How can I cultivate awareness of others? This is a summary of the seventh practice week of Maitreyabandhu’s book life with full attention.
Love is the awareness of another person.
Maitreyabandhu
Other people and ourselves are intrinsically connected; they shape us, and we shape them. If we want to understand and change our life, we need to change our relationship with other people.
The Buddha once said: “friendship is the whole of spiritual life.” While Buddhism is often associated with solitary practice, its aim is selfless love.
Awareness of other people means relating to each person’s unique individuality. Not to their social status, appearance, wage-earning capacity, or amusement value—not as their value to you.
The danger with the inward journey of the first few weeks is that of spiritualised selfishness. It stresses introspection at the expense of activity. We should ask our friends about the kind of change they have notices, and we need to increase our awareness of other people.
Buddhism gradually moves us through psychologically oriented approach. It emerges from the need to end personal suffering and to become happy. Beyond this approach is the transcendental one. It is only by liberating ourselves from our belief in a separate self that we will really be happy.
Cultivating positive associations with the past can be acquired in different ways:
- Before you go to bed, think about five things that happened for which you are grateful.
- Start a gratitude-book. Write down as many things you are grateful for and keep adding them when they emerge. At the end of the week, see what things you were grateful for—one by one.
- Find opportunities to express gratitude. Write a letter, invite a friend, whatever seems like a good moment to explicitly appreciate the people in your life.
Starting to love others starts with loving ourselves. Many people deal with poor self-esteem, and often solutions only make things worse. To love ourselves, we need to learn to love. This we can do, by caring for things that we like, a plant, a cat, or a friend. Our moments of enjoying something, cherishing something or someone, gradually changes how we feel about ourselves.
Cultivating friendship
Friendship is giving someone your full attention. The Buddha was always the first to smile. Usually in social situations, we check someone out first, we rarely just give. If you want to be friends with someone, give them your time and attention. Do that, and friendship will bloom.
The deepest friendships are those defined by ‘good,’ not by usefulness or pleasure. Friendships based on the ‘good,’ are those where there is a common striving for virtues and strengths. These friendships help you grow. These friends will encourage you in your efforts and challenge them if needs be. It is the best support for a life with full attention.
Mindfulness of others means seeing the person, not the ‘people.’ There are no people. Only unique individuals with hopes and fears, wishes and desires, feeling and values. This felt reality needs to be acted upon.
As we become more mindful of our feelings, we may notice that in how we feel toward others. We may react to people increasingly with hatred, irritation, or anger. This can be a sign of progress; we often suppress these feelings because they do not match with our desired self-image. To be mindful is to allow these feelings to arise, but not to be consumed by them.
Practicing awareness of other people
Our parents are a good place to start when trying to become more aware of other people. Often, we revert to childhood patterns as soon as we see or interact with them. Next time you visit them, try to see if you can give them your full attention, and notice any habitual responses in yourself.
Similar things hold true for a relationship with a partner. Here, we can cultivate awareness of the exact nature of the relationship. What exactly do you expect from each other? When are you together, alone or with other friends? How are both of you experiencing the relationship and your interactions? Take this week as an opportunity to (together) become mindful of these things.
Exercise: awareness of two people
Bring two people to your awareness:
- Someone most like yourself (age, gender) that you consider a friend. Preferably someone you will spend time with this week.
- Someone you find difficult to be around.
Write a journal entry for each (first-person), using the spheres of mindfulness we have explored before:
- How does their body feel to them?
- Are they tense or relaxed, habitually tired, or over-strained?
- What vedana do they experience?
- What kind of states of mind do they inhabit?
- What values are they trying to express?
Jot down what they do, where they go, how they feel, and who they are in relationship with. How do they feel about you?
Doing this exercise will help you to take them into awareness when you see them again. When you do;
- Look at them, really take the other person in.
- Listen to them, instead of rehearsing a reply in your head.
- Become interested and set out to learn something new. Deepen the conversation without drawing the story toward yourself.
- Do or give something, no matter how small.
Exercise (alternative): working with a difficult situation
Alternatively, you can work with a single encounter. There are three ‘phases’ to such an event, and each can be approached with awareness:
- Anticipate (before the encounter). Notice how, what and where you feel in your body. See to what extent the things you are anticipating are true, or based on truth? What are creative ways to bring the situation to a productive end?
- Encounter (during the event). Focus on observing any physical or mental discomfort. Make a conscious effort to stay open to the other person(s), as habitually, we turn inward in difficult moments. Check if you understand the other correctly.
- Recall (after the encounter). Notice yourself going over the encounter when you do. Is what you are thinking helpful? Decide what to do and follow through with it.
Keep doing the mindfulness walk as before but pay particular attention to people along the way. Make sure you stay in touch with your body as you do this. Try to be mindful especially of the people you are usually unaware of or try to avoid.
As you pass people, try to see if you can grasp how they might feel. Do they look happy, relaxed, stressed? What can you derive from their posture?
Then, wish them well. While staying in touch with your body, say to yourself “may you be well, may you be happy.”
You can use the mindfulness moment to recall one of the two persons you decided on earlier. What details can you bring up about them? What might they be doing in this moment?
The instructions for this week’s meditations are as follows:
- Day 1: start with overall body awareness. Then, zoom in to the chest and belly area, and gradually bring awareness to the place of your hearth. What can you feel there?
- Day 2: do the same as yesterday. Once you are aware of the heart-area, tell yourself “May I be well. May I be happy. May I be free of suffering. May I make progress.” Try to mean what you are saying, but do not force a feeling upon yourself. While saying these sentences, see if anything happens around your heart-area.
- Day 3: repeat the process of the first day. Then recall a moment where you were in a positive state of mind, perhaps a moment of generosity from this week’s practice. Bring the memory vividly to mind. How does it feel? Alternate between recalling the memory and being receptive to its effects.
- Day 4: start by repeating the process of the first day. Then, bring your friend to mind, and everything you have become aware of in the other mindful moments. Wish them well, like you did to yourself the second day. Alternate between that and receptive awareness of your body.
- Day 5: first bring your awareness to the breath. Then, on the in-breath, invite a difficult situation on event into your heart. Breath them in with kindness and understanding. On the out-breath, think of the things that give your life meaning, purpose and satisfaction. Once you have done this for a few moments, do the same from your friend’s perspective.
- Day 6: repeat the process of the second day, becoming aware of your body and wishing yourself well. Then recall the person you find difficult. Can you feel your body respond to them? What do you feel and where do you feel it? Then expand your awareness to grasp them fully. Not just the things you find difficult about them but try to be aware of them as a whole person, with hardships and struggles of their own. How does that change your bodily response to them?
- Day 7: start off the same as day one. But now, instead of wishing one person well, see if you can expand your awareness. First to multiple people, whoever you can image, and then unconditionally all around.
