that every single person has been your father or mother in one of your countless previous lives. Thus, they’re deserving of your boundless love, compassion, and joy regardless of their current status as friend or enemy.
I understand this might sound strange to many of you. Many of us grew up with the belief we’re given a single life. Once we die, that’s it.
But you don’t have to believe in reincarnation to apply the principle of impartiality in your relationships.
I once read a story about the Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Master, George Kahumoku, Jr. He said he exudes “aloha” in everything he does, and he instantly treats everyone he meets like “ohana,” which means family in the Hawaiian language.
There are many deep meanings to the word “aloha” — beyond hello and goodbye — but simply said it means treating everyone with love, respect, and compassion based on recognition of our interconnectedness. This is impartiality in action with the flavor of aloha.
Just imagine what the world would be like if, like George Kahumoku Jr., we aspired to treat everyone as family or as our closest friends.
“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe’ — a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and feelings, as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”—Albert Einstein
How to Train the Mind in Impartiality
Most of us are riddled with attachment to friends and aversion for enemies.
Just think for a moment what happens when you go to a party. Do you see everyone equally with the same affection, or do you gravitate towards some and avoid others?
What happens when you see someone walking down the street? Do you immediately form concepts about the way they look, tinged with either like or dislike?
That’s the case for almost all of us if we haven’t actively trained our mind in impartiality. You are not alone in that.
But you can cultivate impartiality by meditating on it often until it becomes well established in your heart and mind.
Sit quietly and allow your mind to settle for a few moments. Then recall people you consider as enemies. Question that designation. Consider their positive qualities. Think of how they have helped others or may have even helped you in the past. Give them the benefit of the doubt.
At first, practice seeing them in a neutral way without aversion. Then, gradually see if you can raise the bar by wishing them happiness, freedom from suffering, and the increase of any happiness they already have.
Don’t worry, there’s no need to stop loving your family or friends.
But remember, over-attachment only causes suffering as it’s so entangled with hope and fear, expectations, and disappointments. Practice seeing your close relationships in perspective. Knowing one day they’ll come to an end, try to loosen the stranglehold of attachment.
Closing Thoughts
Impartiality can be practiced by anyone, whatever your background and whether you’re faith based or not.
Impartiality is not a practice for the faint of heart, however. It takes dedicated training to see everyone as equally deserving of your love, compassion, and joy. It might take months or years to open your heart completely.
But don’t let that discourage you, because you’ll enjoy positive shifts all along the way.
Think of the joy you’ll feel when people light up in your presence. Imagine what it will feel like to fully embody and radiate love, joy, and compassion to all. It’s one of the best gifts you can give to yourself and others.
There’s no greater time to practice genuine compassion than right now when the world is so filled with turbulence, stress, and distress. Start by cultivating impartiality, the first of the Four Boundless Attitudes.
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