Love without judgment

Kathleen McDonald has this to say about love in How to Meditate:

Love is wanting others to be happy. It is a natural quality of mind, but until we develop it through meditation and other practices it remains limited, reserved for a few select individuals. Genuine love is universal in scope, extending to everyone, without exception.

Although we might agree with this idea in principle, we probably find it difficult to actualize. Does love arise spontaneously for all the people in the street and the supermarket? Do we feel love for the politicians we don't like, racists, and parents who beat their children? If not, we have work to do!

We should begin with mindfulness: observing our reactions to the people we encounter, looking out for feelings of attraction, aversion and indifference. As long as we continue to discriminate between those we like, those we dislike and those we do not care about we can never even take the first step.

This is passage is written in the spirit of the benefit prayer in which we pray to be "free of the worldly bias towards friends and enemies". Yes, it's a radical commitment. It's meant to be. We will never be truly free, truly happy as long as we cling to the right to condemn others. This does not mean we are required to approve of everyone's actions. What we need to do is be conscious of each person's true nature underneath the actions. Each person, no matter what, is ultimately a fully enlightened being although he or she might not be awake to that. However, each one of us can begin to be awake to the true nature in others. In this way, our love will be non-discriminatory and universal.