This is the exact opposite of self-focus as it involves a focus on others. It doesn’t mean sacrificing your own needs for the sake of everyone else’s (although ultimately it might), but it is about developing understanding, tolerance and a caring nature towards others.

Everyone experiences good and bad times in their life. If they’re good now, bad things will happen in the future and if times are unpleasant, things will pick up eventually. It might take a long time and involve a lot of suffering, but even after the longest, darkest, stormiest night, the sun will still rise in the morning.

This is exactly what’s happening to you and everyone else around you. We are all going through good and bad times, suffering and pleasure. Some of it will seem self-inflicted whereas at other times it will appear to be very bad luck.

The world is evolving as it will, for better or worse, taking us along with it. We look at society around us and conform to what we think is ‘right’, condemning those we think are ‘wrong’. We then try to make those we think are ‘wrong’ conform to our way of thinking. After all, we’re right. Except we’re only ‘right’ if we are conforming to our society’s values and they are continually changing. And other societies, such as France or the USA or Afghanistan, have different values and views of what’s ‘right’.

Remember that it’s not so long ago the USA, the ‘land of the free’ fought a civil war over slavery. Slavery that we as the British helped to develop, run and fund. We might find it abhorrent now, but 250 years ago it felt perfectly normal to take people forcibly from their homes and ship them 3,000 miles away – shackled in irons – to make them grow tobacco and cotton to make us wealthier.

It’s only recently that the last veteran of WW1 died. The ‘Great War’, where we thought it was a good idea to kill millions of European youths for the pride of royal families and the right to enslave and ‘civilise’ Africa.

So don’t get caught up in ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’. Instead accept that everyone has different views, some of them helpful and some of them less so, but all of them merely a product of their society and environment, and all ultimately leading to suffering and problems.

If you think you’re having a hard time, look around you and put yourself in the shoes of the starving, the destitute, the homeless as a result of disasters, the bereaved, prisoners of conscience, the kidnapped, victims of crime and accidents who are now disabled, the parents of severely disabled children. See their suffering and pain, and feel it for yourself. Still think you’re having a hard time of it?

Now think about the burglar, the junkie, the alcoholic, the violent criminal, the welfare cheat. Are they happy people? Imagine the torture and pain going through someone’s head before they break into a house. How worthless and valueless as human beings they must feel, to inflict that on someone else. These are not happy people. Yes, they make you suffer by their actions, but they’re doing it because they’re suffering themselves.

Their minds are tortured, full of self-focus, paranoia, anger, hatred, bitterness, jealousy. Not a happy place to be, not a happy world to live in. They’re doing these horrific actions because they are driven to it by their tortured minds, destroying their peace and happiness, thinking that it’s the right thing to do when all it’s going to do is cause more suffering. Not only for you, but them when they go to prison, lose everything and have their self-dignity removed, suffer violence themselves from people in the company they keep, live in poverty when they’re found out or kicked out the home. Every homeless, destitute, addict and imprisoned person has a harrowing tale of suffering to tell.

So what causes all this suffering? Self-focus, anger, intolerance, pride, jealousy – and in some cases, bad luck. You too have self-focus, anger, intolerance, pride, jealousy – and some ‘bad luck’ which, if you believe in the Buddhist world view, is actually your karma from previous lives coming back to haunt you. These people you condemn are doing exactly the same as you, but perhaps in a more extreme way.

This is where undertanding, love and compassion for everyone (not just the ‘deserving’) comes in. We all act under delusions and suffer as a result. The saying “there but for the grace of god” is absolutely true. There indeed, go you. Perhaps not now, but you will in time.

Look at those around you who are suffering or inflicting suffering on others and see yourself in their actions. See when your thoughts are similar to theirs, such as jealousy which might be what the burglar sees when he looks at what you’ve got. Remember times in the past where you have been jealous or your self-focused actions have caused other people upset. Listen to your words and hear if they spread love, joy and happiness, or anger, gossip and bitterness. Think of your motivations and see if they are self-focused or of an understanding, caring nature.

Is it any surprise that the world is so full of pain and suffering when our thoughts, words and actions make it so? And yet we blame other people for our problems rather than looking at ourselves to see what delusions we live with. We get upset when people inflict actions or words upon us as a result of their delusions, but don’t see the same delusions in ourselves.

It’s very easy to feel love and compassion for people when you can see yourself in them. And when you feel love and compassion, you’ll see better and understand more because you’re not looking through the eyes of anger, paranoia and self-focus. That understanding will bring the wisdom that leads to peace and happiness because you will know what to do in any situation to make things better for everyone concerned, rather than worse. Anger, intolerance, hatred, bitterness and jealousy will only ever create more problems.