Whatever the strategies for a successful life promulgated in self-help books, and no matter how hard someone may thump a holy book to declare a particular belief as the answer to all life's problems, none of these approaches works if the basic motive of genuine love, of actual care for persons, is not present.

We ache at the violence, pain, and hunger in our world, and inside us is a will to help. But 'help' only helps if it is an active expression of love. Otherwise our attempts to help, limited by narrow self-concern, become rigid and too easily discouraged.

If our motivation for serving others is tied to a strong desire for specific outcomes or for praise, our potential is limited. Because we can never completely control the results of our efforts, we may become easily frustrated and disheartened.

When individuals and groups do not experience being loved -- when whole communities lose hope that anyone cares -- fear and violence are often seized upon as seeming protectors in the form of gangs, mobs, and communal hostility.

The claim that love pervades this world may not sound real to you, but not because it isn't true. Rather, many of us haven't learned to pay much attention to countless moments of love, kindness, and care that surround us each day: a child at the store reaching for her mother's hand, an elderly stranger at the park who smiles upon a young family, a grocery clerk or waitress who beams at you with kindness as she hands you the change.

As we grow older, we learn to pay attention to things that society considers more real and significant than the loving care of all those people. According to the social discourse around us, it seems much more important to identify those whom we should hate, fear, or compete with for affirmation, power, and wealth. Meanwhile, television news and magazines focus our communal attention each day on the horrible things that some people have done to others, as if that is all that happened throughout the entire world that day.

We are learning to take off the Coke bottle-like glasses that have hidden the sacred truth that each person is seen accurately only through eyes of wisdom and love, the eyes of the Buddha in us, the eyes of God. Such pure vision is not some ideal from on high. It is our own inmost vision.

To find refuge in our capacity for unwavering, impartial love is to find a stable refuge for all persons, to bless them as sacred beings worthy of love. It is to extend refuge to the many — to encircle all in a zone of healing and protection. We can sense this emerging within the meditation and we can learn to carry its protective power into every part of our world.

Let all the rituals of family life be rediscovered as gestures of wise love.… Commune with your children through the energy of love as they deal the cards, take a turn on the game board, or toss a ball. In that spirit, when you look into their eyes, your gaze mirrors their fundamental goodness without even speaking.

Through these meditations, we discover that our suffering is not just a personal problem. It need not isolate us from others into narrow confines of personal pain. We can rediscover the meaning of our own suffering as a profound connection to countless others and to the dignity and sacredness of all our lives.... Such compassion doesn't just share the sorrow of beings in their suffering. It is also a resolute will and liberating energy which communes with others at the level of their deepest freedom. And it is joy at participating in their freedom now.