The Buddha said that we should often contemplate old age, sickness and death, the variableness of things, kamma and vipka. We should realize the impermanence of all conditioned realities. Seeing at this moment is conditioned. There can only be seeing if there are eyesense and visible object. What arises because of conditions has to fall away again, it does not last. Everything in life is very temporary. When people pay us compliments and say nice things to us we are pleased. When they are unkind to us we are sad. When we look at a beautiful sunset we are pleased, when we watch an accident we have aversion. The realities of life are beyond control, they cannot be all the time as we would like them to be. We are so taken in by the world of conventional truth that we do not know what is really there when we listen to what people say, when we look at nature or watch an accident. There are only realities which appear through the six doorways. There are hearing, sound, aversion, or attachment, but there are no people there. Realities arise because of their appropriate conditions and then fall away immediately. When we see something pleasant, it is the result of a deed committed in the past, it is conditioned by kamma. We cannot avoid unpleasant results, they are conditioned already. There is no “I” who experiences an unpleasant result, and there are no other people who cause that unpleasant result. There is no me, no he, only different namas and rupas which arise because of their own conditions and then fall away again. When we develop right understanding we shall be more patient when unpleasant things happen to us and we shall be more tolerant towards other people.

How can we develop loving kindness and compassion when there are in reality no people? We can still think of people as usual, but right understanding of realities conditions more wholesomeness in our life. If right understanding is not developed we are absorbed in the world of conventional truth and this is not beneficial. We often look at people with attachment, with aversion, with ignorance and wrong view. When people are objects of clinging we think only of our own happiness. We are expecting pleasant things from others and at such moments there is no opportunity for loving kindness and compassion. When we cling to others we actually cling to ourselves. When we develop right understanding it does not prevent us from thinking of people, but we realize that there is at that moment thinking of concepts. At such moments we are not absorbed in concepts with akusala citta. Right understanding can condition thinking with loving kindness or compassion.