Look closely at the criteria we use to put people in the attachment category, the aversion category, or the apathy category. Look really deeply, who do we have an attachment for? It is always the people who are nice to ME. They are nice to me, they agree with my ideas, and they think I am great, when other people criticise me, they give me support, and when I suffer losses, they comfort me. They are the people who do what I like, they think well of me, they agree with my ideas, and they do not criticise me in public.

In fact, they praise me in public and tell other people all my good qualities. Even if I am in a bad mood, they still care about me. These people are terrific on their own. I am impartial and happen to meet these people that are so wonderful. But it also happens that they are so wonderful to me because they do all these things for me.

Coincidentally, the people who are my enemies, that I do not like, are the ones who criticise me, who blame me when I did not do anything wrong or if I do something wrong. They are supposed to be patient, tolerant and forgiving, but they are not. They criticise me in public. They talk about me behind my back. They steal my stuff. They do not support me. They are mean. I walk into the room, and they turn away. Sometimes they might even punch me in the nose. “Coincidentally” these are the people who are mean to me. But when I look at them, I think I am seeing them objectively, this is who they really are. That is why I cannot understand why in the world somebody else would like that person. Or why in the world somebody else would not like somebody whom I am very attached to, whom I think is the cream of the crop.

Everybody else? They are just obstacles that I must navigate around. You know when you are driving on the highway, they are no real people in cars who have emotions and needs. They are just people who are in your way that you have to get around to get to where you are going. When you get on a plane, everybody else is a competitor for the seat you want. Those people are just strangers, they do not count. People at the gas station, who cares? All the people who do the electric power, the sewer system, and all that, we do not know them, they are strangers, who cares? The garbage collectors, we do not know them, so we do not care. 

When I look at how I get into friend, enemy, stranger, attachment, aversion, and apathy, it is not that these people have those qualities in them. It is that I am judging and evaluating everybody in terms of how they relate to ME at this very moment, and I see them as inherently existent, permanent, concrete, and the way they are from their position.

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