Yes, we don't want to wish suffering. There's a difference when we have the knowledge that most people have to suffer in order to wake up. That's a wisdom element, most people simply have to get Dukkha before they wake up. We don't want to wish it for them. We know it could be good in the sense that it has the potential to give them wisdom, but we don't want to wish suffering on them.
Thirty years ago, I worked with a Christian minister, and he was adamant at the time, that the world needed a big catastrophe, another World War II or another great depression. He was adamant the world needed it because people were too complacent, too greedy, too into indulging their desires. This was his big trip, and I was thinking, "Wait a minute, another World War II? Another Great Depression?" I couldn't believe it, but he was adamant about it, because he understood the principle that most people don't grow unless they have Dukkha first, but no, no, no, we don't want to wish that. The fact is, not everybody has Dukkha before they grow. There's a small number of people who don't.
That leads into an analogy the Buddha gave about four types of horses. A farmer has a horse that he uses to plow the fields and such. He goes and waves the stick at the horse and the horse immediately does the work. With the second horse, the farmer comes up, waves the stick, the horse does nothing, he touches the stick to the horse's neck, the horse starts doing the work. With the third horse, the farmer comes up, waves the stick, touches the stick to the neck, does nothing, sticks the stick into the skin, and the horse starts doing the work. With the fourth type of horse, the farmer comes up, waves the stick, the horse does nothing, touches the neck, does nothing, sticks it in, does nothing, sticks it straight into the bone, and the horse goes off and works.
In a similar way, those are the four types of people who wake up. Some people only have to hear about Dukkha in the world, that's all they have to do, they read about it in the newspaper and immediately, "I've got to do something with my life! I can't just goof off and be selfish" or whatever, and they immediately start to purify. They don't need Dukkha for themselves. That's the first type. The second type sees somebody, but not a person close to them, somebody on the street who's walking along with one leg or something, and that wakes them up. It's closer to reality. The third type has a family member who has some disease or whatever, and that wakes them up. Now with those 3 types, none of them have actually had the Dukkha themselves, but they wake up.
The fourth type, as you can imagine, is the person who has lots of Dukkha, the stick pokes straight into the bone, and they have lots of Dukkha and they wake up. Now these are the four types of people who wake up. A lot of people on the planet never wake up, so how much Dukkha are they having? They don't wake up. They don't just get that stick into their bone once, twice, it's a hundred times and they still don't wake up. You see it everywhere. Do into a pub on Friday night and you'll probably see heaps of them. So in this sense, knowing that some people are going to wake up without Dukkha, we don't want to wish Dukkha on anybody. We do realize that most people need Dukkha to wake up, but not everybody. So our compassionate wish is that we hope that person will wake up without more Dukkha. We see that they're having Dukkha, and we wish that they'll wake up wake up before they have more.