What’s More Important in Your Life?

For some people, the most important thing in their lives is cultivating the ability to help people be happy and to relieve some of them of the suffering they might be experiencing. Leaving each person that you interact with a little bit better off than the way you initially found them is an aspiration in life for many. Sometimes, this will take a lot of your time to accomplish, but sometimes, it only requires making eye contact and giving a small smile as you walk by.

The three essential components of kindness, compassion, and equanimity are what others seek. Sometimes those saying they “love” something, is really meaning that something and/or the feeling of something, is really passion or desire. Love is not a feeling but an ability to respond to people and life with kindness, compassion, and equanimity as follows:

1. Kindness is the ability and effort to respond to someone in a way that makes them happy.
2. Compassion is the aspiration to understand and help relieve someone of the suffering they experience.
3. Equanimity is the ability to be kind and compassionate to all beings without bias, whether we like them or not.

There is an endless list of the benefits of practicing mindfulness and cultivating true love, and it is the principal motivation for the practice of some people. The insight that comes from the continued practice of mindfulness—that we are not the ego but that which is aware of the ego—gradually being less attached to the ego.

The most powerful thing we can do to increase our own happiness is cultivating true love. This is what will improve our own life. Training for true love is the most important thing we can do to “save the world” and to end suffering permanently, according to Matt Tenney, author of The Mindfulness Edge and Serve To Be Great.

He also believes that by eliminating his selfishness, he is free from suffering and can realize true love and help others to do the same. Just think of a world free from selfishness and suffering that is capable of true love in every moment. No more wars, no one without food and shelter, and no one would be lonely in moments of pain.

The practice of mindfulness is taking us one step closer to a world free of suffering that makes each moment of our lives feel incredibly meaningful. What can you and I do to make this a better world for everyone around us?

Dr. Fredda Branyon