The Book of Joy

among parents—‘my children, my children.’ That’s biased love. We need
unbiased love toward entire humanity, entire sentient beings, irrespective
of what their attitude is toward us. So your enemies are still human
brothers and sisters, so they also deserve our love, our respect, our
affection. That’s unbiased love. You might have to resist your enemies’
actions, but you can love them as brothers and sisters. Only we human
beings can do this with our human intelligence. Other animals cannot do
this.”
Having known the fierce and focused love of parenthood, I wondered
if it was truly possible to love others with that same love. Could we really
extend that circle of care to many others and not just our own family? A
monastic could focus all their love on humanity, but a parent has a child
to raise. I imagined that what the Dalai Lama was saying might be an
aspiration for humanity, but was it a realistic one? Perhaps we would not
be able to love other children as much as we love our own, but maybe we
could extend that love beyond its typical boundaries. I wondered what the
Archbishop, who was also a father, might say, but by now everyone had
finished lunch.
We would return to the elasticity of love and compassion later in the
week, but tomorrow we would begin discussing the obstacles to joy, from
stress and anxiety to adversity and illness, and how we might be able to
experience joy even in the face of these inevitable challenges.