Goodwill for the Real World

Years ago, after the 9/11 attacks, there was a Buddhist teacher who said that the attacks had burst his “complacent Buddhist bubble.” That’s a contradiction in terms: “complacent” and “Buddhist.” After all, the Buddha said that all skillful qualities come from heedfulness, and heedfulness means having a very strong sense of danger. There are dangers in the world. There are dangers in your own mind. The reason we try to develop skillful qualities in the mind is that we see that we have to prepare for these dangers. 

Now, it’s true that some of the Buddhist teachings sound like they’re not designed for the real world. One of them is “goodwill for all beings.” A lot of beings are really misbehaving, so it seems difficult or impossible to have goodwill for everybody, but actually, universal goodwill is not only possible, it’s necessary for our own survival: the survival of our goodness. If you act on ill will toward other people, you’re going to be creating a bad state of mind within yourself and bad conditions in the world through your karma. The first thought in generating goodwill has to be that you’re doing this for yourself so that you can protect yourself from your greed, your aversion, your delusion, and especially from your ill will. 

The Buddha admits that there are a lot of people for whom it’s difficult to have goodwill. A chant from the Paritta Sutta describes a monk who was sitting out in the forest meditating when a snake fell out of a tree on top of him, bit him, and he died. The monks went to report this to the Buddha, and he responded that the monk had not spread goodwill to the four families of snakes. Then he proceeded to teach the monks that particular chant for spreading goodwill for beings with no feet, beings with two feet, beings with four, and beings with many feet. He goes through a list of all the creepy crawly things that there are out in the forest—and those are just the small ones. There are other places where he talks about having goodwill for little beings, big beings, short beings and long. Some of the big beings in the forest, of course, are pretty scary too: elephants, bears, rhinoceroses. There were also bands of thieves that might kill monks just for the fun of it. So the Buddha lived in a dangerous world. 

Universal goodwill is not only possible, it’s necessary for our own survival: the survival of our goodness.

One of the things you notice about that chant of goodwill for snakes and creepy crawly things is that it says, “I have goodwill for you all, but may you all now depart.” Goodwill doesn’t mean that you’re going to be there for them or you’re going to be loving to them. There are lots of cases where goodwill basically means, “You’re looking for happiness in your way and I’m looking for happiness in my way, and as long as I can live in a world where I’m behaving in a skillful way, may we go our separate ways.” The snakes will be happier to be away from you anyhow, and you’ll be happy to be away from the snakes. 

So goodwill doesn’t mean love. I read a while back someone saying that even the word loving-kindness is too weak a translation for metta, that the Buddha would want to have you have love, love, love for everybody because, of course, everybody loves love. Well, the Buddha didn’t teach anything just because people liked to hear it. The attitude he taught is goodwill: “May these people be happy.” But you have to think about it: What does it mean for a person or an animal to be happy? They have to behave skillfully—people especially. Your wish, basically, is, “May all beings behave skillfully.” That’s a wish you can have for anybody without hypocrisy, including people who have been really misbehaving, people you intensely dislike. If you’re mature, your attitude should be, “May this person see the error of his or her ways and be willing to make a change.” If there’s some way you can help them make that change, you’re happy to help. But you also realize that a lot of people won’t be willing to change. In those cases, you’re not going to do anything to harm them, but at the same time, you have to develop an attitude of equanimity.

Equanimity isn’t cold-heartedness. It’s just realizing that there are some people you cannot influence, no matter how intense your goodwill, so you have to focus your efforts on people who will respond to your goodwill. 

There are stories in the canon of the Buddha extending intense goodwill toward individuals and changing their behavior, but that largely has to do with the power of his mind and with the individual good karma of those people. The power of your goodwill may not be that strong, but at the very least, it protects you. If, as you go through the day, you’re not acting on ill will, that makes it a lot easier for the mind to settle down in the evening: You feel better about yourself. So even though you may be angry at people for one reason or another, you don’t let it spill over into ill will. You’re careful not to let the anger influence your thoughts, your words, or your deeds.

You protect your goodwill, because it protects you. There’s that famous line in the Karaniya Metta Sutta: “Just as a mother would protect her only child with her life, you should protect your goodwill.” Some people read that passage as meaning that we should love everybody in the same way that a mother loves her only child, but that would be impossible. It gets into the world of unreality. The Buddha is teaching goodwill for the real world. There are cases where people are really going to misbehave, and it’s going to be a real challenge for you to have goodwill for them, but you have to protect your goodwill because, as I said, it protects you. That’s what the verse is actually saying: Just as she would protect her child with her life, you protect your goodwill with your life. 

The example the Buddha gives is of thieves who have pinned you down and overpowered you, and they’re cutting you into pieces with a two-handled saw. I’ve always liked that detail: the two handles. It means that at least two of the thieves are sawing away at you. The Buddha said that even in a case like that, you still need to have goodwill for them. In fact, you start with goodwill for them and then expand it out into the whole universe, so that you’re not focused on them and what they’re doing to you. You realize that your most important wealth is the state of your mind, and that you protect that above all else, even if it means you’d be faced with death. You protect that because that’s more important than your body.

One of the stories that comes from the forest tradition is of a monk who is sitting in his hut one night and an elephant comes and crashes through the wall right in front of him. Here they are, face-to-face, and the monk realizes that his only protection is goodwill for the elephant. So he spreads goodwill and speaks to the elephant in kind, gentle terms. Elephants are very sensitive to what you say to them, as well as to the tone of your voice. In that case, the elephant withdrew. 

Last year, I was staying in a monastery in Thailand, and one morning an elephant started crashing through the monastery wall. Someone happened to be nearby. He spoke to the elephant in very kind terms. He said, “Big Brother, Big Brother, don’t do that. It’s bad karma.” The elephant stopped and walked away. 

There’s also the story of Ajaan Lee out in the forest. The villagers had warned him that there was an elephant in rut who was running around, stabbing people with his tusks, and that he’d be wise to get out of the forest. But he wanted to test his determination not to be afraid of that kind of thing. And sure enough, one afternoon, he was sitting in meditation under a tree, and the elephant came into a clearing right in front of him. His first thought was, “If he comes at me, I’m dead.” So he reaches up for a branch. He’s going to climb up the tree, but something inside him says, “If you’re afraid of death, you’re going to keep on dying.” He sat back down in meditation, faced the elephant, and spread goodwill to the elephant. The elephant stopped, shook his ears up and down a bit, and then walked away. 

For the forest ajaans, metta, or goodwill, is not a soft, tender, weak emotion. It’s strong. It’s a protection. It protects your genuine valuables. When they talk about having goodwill for all beings, it’s not an airy fairy world that they’re imagining or a “complacent Buddhist bubble.” You need real goodwill for the real world, because the dangers of the world are real, and this is one of your ways of protecting yourself from responding to those dangers in an unskillful way. 

You realize that your most important wealth is the state of your mind, and that you protect that above all else, even if it means you’d be faced with death.

When you think about it in those terms, it’s a lot easier to spread thoughts of goodwill to all. If it’s not there, you work on it. We’re sometimes told that goodwill is part of the innate nature of the mind. Now, it is possible for the human mind to have thoughts of goodwill, but remember, human goodwill is very different from Brahma goodwill, and Brahma goodwill is what we’re trying to develop. Human goodwill is partial. You have goodwill for the people who are good to you and not for the people who are not, but that’s no protection at all. It’s like building a fence around the front of your house but leaving the back of the house open. You want goodwill that’s all around. 

Think about it: Who is there in the world for whom you feel ill will? Start out with people who are easy to feel goodwill for, and then go to those who are harder and harder until you get to the ones where you find it really hard. Then ask yourself: What would you gain, what would anybody gain, by seeing that person suffer? You think it through, and you realize that nothing would be gained. 

Then focus on what you’re doing as you think these thoughts. You’re engaging in directed thought and evaluation. That’s verbal fabrication. And you hold in mind those images—the images of the bandits sawing you into pieces, the mother protecting her child—which are mental fabrications. Fabrications are things you have to do, to put together. So in working on goodwill, you begin to get more sensitive to how the mind has to create these mental states, and how it can create these states by learning to think in new ways, learning how to keep new perceptions in mind. 

Basically, what it comes down to is understanding goodwill in the light of karma. On the one hand, there’s the karma of generating goodwill itself. Then there’s the karma that you’re thinking about as you think thoughts of goodwill. What does it mean, in the light of karma, to wish for people to be happy? It means you wish that they would create good karma, that they would be skillful. As the verse said just now, you wish, “May beings not deceive or despise one another or wish for another to suffer.” That’s goodwill in the light of karma, which makes it an extension of right view. As the Buddha said, if you have ill will for anyone, that’s a part of wrong view. Not just a wrong attitude—it’s wrong view. 

So when you understand goodwill, you realize that it’s for the real world, and you’re dealing in realities when you try to make your goodwill universal.

It’s not magical thinking. It’s a genuine power in the real world.

♦

This article was adapted from a talk given on July 3, 2024, and originally appeared on dhammatalks.org.