I’ve noticed that many people, when trying to cultivate kindness or compassion for someone they find difficult, tend to do it in a vague way. Often, during their meditation, they just picture the “enemy” and recite phrases like “May you be well” or “May you be free from suffering.” That’s how I learned it, and that’s how most people practice it too.
So, what’s the issue here? The real problem we have with difficult people lies in their behaviors—the things they say and do. These actions are what trigger our reactions. When we visualize the person calmly during meditation, we don’t provoke the discomfort that usually annoys us. We need to challenge ourselves by creating discomfort to learn how to handle it without reacting. We must put ourselves in situations where reactivity is likely so we can recognize early signs of anger and choose not to feed it.
I teach loving-kindness and compassion meditation as a way to practice handling real difficulties. When you think of a difficult person during meditation, focus specifically on what they do or say that triggers you. Visualize these actions vividly to generate uncomfortable feelings, as these feelings spur our reactivity. Meditation offers a mindful space to sit with these uncomfortable feelings, observe our anger, and choose to let it go while cultivating kindness towards the person.
I was reminded of this while thinking about the civil rights marches of the 1960s. The marchers, led by Martin Luther King Jr., endured verbal and physical abuse without retaliating. Initially, I was amazed at their ability to withstand such mistreatment, especially knowing how easily I get offended by online comments.
Later, I learned that these activists trained themselves not to react to violence. They practiced in groups, role-playing scenarios involving insults and assaults to learn nonviolent responses. They redefined arrest and imprisonment as badges of honor rather than losses of freedom. Their goal was to convert their opponents, not humiliate them. They understood that the true enemy was an oppressive ideology, not the individuals enforcing it.
These activists didn’t magically develop their ability to love in the face of hatred; they trained for it step by step. This made me realize that we too can learn to respond to minor irritations in life with love and patience. By turning meditation practice into a rehearsal for real-life irritations—like household annoyances or online slights—we can observe our irritation, let it be, and respond kindly instead of reacting angrily.
Compassion meditation works similarly. It’s not enough to just think of someone suffering; we need to deeply imagine their distress to evoke powerful compassionate responses. Buddhist monk Mathieu Ricard suggested visualizing extreme suffering, like a friend badly injured by the roadside, to generate strong feelings of compassion.
This practice isn’t about making ourselves suffer; it’s about developing a compassionate response that supports the person in pain while keeping us from being overwhelmed by suffering. However, we should gradually increase our capacity to handle suffering; otherwise, we risk becoming overwhelmed, which helps no one.
In essence, slow progress from kindness and compassion meditation arises if we don’t challenge ourselves. By vividly imagining emotionally provocative situations, we can grow our strength in these areas. The civil rights marchers demonstrated that, with practice, we can develop seemingly superhuman levels of love and compassion.