There were so many bits of wisdom in Sharon Salzberg's book The Kindness Handbook - a practical companion. My previous post on "neutral" was inspired in part by this book. Before I take it back to the library I wanted to post one more quote."When we send a neutral person lovingkindness, we are consciously changing a pattern of overlooking them, or talking around them, to one of paying attention to them. The experiment in attention we are making through these benevolent wishes asks of us whether we can practice 'loving thy neighbor as thyself' when we don't know the facts about someone's dependent, elderly parent, or at risk teenager, and so our heartstrings have not been tugged.
When we think of our neutral person, we haven't learned the story of their suspicious mole or empty evenings. We have no knowledge of their inspiring triumphs or their admirable philanthropy, and so we are not in awe of them. We aren't seeing their tension after a disappointing job interview, or their sadness after their lover leaves. We practice wishing them well anyway, not knowing any of this, but simply because they exist, and because we do know the beauty, the sorrow, the poignancy, and the sheer unalterable insecurity of existence that we all share.
Paying attention this way, we learn that even when we don't especially know or like someone, we are nonetheless in relationship to them. We come to realize that the relatedness is in itself like a vibrant, changing, living entity. We discover the gift of caring, of tending to this force of life that exists between us, and we are immeasurably enriched by that."
