Question

It is easier to be compassionate for people far away. A friend of mine moved into a Lebanese community in Bankstown. She did not know this. There was constant fighting and women were kept in their place. Windows got smashed. My friend's car got trashed. Her husband and child never went out after dark and many other unpleasant things. I heard myself say in my head 'I wish those Lebies would pack up and go home'. PS I know a fabulous Lebanese Muslim family down the street from me.

Answer

Yes, we have to try to remember that greed, hatred and ignorance doesn't usually have to be within a certain type of community. Greed, hatred and ignorance is just greed, hatred and ignorance. It is a human quality. So we don't want to form prejudice against a group of people due to their ethnic background. Some people may have difficult conditioning. When we start to see that we are getting lost in prejudice, try to identify with that particular conditioning, as we did with the Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation towards groups of people. Trying to identify with some of the conditioning that makes it difficult for them to experience inner peace and contentment.

Some people believe that when we are compassionate that we do not discriminate. However, compassion has to be balanced with wisdom so that we know how to discriminate and to know what is skillful and what is not. So wisdom protects compassion from accepting action, speech and thoughts that are unskillful, no matter what type of person it arises in. If we see certain conditioning brings suffering for certain groups of people coming from wrong views, we acknowledge these are wrong views. We are quite clear about this, that is wisdom. But compassion feels with the suffering of the conditioning that brings about these wrong views and this protects wisdom from being harsh and falling into aversion and starting to form prejudices to all these different types of people. As the PS says 'I know a fabulous Lebanese Muslim family down the street from me'. So windows getting smashed, cars getting trashed, etc. There are many people who are not Lebanese who do these things, also. Greed, hatred and ignorance are not things that is male or female or belong to a certain ethnic group. This is where with Compassion/Lovingkindness we see the differences and then we look at the similarities to help us from falling into prejudice.

Our apologies if there are any errors in the above text. If anything seems to be wrong or confusing in any way, please feel free to contact the teachers for further clarification.