You never want to wish pain. You never want to wish what you might think is a painless death, because you can't guarantee that someone doesn't have pain when they die. A lot of people think dying in their sleep would be the nicest way to die. I personally know people who say that they would like to die in their sleep. Why? Why do they believe this? Have they never had a nightmare in their sleep? Have they never dreamt they were being killed or murdered or whatever? Have they never woken up screaming, in a sweat, afraid? Why do they think they are going to die peacefully when it could be a very bad nightmare that they never wake up out of? In that sense, it just covers the last bit.
Yet according to the teachings, we do need what they call the "Seven Suitable Conditions" in order to grow and develop. We do need certain conditions. We need a good basic climate, so we are not too worried. If you try doing this practice in Antarctica, you will have more trouble. In the middle of the Sahara Desert you will have more trouble, it's too hot. OK, you need suitable climate, you need suitable food. If they fed me a diet of chilies, it would be like what happened to us in the first six months, Rosemary got sick. It just wasn't suitable. We need suitable clothing and so on. There are seven listed suitable conditions.
Two of these seven are the most important though, and these are suitable friendship and suitable conversation. When you think about it, when you have suitable friendship and suitable conversation, you can go with crummy diets, you can go with crummy environments, you can go with things that aren't totally suitable. But if you have a perfect environment, if you have perfect food, but you don't have a good friend, and you don't have someone you can talk with about Dhamma, it won't work, right? In those suitable conditions, it is suitable friendship and suitable conversation which are most important.
Now, in the sense of a person whose basic needs are not fulfilled, if they haven't got a lot of those suitables, it is true, they are not going to progress in the Dhamma that well, because they are too worried. They are worried about their food, they are worried about their clothing. They are worried about this, they are worried about that. So that preoccupies the mind and they can't do anything as far as practice goes. Now we can still wish that they get the tools, we can still wish that they are going to get through it. Because even when you are totally stressed out with your worries and your fears, is it one hundred percent of every day? No, it's not. There may be brief moments within your multiple hindrance attacks where you are not stressed out. If we can stretch them a bit longer, then maybe we can put in some Dhamma even in the worst moments. Even for a person in the middle of Africa, for example I have seen a photo of a woman who was holding a baby and the intestines were coming out the rear end, it was starving so badly, she pushed the intestines back. Even in the middle of something horrific we still want to wish that they are going to find the tools, somehow. On the realistic level, we know it is probable that they won't. So, we hope that they are going to have a good rebirth, in that sense. But as to holding back the wish, just because we think they won't, no, we don't want to do that. When you sit on your pillow, open up your heart for everybody. Wish them all, it doesn't matter whether they will or they won't, we don't always know if they will or they won't.