Love and Hate

With palms together,
Good Morning Sangha,

There is a lingering coolnesss, fresh and crisp, in the air this morning at my window as I type. Although the desert sun is rising and quickly warming the air, it is still a delicious taste of spring. It is important to experience directly. Feel the air. Smell the plants. Taste the interior of your mouth in the morning. It is important to do so without commenting mentally about the experiences. It is the commentary that takes us away from the truth. Within split seconds we are in the mental world of ideas, likes, dislikes; the world of labels and categories. While this world has its place and its function, it is a world that separates us from ourselves, internally and externally.

The Buddha taught that hate produces hate. He taught that love produces love. He also taught, more deeply, that both hate anmd love are part of the same thing, that we and the world, the entire universe are one. In this teaching if we attain it, we see that to hate another is to hate ourselves. To love another is to love ourselves.We see in this that every moment, every gesture, is a universal one.

Living in a dualistic world, we create groups of assumptions in our mind/body. We gather experiences, words, feelings, sensations and store them in our consciousness. This store becomes a toxic filter through which we push our each experience through. This is like that, we say, and respond accordingly. What is missed in this process is the fact that this is not that, this is this! Itself.

In our response, we gather steam, we justify ourselves, well these people act like this, they speak such and such, they must be this or that. The response re-enforces the initial belief and that re-enforcement is stored in our consciousness.

On a particular blog I have been engaging in a set of discussions that have demonstrated this and drove the point home to me in no uncertain terms. The people on this blog site see me as critical, hateful, and unpriestly. I agree. I have spoken within my store of experience, allowing it to distort my perception and not see them for themselves, but rather my creation of them. This creation and my response to it has been poisonous. Polarization is easy, understanding is challenging. Hate is easy, love is challenging. It is very easy to live in a thought world, a world of preconception, distortion, prejudice. It is a whole other matter to reliquish the baggage, as Tanzan, (in my blog note yesterday) and stand directly and openly, doing what the situation actually calls for.

May we each work hard to live directly and with deep compassion for our neighbors and for the strangers among us. We are all we have, you know. It would be wise to nurture this most precious resource.

Be well.