Mindfulness and contrasts/similarities

Supertramp

I seem to be making a lot of threads here lately, but I figure since you've all helped me a lot on them why not?

I'm reading "mindfulness in plain english" so I can start meditating soon, but I ran into an issue that isn't explained or clarified.

Namely the following:

11.Don't dwell upon contrasts: Differences do exist between people, but dwelling upon them is a dangerous process. Unless carefully handled, it leads directly to egotism. Ordinary human thinking is full of greed, jealousy and pride. A man seeing another man on the street may immediately think, "He is better looking than I am." The instant result is envy or shame. A girl seeing another girl may think, "I am prettier than she is." The instant result is pride. This sort of comparison is a mental habit, and it leads directly to ill feeling of one sort or another: greed, envy, pride, jealousy, hatred. It is an unskillful mental state, but we do it all the time. We compare our looks with others, our success, our accomplishments, our wealth, possessions, or our I.Q. and all these lead to the same place--estrangement, barriers between people, and ill feeling.

The meditator's job is to cancel this unskillful habit by examining it thoroughly, and then replacing it with another. Rather than noticing the differences between self and others, the meditator trains himself to notice similarities. He centers his attention on those factors that are universal to all life, things that will move him closer to others. Thus his comparison, if any, leads to feelings of kinship rather than feelings of estrangement.

If I'm not supposed to dwell upon contrasts, how can I notice the similarities and center my attention on those? When I'm centering my attention on the similarities, don't I keep in mind the contrasts automatically? Or am I thinking too dualistic?

DhammaDhatu

similarities are things such as:

we all appreciate being loved and/or respected

we all appreciate being acted towards with consideration

we all appreciate trustworthiness

we all appreciate having kind rather than nasty words spoken about us

we all get sick, get old & die

stuff like that

buddhajunkie

You can pay attention to similarities and simply ignore contrasts.

This is not a contradition:

For example, if I reflect upon how my neighbor and I both enjoy watching football, I am not necessarily thinking about the fact that he is a Republican and I'm a Democrat. I can ignore that and focus on things we have in common.

Supertramp

Ah yeah I hadn't looked at it that way, thanks for clearing that up.