“…When there’s love for others, there’s no taking advantage, no causing of even a little harm. Paraphrasing the scripture, it’s said that on seeing through the eyes of love, all people will mingle together like milk and water – milk mixing easily with water. If there’s no love for others, that can’t happen, just as water and oil can’t really mix. When there’s love, there’s no wrong doing of any sort, and human society is peaceful and happy. Then we, being as one, each derive the highest benefits because in loving others, selfishness is destroyed, and humankind has no greater enemy than selfishness. Harmfulness, conflict in every form, arises from excessive selfishness.
Our purpose is to destroy selfishness, but selfishness is very strong, very difficult to be rid of, and we’ll need something powerful, something which is strong enough to destroy it. Only mettā, only feeling love for others can do that job. Like opposing elements within us, selfishness represents the kilesa, the defilement side, while selflessness, or love for others, represents the bodhi, the wisdom side. It’s a fact that loving others is the way to safety, to wellbeing, to contentment, yet we overlook it. We don’t see it as being the most important thing for us to have, hardly giving it any attention or talking much about it, nor do we treat children in such a way that they could become interested in it.
We’re all the time stuck in the prison of selfishness, enduring continual torment. Yet we don’t see the fetters that bind our ankles, don’t see the collar around our neck. We don’t see the prison which encloses the mind, so we don’t recognize loving others as the way out from that situation. Hence I say that loving others is something noble that we overlook, yet it’s our way out; it’s the escape route that we don’t recognize, that we miss…”