In certain Buddhist beliefs, there are enlightened people—called bodhisattvas—who decide to hang out on earth instead of basking in nirvana. Their aim, in delaying their entry into what we would consider paradise, is to stay around in service to all sentient beings. And the primary way they render that service is through compassion.

If you’ve ever participated in a lovingkindness meditation, you may have gotten a glimpse into the depth of the compassion bodhisattvas are trying to cultivate. Most lovingkindness meditations hinge on your ability to generate a feeling of great love and empathy. To do so, you generally begin by picturing your loved ones—partners, family, friends, pets. Once you’ve kind of anchored that feeling of love in your heart, you aim to extend that feeling outwards to an ever-broadening group of people—acquaintances, strangers, enemies, and ultimately towards all beings.

In the sanitized Western version of this practice, lovingkindness meditation is just lovely, thank you. You sit around breathing in good vibes, picturing balls of white light, and imagining your light casting about the world.

The actual practice of compassion is nothing like that.

Is it possible to love strangers?

Here’s the thing. Real compassion means caring about others as deeply as we care about ourselves. Most of us aren’t very good at that. Heck, we can’t even generate true compassion for the people we claim to love the most. If our kids are “behaving”, meaning acting in a way we approve of, sure, we love them unconditionally. But the minute they start to behave in a way that makes us uncomfortable, we pull back emotionally. We lose some of our compassion.

How, then, are we supposed to extend compassion to acquaintances, strangers, and enemies? These are people who don’t think like we do, who don’t believe what we believe, who don’t act in ways that make us comfortable. How the hell are we supposed to love everyone?

We’re in this together

I’m not claiming I know how to do this. I’m not a bodhisattva. But as part of my commitment to being conscious and carefree, I have spent some time studying this. As a result, I’ve come to understand a few things.

First, to have compassion for all beings we must acknowledge that all beings are suffering, just like us. I’m in pain. You’re in pain. Everyone, every one of us, is in pain. Let’s make it personal. If your kid is in pain, what would you do to make that pain stop? Or, really, what wouldn’t you do to make that pain stop? That’s the level of compassion we need to bring to every sentient being in the whole wide world. True compassion means deeply and personally identifying with the pain of others, and doing everything in our power to make it stop.

Second, the place to begin is with ourselves. It’s not up to other people to change how they behave so we can extend compassion to them. It’s up to us to change the way we think. Our beliefs have to be sufficiently porous that we’re willing to let them evaporate when presented with conflicting evidence. If we entrench behind a false belief because reality makes us uncomfortable, all we’re doing is perpetuating false beliefs. It’s up to us to work with ourselves and our minds so that we’re capable of encompassing all of reality, even if reality doesn’t look the way we like.

We’re never going to all agree with each other, but our compassion shouldn’t hinge on the need for that agreement. Just as pain is universal, love is universal. It’s something we must practice with our eyes closed and our hearts open.