All You Need Is Love

 

"Hatred never ceases by hatred. It is healed by love alone. 
This is the ancient and eternal law."

-- Buddha

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul

and with all your strength and with all your mind. 
Love your neighbor as yourself.”

--  Jesus of Nazareth

As the candy-coated, commercialized carnival of Valentine's Day fades in the rear view mirror, I still find myself musing about True Love. 

I don't know how it plays out in other languages, but it seems to me that in English the word "love" is astonishingly imprecise.   

The very same word is used for both the ultimate self-sacrifice that Jesus spoke of when he proclaimed, "Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life...,"AND the most possessive and jealous form of desirous, grasping imaginable.  The very same word, love, casts a net that includes both the enlightened activity of the Bodhisattva Green Tara -- and the painful, jealous flailing of folks ensnared by the Green Eyed Monster!

Yet, we have it on "good authority" (see introductory quotes above) that the key to the Real Deal is Love.  So, what does the word "love" really mean? 

Mean?

Yikes.  Here we go again: What does the word "mean" really mean?  

Its "meaning" runs the gamut from ultimate significance and purpose, to simply being nasty!?  It reaches from the perfection of Aristotle's (and Buddha's) Golden Mean to the obnoxious underwater antics of the Blue Meanies.!?

WTF?

It's Only Words...

Love? Meaning? 

 

These words certainly seem important.   Conditioned as we are in a culture that stresses the importance of conceptual thought, much of our awareness is tied up in the stream of words that dominate our attention.  Yet using these word to get at the Truth can be problematic, no?  Words can be quite sloppy. Their meanings even paradoxical.  Perhaps, words are not always that useful in our quest for fundamental clarity.

The Zen tradition points this out.  Repeatedly. 

During a teisho in sesshin years ago at the Rochester Zen Center, Bodhin Kjolhede Sensei asserted, "Every time I open my mouth, I'm lying!"  He had obviously -- and very passionately -- just opened his mouth.  

 

I sat there bemused. 

Was Sensei telling the truth in that assertion -- or was he lying?
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The Real Deal

The Practice actually provides a way to address that question.  

The cultivation of Mindfulness through Simply Sitting Still offers us an opportunity to expand the scope of our attention to include a quality of consciousness that doesn't rely on words.  With Practice, we come to experience for ourselves the spiritual dimension of our being, a boundless realm of awareness that most of us have been conditioned to ignore.

 

As we learn to bring our attention to the moment by moment experience of our own life, we perceive a Presence.  We can sense it beneath and beyond the emotions we've repressed and the belief structures that we've adopted, consciously or subconsciously, as we learned how to try to be "normal" in our hyper-individualistic, ego-driven, capitalistic society.  

With Practice, we become less blinded by our own conditioning and more attuned to a finer range of sensibilities. We come to see directly that we are capable of deep levels of intuition, empathy, and understanding.    

 

If you're paying attention, the Truth, even a personal or relative truth, has a certain energy.  It can be quite subtle.  Yet, if you're paying attention, it's palpable.  In meditation, we cultivate our ability to pay attention to these subtler forms of energy.

As the Practice deepens, as we more fully open our hearts and clear our minds, there will be moments where Reality Asserts Itself.  There, in the embrace of open awareness, the perfect connection is made.  What we may have yearned for, what may have intuited, what we had possibly conceived of intellectually, we come to know for ourselves.   

 

Sometimes, an awakening may appear as a big bang perception of beauty or perfection, or love, bringing us to tears.   Sometimes it may appear within visions or voices, a mystical or paranormal experience.  Other awakenings may emerge with boisterous laughter.  Some may simply evoke a smile or a gentle sigh of deep contentment.  We each experience the miracle of the Real Deal in our own unique way.

 

Whatever word we may chose to try to label the source of that experience -- God, Nirvana, the Tao, Allah, Christ Consciousness, Krishna Consciousness, etc.  -- at a certain point, we glimpse what Buddha, Jesus, Lao-tse, and a myriad other sages and teachers were pointing at.  The One Love that is the source, ongoing essence, and fulfillment of our life is experienced directly.  In True Love, we know for ourselves that each of us is inseparable from all that is, has been, or could ever possibly be.

 

Those moments are beyond words.  They are beyond belief. 

 

Yet, sitting here at the keyboard blogging away, an old song comes to mind.  With a grin and bow to Bodhin Sensei -- and the BeeGee's, "it's only words, but words are all I have...🎶"

 

Simple but Not Easy 

 

At age 78, I've come to understand that knowing True Love as the answer is one thing.  Becoming a loving human being is another.  It takes commitment and effort, a set of understandings and skills -- and patience.  Lots of patience.

 

I've found that a daily meditation practice is extremely helpful.  With Practice, I've been able to deepen my ability to open my heart, relax my body, and clear my mind enough to love more completely and more consistently.  It hasn't been effortless.   

 

Why?

 

I was born into a capitalist society, one that glorifies "rugged individualism."  The collective consciousness that I have been conditioned by since I was in my mother's womb is steeped in centuries of white supremacy, patriarchy, "rational" scientific materialism, and a distorted form of religion that pivots on the emotional energies of condemnation, guilt, shame, and fear.  It's a devil's brew that has this world poised on the brink of catastrophe.  

 

Throughout time, it seems other cultures have their own variations of these themes.  What Buddhism calls the Three Poisons seem to be an inherent quality of the human condition.  Left to our own devices, Greed, Enmity, and Ignorance can dominate our lives.  And we suffer.  

 

So, a large part of who I am was conditioned by, and is still being influenced by, a set of conditions that tend, moment to moment, to create a way of experiencing myself and the world that prioritizes thinking.  I can get "lost in my thoughts" -- a lot. 

 

I've also been conditioned to react emotionally in certain ways. Entwined with a set of acquired beliefs about myself and the world, these emotions, and the bodily tensions associated with them, continue to impact on the way I experience and interact with the world around me.   As a matter of habit, I've often reacted to the world (as most people in our culture do) judgmentally.  Feeling stressed out, impatient, frustrated, depressed, I'd hardened my heart and blamed myself and others, even life itself, for my unhappiness.

 

Now? Not so much.

 

It Just Takes Practice

 

I meditate most every morning.  I've done this for decades now.  I've also continue to pour through the literature and scripture of the world's religions, humanistic psychology, contemporary spiritual teachers, and the sciences. I've also continue to compare notes on mindfulness, meditation, life, and spiritual practice with fellow travelers in the Morning Mindfulness Meditation Circles I host and elsewhere.  

 

Although meditation and mindfulness may not work for everyone all the time, for me and other folks I trust, this stuff really works.  Why?

 

As we learn to "get out of our heads" and bring ourselves more fully into our actual embodied experience of the present moment, the quality of our experience shifts.  Even with the simple recognition that we are thinking, we are no longer lost in thought.  We access a different aspect of our own consciousness.    

 

Simply Sitting Still regularly, we gain greater agency on the quality and focus of our attention.  With Practice, we learn to relax, expanding our gaze beyond the tunnel vision of conceptual thought.

 

Simply by getting in touch with our breath, our belly, our heart, we can experience the actual energies and sensations of the conditioned patterns that close our hearts.   

 

In certain moments we don't even have to actively "let go" of the clusters of constricted dark energy that emerge in our awareness. We can simply relax and breath it into our hearts, and let it be. 

 

Aligned with our intention to be compassionate and kind to ourselves and others, our hearts naturally open. The darker energies of the human condition dissipate in the open spaciousness of a boundless awareness.  True Love is all that remains.  We can then send this out as a prayer for the welfare of all.  

It seems to me that Mindfulness could, perhaps, better be described as Heartfulness.  Fully engaged with the present moment, on the meditation cushion or in the midst of our daily activities, we can experience a warm, spacious, expansive, affirming,  Presence.  There, our eyes see.  Our ears hear.  Our hearts love. 

How cool is that?

It just takes Practice.


Originally published, February 14, 2014.