Listen or subscribe in your favorite player:

The recent U.S. election has left our country more divided than ever with Donald Trump elected as the next president. Whether this news fills you with hope or despair, today’s episode offers a fresh perspective on how we can respond with curiosity, compassion, and a commitment to finding common ground even when it feels impossible.

This episode isn’t about taking sides, but about understanding why we end up on different sides. Why do people make the choices they do? Are they driven by economic fears, religious beliefs, or longing for a safer, more prosperous future? How can we navigate our massive disagreements without losing our own peace of mind?

I’ll share my personal reflections on nonviolence, the deeper motivations that drive us all, and how we can still recognize the fundamental goodness in everyone, even those we vehemently disagree with. Through meditation and thoughtful exploration, we’ll learn to soften our anger with equanimity, transform criticism into compassion, and uncover the ways our minds shape our experience of reality.

In this episode, I also share a secret object that I’ve been hiding in my closet for the past eight years, that I was a little nervous to reveal. It’s something that may seem slightly shocking at first, but it’s helped me to see the fundamental goodness in everyone.

Compassion for our country

Scott Snibbe: Today I’m going to lead a meditation I call Compassion for our Country. With this session, I wanted to start with a motivation. I think it’s nice to begin any kind of session, discussion with a motivation, so that we might create a more harmonious and fair and peaceful and abundant world.

Starting with peace and compassion in our own minds and insights into the true causes of happiness and suffering in the world, which, unfortunately, aren’t as encouraged by our society and by our leaders as much as we would like. May this discussion and meditation be a cause for our own inner development and the development of the outer world into a better place for all humanity and all living beings.

I did an audio course by Tara Brach called Radical Self-Acceptance, some time ago. Some of you might know about it, and I’ve written about it and talked about it a lot. Something she speaks about in that audio course is that the quality of curiosity is something very powerful. She says something even stronger than that because she says that it’s impossible to maintain interest and curiosity while also rejecting something because the very nature of curiosity is openness, attention, attention, and attentiveness.

I think about this a lot, What’s the antidote to anger? In some ways, the antidote is curiosity. Just to be interested to what’s going through that person’s mind. What’s motivating them? This teaching of hers really sunk in with me at the time. It must have been at least a dozen years ago.

I took the recordings onto a personal retreat just by myself, and I went through them, one after the other, and really thought about them, and took notes, and meditated on them. I came out of it realizing you don’t have to agree with somebody in order to understand them. You don’t have to agree with somebody in order to have compassion for them. You don’t have to agree with somebody to have the humility to say that neither of us knows for sure what’s best. What’s best for our country? Maybe it’s a mixture of what we both believe.

A little bit of what I wanted to do in the talk and the meditation is just that understanding. There are so many different topics you could bring up at a time like this. By the way, this talk and meditation is geared towards everybody. It’s not just towards people who felt like their candidate lost.

Understanding others

What I wanted to do is really use the Buddhist perspective, the Mahayana Buddhist perspective, which is one of concern for everybody, universal compassion, universal love, to try to understand the specific issues that make people vote for or support one candidate or another, with very nonviolent language.

A lot of people here have some experience already with this path, which comes from Tibetan Buddhism, the lamrim path, the stages of the path. Every single topic in that path bears on the current situation, wherever you are in the political spectrum, if you’re happy with the outcome of the election, disappointed, or trying to ignore it.

The topic of cause and effect is particularly powerful at this moment, because with cause and effect, you try to understand why things happen and how they happen. I think at the core of cause and effect is a curiosity to want to understand why things happen.

One of the saddest things I hear people say all the time is, “I don’t understand,” “I don’t understand why they voted for that person,” “I don’t understand why they support that policy or not.” Even if you support the opposite policy, it’s so nice to understand. Don’t you want to understand? Even just to be able to promote your position more strongly.

If you really believe you’re right, you want to understand why the other side believes they’re right too. Even just to counter it, you’ll be a better opponent by understanding why people sincerely believe what they believe. I’ve been reading the news for years. This is not a new phenomenon.

I’ve had lots of time just like you, eight, ten years to kind of research why people support different candidates. With this particular candidate, Donald Trump, who got elected, why did people vote for him? A lot of people voted for him. I guarantee you, they’re not all crazy. They’re not all racist. They’re not all violent extremists. Very, very, very few of them would fit under those labels. I think it’a a tiny percentage, probably the same percentage of extremists as there are among liberals and libertarians and whatever other persuasion.

What are some of the reasons, you know, thinking about cause and effect for yourself if you do the research. Some of the people felt this candidate would end support for the wars in Ukraine in the Middle East more than the current candidates. Even many Arab Americans opposed the current democratic policies and they supported Donald Trump cause they thought he would end the wars. For a lot of people, they have a single issue that overwhelms everything else.

Abortion is a very strong issue. Even if you come on one side of that argument, you can understand and have respect for people that have a different perspective, who have a strong religious conviction, who’ve had their own experiences with abortion. I think most of us know people who’ve had abortions and It’s a very, very difficult thing to go through. People come to different conclusions after having done that.

All the economic reasons. The vast number of Americans don’t even have a hundred dollars in savings. I looked it up last night, to see what it was currently, 25 percent of Americans don’t even have 100 in savings. They’re just one paycheck away from disaster if they lose their jobs. For them, some report from the Federal Reserve that says things are going well and inflation’s coming down doesn’t really make that much of a difference to them when they look at their own lives.

Many people want more economic opportunities for people without college degrees. When I was in high school, they had more shop classes, automotive classes, art classes, and things like that. Things that you might not need to go to college for. A lot of those have dried up in our country, and have been eliminated in favor of more intellectual, academic careers.

You can see why people looking at some of these issues might feel that some more radical change to our country’s leadership might make them more prosperous. You can see this without agreeing with it. It’s okay to disagree. But just to understand, to be curious. I was reading the news after the election that many Latino immigrants and immigrants from other countries, who immigrated legally, voted for Donald Trump because they wanted others to immigrate legally instead of just crossing the border, as they say, “undocumented.”

Again, setting our own opinion aside, just seeing that many people have this perspective that the border crossing should be done according to the laws of the country. Many immigrants from those same countries voted for Donald Trump because they wanted things not as disorderly as it seems to them.

50 million Americans own cryptocurrencies and are disappointed with the current administration, and wanted a candidate who would support that. There’s many people who disagree with the current policies on medical care for transgendered youth. Again, irregardless of your own perspective on that just acknowledging that people have a different perspective on that and that was a very important issue that made them vote a different way than some others.

There’s also people, including very many black people, Latinos, Asians, who are against affirmative action, who believe in more of what we call meritocracy approach based just on your suitability for the job and not your race. These are all very hot button issues. But to set aside your own opinion and just acknowledge that other people do have a different opinion on these positions, and they voted based on those opinions.

You don’t have to agree with someone’s policies to see that a rational human being can come to a different conclusion than you have on various issues, and that they can vote for a candidate that supports their positions despite finding that candidate’s personality and speech distasteful.

This whole talk, it’s mostly about compassion. A lot of talks that different dharma teachers have given are about how to take care of yourself and get through this process, which we talk about a little bit. But the most powerful way to take care of yourself, from this Mahayana Buddhist perspective (the Dalai Lama’s tradition) is compassion, to try to understand. That’s the way to really, eventually soothe your mind.

Nonviolence

I don’t usually talk about my politics and I’m not a Democrat or Republican. I’ve been this way my whole life. I didn’t like either one of those parties positions on a bunch of different things. I also had an overriding issue in my voting, which was nonviolence. Because growing up, I didn’t see any benefit to the violence in my family or at school.

Then, as I learned more as I grew up, I saw that the most successful political movements of our time were nonviolent, at least in the 20th century, Gandhi’s, Martin Luther King Jr. ‘s, and Nelson Mandela. I grew up during apartheid and I saw Nelson Mandela’s nonviolent approach succeed in South Africa, which is really extraordinary.

I compared that to the violent conflicts over the course of my life, my parents life, like the Vietnam War, the Korean War, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War. I noticed that most of them failed to achieve their political goals. They resulted in hundreds of thousands or millions of people dying. Not to mention millions of people’s long term pain and resentment.

This is kind of my overriding political issues, even before I was a Buddhist, as a kid, a teenager, I was committed to nonviolence, maybe naively; I think a lot of people would say naively. In the United States, as a man, you have to sign up for the draft. In order to get your financial aid in college, you have to sign up for the draft, which means that they can call you up if they have a war. We haven’t had a draft since Vietnam, so it’s kind of forgotten now. It wasn’t as far away when I was going through it, and I kind of protested that, in my own little way.

What bothered me is that both of the parties, the Republican and the Democrats, support violent solutions to conflicts that have killed hundreds of thousands of people over the course of my own life. That’s kind of my overriding value, and I don’t force it on anybody else. I respect that probably most people disagree with my position. That they do see the value of violence.

For example, in the Ukrainian war. Very many people support it. I disagree with them, but I don’t hate them, or think they’re idiots. They might even be right, actually. That’s even more powerful to think. I actually might be wrong, and they might be right, but that’s my perspective, based on how I was raised, my background, and so on.

I’m also very firmly against the injustice and the cruelty of our criminal justice system that so many people, a majority of Americans, still support. There’s a science that backs up that more compassionate ways of dealing with crime and conflict work better to rehabilitate and reconcile people. They cost less. They result in a safer, more abundant society.

I believe people are fundamentally good, which Anne Frank said that. If you have your doubts, it’s nice to look at people who lived a more difficult life. The Dalai Lama says that, Mahayana Buddhism says that.

Does Trump have buddha nature?

I’m going to show you something that I’ve not shown almost anybody. There’s this idea of buddha nature, that we’re all fundamentally good, and after the last election, the 2016 with Donald Trump, I purchased this object. Which is a Buddha with Trump’s head on it. I don’t put this on my altar, this is not for my altar. But this is a really powerful object.

I think they might still be available on eBay. I’m not recommending you purchase one, but this reminds me that Donald Trump has a buddha nature. I didn’t tell anyone I bought this. It was just hidden in my closet in my meditation room. My daughter saw it once. She’s like, Why do you have Donald Trump Buddha? I said, Because he has buddha nature, he’s fundamentally good.

Beneath the anger and the divisiveness that he shows is pain. The wounds from childhood, from a father that withheld his love and measured his son just by money and success. That meant when he grew up, no matter how much he got, it wasn’t enough. Not getting billions of dollars, not being president, not being president twice. I’m sure he’s still not satisfied.

Nothing can satisfy you like that if your parents don’t show you love. If you don’t feel like your parents love you, how do you ever get over that? So difficult, you can feel some compassion, right? His father measured his son by money and success, but then no matter how much he got, it wasn’t enough.

It’s so sad, and if Donald Trump were really happy, he’d speak in ways that brought us all together, that inspired love and compassion, generosity, acceptance, without a doubt. When people are loved and feel loved, they behave lovingly and compassionately.

That’s the Donald Trump Buddha, and it’s a very nice reminder. It’s quite shocking actually, if you look at it. I think even if you’re a Trump supporter, it’s a bit shocking to see Trump as a Buddha. The point of buddha nature is to remind us that we all have that.

I have buddha nature, you have buddha nature, we all have that fundamental goodness. All our needs are legitimate and healthy. We all have the same fundamental needs for safety, security, kindness, love, some wealth. But it’s the level of strategies, how we go about trying to get those needs met, is where we start to go off the rails and start to harm by trying to get our needs legitimately satisfied.

Think about ourselves, you can think about Donald Trump, but then it reminds me of myself. When I yell at people I love the most, when I do things that harm my body or my mind, that’s when my strategy is going awry. Those aren’t effective strategies for being loved for having a good life.

There are unhealthy strategies with respect to food. Of course, we all need nourishment, but then it can go off the rails, and you have an unhealthy way of trying to get that need met. Unhealthy, divisive, exploitive types of media, the media has an enormous impact on us: television, YouTube, social media. Or then when we speak divisively instead of bringing people together. These are all ways we’re trying to get our needs met, but we’re taking a strategy that does the opposite.

Strangely, we often speak divisively to kind of get closer to someone. You bond over hating somebody else. But it doesn’t end up being a cause for a harmonious mind. Speaking divisively tends to spread, spread, and spread in your life. Seeing the worst in people instead of the best. These are all unhealthy strategies. Once you see the best in others and in yourself, the good, the healthy needs that underlie the tragically unsuccessful strategies for meeting them, from that buddha nature or fundamental goodness,

It makes you want to take refuge in all beings. I write about this in my book, How to Train a Happy Mind, that if you’re non Buddhist, what do you take refuge in? From the kind of logical perspective of how much other people benefit you, and how much you need other people to grow as a human being, refuge in all beings is a very powerful refuge.

Refuge in our own buddha nature, also in ourselves. If you find yourself going off the rails, getting angry, frustrated, take refuge in your own fundamental goodness, the legitimacy of needs for love, kindness, safety, security, wealth, and so on. That we all have almost an unlimited capacity for good. It’s only this negative conditioning that keeps us from being our best selves.

Renounce suffering

Then, from refuge, it steers into that topic of suffering: remembering the causes of suffering and wanting to renounce suffering. This is really the essence of the Buddhist path. When I interviewed Laurie Anderson, I asked her about getting over her husband’s, Lou Reed, death. She said her teacher, Mingyur Rinpoche, told her to feel sad without being sad, to let the feelings go past you. In this situation, with the current election, some people may be feeling angry. If you take that same lesson, can you feel angry without being angry?

Because you don’t want to bury it, you don’t want to deny your anger, or feel guilty about it, but is it possible just to feel it and let it pass through you? Notice that it’s a delusion, the delusion of anger is a very powerful negative influence on you. Is it possible to feel angry without being angry?

It’s very powerful and different perspective on reality that comes from Buddhism, which is that our true enemies are our delusions. There are no external enemies. The true enemies are attachment, craving (which is exaggerating the positive in things), and thinking we can’t be happy unless we get them.

Anger, which is exaggerating the negative in things, wanting to harm it, and thinking we can’t be happy unless we get it out of our lives, maybe get it out of the world. Ignorance, which is a sense of separateness, selfishness, confusion, ignorance about many things.

There’s two other delusions that I don’t mention as much, that in general they don’t mention as much. One is jealousy. The other one is arrogance, which is feeling superior to others. That’s the basis of so many conflicts. It’s the basis of racism and classism, feeling superior or feeling inferior. Either way, it refers to thinking that other people are idiots or crazy.

I saw a very dear, kind person I know post on Facebook that every single Trump supporter was a racist idiot. That’s almost 200 million people. Really? They’re all idiots? They’re all crazy? That’s a delusion. That’s exaggerated. That’s like arrogance. It’s anger. It’s another one of the five main delusions that rob us of our happiness.

Those are our real only enemies, these delusions. It’s very powerful if you come to accept this. You don’t have to, this is just a particular point of view that comes from the Buddhist tradition. But look closely at your own mind and if you really examine it, you’re very likely to come to the conclusion that it’s not the external circumstances that make us angry, resentful, judgmental, but our reaction to them.

You don’t want to tell somebody that in the middle of them being very angry and telling you what they’re angry about. But luckily in a forum like this, where people have voluntarily come to chat about these ideas, we can talk about these very rational, very brave, very compassionate, powerful ways of transforming our minds.

We want to be gentle with ourselves. We don’t want to add guilt on top of anger, but to start to realize that anger is my only real enemy. Robert Thurman wrote a little book called Anger, and he said the only thing to be angry at is anger. He’s so great.

My mom taught me this. She’s not Buddhist, but when I was growing up, my mom taught me this. She said, When you’re angry, the person you hurt most is yourself. Often, the only person you’re hurting is yourself. The other person doesn’t even know you’re angry, but you’re sitting there miserable, fuming at them. Just start to realize that anger is our only enemy, and to do the practices and cultivate ways of thinking that diminish this awful destructive emotion.

There are even scientific studies that show you’re going to live a couple decades less often if you’re very angry and stressed out. It causes heart disease and high blood pressure. My teacher, Venerable Robina, describes anger as the ego throwing a tantrum when it doesn’t get what it wants.

I get angry sometime. I asked my teacher, Venerable René, How do you deal with anger? He said, Oh, anger is the easy one, isn’t it? Because anger doesn’t feel good. You want to get out of that state as soon as possible.

I was like, Okay, yeah, you’re right. Then in my notebook I wrote, “Anger doesn’t feel good” in really big letters. Because I didn’t realize that. It should be obvious. It feels horrible to feel angry and it would be nice to get out of that state as quickly as possible. Again, without guilt, without judgment, but just like, this is not a nice state of mind to be in.

All the other topics of Buddhism can relate to this topic too. Impermanence is a very good one, so that you become aware that things can change in any instant. They just did change in a kind of a big way, but also, every day is different. You never know what’s coming. Every leader that’s ever been in power, lost that power eventually, one way or another.

Impermanence also means things are changeable and flexible. We have to accept everything right up to this moment. That’s cause and effect. But then through impermanence, we know anything can change going forward. Anyway, let’s do a meditation.

Settling into the meditation

Get into a meditation posture. We already did our motivation at the beginning of our lecture.

Imagine in front of you a big, vast field of light, like an infinite bank of fog extending back forever, where every particle of that fog glows and emits light.

That space is filled with all the good qualities of human beings: kindness, love, generosity, patience, joy in doing what we do, understanding the interdependent nature of reality, accepting the way things are while working very hard to transform ourselves and the world for the better.

If you know anyone who embodies those qualities greater than you you can mix their minds with that space and then let that space come forward and wash over you.

You feel your mind mixing with that space. You feel the support of others who have developed or even perfected those qualities and feel your own potential awakening, growing, blossoming for kindness, love, generosity, patience, joy.

Knowing the right thing to do. Avoiding harmful actions.

Compassion, love, understanding the interdependent nature of reality.

Then bring your mind to your breath, just for one minute. We’ll focus on the breath as it comes in and out of your nostrils, or with the rise and fall of your chest.

When other thoughts, feelings come up in your mind, just let them pass by and bring your mind back to your breath. Just for one minute.

Meditation on equanimity

Now we move into a meditation on equanimity.

This is one of the most powerful meditations to help you equalize your mind, develop constructive feelings towards everyone in your life. Picture in front of you, a friend on the left, an enemy in the middle (that can be a politician if you like today), and a stranger on the right.

Think about how the relationships change in your life. That friend, when you look at them, their relationship seems very fixed, like they’ve always been your friend, but someone who was a stranger to you before.

You can probably also think of friends who became enemies in your life, especially romantic partners. That label is changing. Friend is just a label.

Same thing with that enemy, today if that is a politician, a presidential candidate, did you always have this strong negative feelings towards this enemy? Of course, at some point they were a stranger in your life. You might have even admired them at some point or been entertained by them.

Also in your life, you probably know that most of the enemies, the conflicts in your life came with people that were once strangers or who were friends, then became enemies. I think some of us, maybe a lot of us, can think of enemies who became friends too, these relationships change.

Then think of a stranger, if you can think of a specific stranger, that’s even better. A person you saw in a shop or on the street.

Think how that person could change if you had a conversation with them. If they did something nice to you or you helped them, they’d become your friend.

How strangers can become enemies too. They say something mean to you or give you a dirty look. Just about everyone in our life was once a stranger.

Then look at how these people see themselves. From their perspective, friend, enemy, stranger, they all want to be happy. No one wants to suffer. Even our current president, the future president, they have the basic underlying needs, psychology, wish to be happy, to not suffer, to be safe, to be loved.

It’s one thing to say it, I think we all agree with it logically, but the point of the meditation is to really feel it. Everyone wants to be happy, no one wants to suffer. We’re all the same in this way.

Then think about how others see your friend, your friend’s an enemy to others, your friend’s a stranger to most people, your enemy, again, if you’re thinking about the current president, the next president, how do others see them?

Tens of millions, probably more than a hundred million people love one, hate the other, hate one, love the other, and then the stranger has someone who loves them more dearly than anyone else in the world, parents that love them, maybe a partner, friends, children.

You see how this meditation awakens you to the three dimensionality and the goodness in people and the changeability. From equanimity let’s now meditate on cause and effect.

Cause and effect

You can try this on your own, you can do this when you’re walking or on your meditation cushion, but especially if you start to feel angry or resentful. Sit and do this meditation or take the earpods out of your ears and go for a walk quietly and think, What causes people to behave the way they do?

The person I’m angry with, the person I’m in conflict with, the next president, the current president. What causes people to behave the way they do?

Think about how their parents treated them. The culture they were raised in, there’s a family culture, there’s a school culture, friend culture. How did the culture they were raised in affect their beliefs, their behavior? How did their education affect them? How did the media, advertising, movies, television, pornography, how do all these things affect the person?

For a lot of famous people and politicians, a lot of their identity actually comes from going to read articles about what other people think of them and then it changes how they think of themselves for the better or worse.

People’s friends have a very big influence on them, their colleagues, their workplace. Think of how Donald Trump was raised by a father who withheld his love, said he was never good enough.

If you’d been subject to the same environment and influences as someone else, some of these people, the people you’re angry with, would you behave any differently than them?

What are the causes of a better country, a better world?

Do we need more divisiveness, more criticism, more anger, more violence?

Or do we need nonviolence, kindness, patience, generosity, compassion, love?

What qualities do we want to cultivate in ourselves? Which do we want to abandon?

As we develop ourselves, how might that influence the people in our family, our friends, workplace acquaintances? If we were to develop our mind towards these gentler, kinder, more loving qualities,

How would it affect even the people we disagree with?

How would the arguments in our life change if we started out by telling people we disagree with, that their point of view makes sense, even if we don’t agree with it?

Listening, understanding, even if you don’t agree.

Emptiness

Then we can think a little bit towards dependent arising, emptiness, if you’re familiar with that topic, to see how our mind is the main factor that determines how we see things. We just had this election. Half the country were very happy with the result. The other half disappointed, miserable, even despairing.

Why is that? It’s dependent arising. There are things that appear in the world: objects, experiences, actions. There are causes that bring these things together, make them happen. But then there’s the mind that tells a story about those things that came together through causes and conditions.

The result of the election isn’t objectively good or bad, but it’s our mind that tells a story as to whether it appears good or bad. And the mind, again, from this perspective is the determining factor in how we experience reality.

That doesn’t mean whatever we think is true or comes true. It doesn’t mean we give up what we believe in. It’s just that we realize that our mind is the main creator of our realities and the cause of whether we feel happy or miserable. That gradually we can gain some control over our mind to steer it toward constructive ways of seeing and acting in the world.

Fundamental goodness

Then on to this fundamental goodness. Fundamentally all our needs are the same, kindness, love, security, food, shelter, some wealth, friends, love, compassion. It’s just our strategies that differ in getting these needs met. Sometimes our strategies for getting our needs met become harmful. This can go as far as speaking or acting violently to get what we need, harming ourselves, harming others.

It’s such a tragic misunderstanding of how to get our legitimate needs met. I think we all have this in different areas of our life. We have healthy, reasonable needs, the same as everyone else, and then we choose a strategy for getting those needs met that only brings the opposite. It brings misery, suffering.

Try to really feel this. Everyone is fundamentally good. Everyone has fundamentally reasonable needs. We just are ignorant of the true causes of happiness and suffering. But we can learn them. The information is out there. We have friends and teachers, communities that can support us.

One way, from this tradition, is to go beneath thoughts for a moment.

Try to get a distance from your thoughts, even though they’re still passing by. Try to see them from a distance, so that you rest in the space of your consciousness.

This is someplace you could go whenever you want. This is another way to look at our fundamental goodness, as the space of our mind that’s there as a refuge for us whenever we want it.

It’s just like you would look at people with curiosity, look at your mind with curiosity. When you look at your mind, the place where thoughts come and go, is it bright or dark? Is the space of your mind, when you close your eyes and sit quietly, vast or confined? Is it warm or cold?

Do you feel reassured there? Or adrift? It might change from time to time too.

But just if you can rest in that space and see any thoughts that arise very far away.

That this is who I truly am, beneath thoughts, feelings, even my personality, beliefs. There’s a fundamental goodness, spaciousness, openness, contentment, satisfaction there within all of us to visit if we just take a little space and time. If we’re lucky enough to have those.

In some ways, our real enemies are all the things that compete for our attention because they prevent us from touching this part of ourselves that is fundamentally kind and good, luminous, aware, compassionate, loving, and happy.

Now there are people tortured, political prisoners, incarcerated people who are happy. They realized that no one could rob them of that inner happiness, inner satisfaction, regardless of their external situation.

Meditation on compassion

Then very quickly, let’s just practice a very powerful meditation on compassion.

Imagine all the friends, everyone you care about, beside and behind you. Imagine enemies in front of you, including whichever politicians you don’t like. Imagine strangers all around everybody, 8 billion people. Imagine all the different ways that they suffer and feel pain, physical illness, conflicts, financial problems, being overworked, fear, lack of freedom, competitiveness, jealousy, addiction.

Let all of that seep up out of the people as a vast cloud of dark smoke. Imagine in your heart, in the center of your heart, is also the darkness, is also your own delusion, self-centeredness, anger, craving, everything that gets in the way of a happy, meaningful life.

Just gradually over a couple of breaths, breathe in that cloud of dark smoke. Breathe in that cloud of dark smoke first to come in front of you very dense, very dark.

Then to tighten into a very small cloud everybody’s pain and suffering. And then to breathe that in in two strings of smoke into your nostrils, and as all of their suffering and pain goes down, down through your spine, and it comes to touch the darkness in your own heart, and there’s a vast explosion of light as both their pain and suffering and delusions, and yours, are completely destroyed.

This extraordinary brightness in your heart, like a little star at the center of your chest now glowing. And it emanates out in all direction rays of light that are love, kindness, generosity, patience, satisfaction, good health, safety, security, wealth, to every single person on earth offering them everything they need, whatever it is.

Imagine everyone on earth happy, healthy, satisfied, kind, receiving kindness, you giving it to them, including all your friends, enemies, and strangers.

You can let that visualization dissolve, but don’t let the feeling dissolve of that satisfaction, generosity, a better world.

As we end the meditation, we can dedicate—which is really an aspiration, it’s not like a magic spell, a dedication. It creates a cause in ourself to carry these ideas out of the meditation into everyday life, where they affect others.

Let’s dedicate the benefits of listening, meditating, talking, today to a harmonious world that’s free from war and violence. Where the abundance of the earth is shared with everyone. Where we respect each other’s differences. Where we understand that inner transformation has to come before outer transformation, and we each develop our mind to its true potential of openness, kindness, compassion, and love.

Credits