December 19^th, 2025

A Heart Bigger Than The World

Start with thoughts of goodwill, wishing for your own happiness—your own true happiness—and the true happiness of everyone around you.

Life is a lot easier when we can maintain that wish, even though we know not everybody is going to be happy. And why is that? Because not everybody acts on the causes of true happiness. You can’t make anybody act that way, and so your goodwill has to be backed up by equanimity. We say, “May all beings be happy,” but can all beings be happy? They can. It’s a possibility. Will they? We don’t know, but we can maintain that wish, because when you act on that, you don’t have the scars of looking back on bad motivations. You can live with yourself and your actions are much more likely to be skillful.

This doesn’t mean that people aren’t going to be difficult. Often, the people who are most difficult in our lives are the ones that are closest to us. And goodwill is not a Pollyanna kind of wish, thinking that everybody’s going to be good, therefore I’ll be good to them. It’s because people are not going to be good many times that you’ve got to be good to them, good in a discerning way, thinking about what would be in their best interest, the best interest of their true well being, and taking that as your guide.

So spend some time with the thought of goodwill. All too often we think that we know all about goodwill. Why, all you have to do is say, “May all beings be happy,” and there you are. But it’s good to stop and think about it when you have that wish. What are the implications? It means you have to look at your thoughts, your words, and your deeds to make sure, at the very least, that they’re a good example. It also means you have to make your mind bigger than the events of the world. This is one of the reasons why we practice concentration, because if the mind is small, it gets overwhelmed, and all you can think about is what this person did or what that person did, and now you’re squeezed by their actions. If you put yourself in the world, the world is going to squeeze you. But if you make your heart bigger than the world, okay, the world is there and it can squeeze, but it can’t find the boundaries of your heart, so there’s nothing for it to squeeze on.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Tricycle Magazine, Dec. 3, 2025
excerpt from a Dhamma Talk given August 30. 1013.
For more, go to the Bhikku's website at dhammatalks.org.