Seeing Beyond Our Pain
We are the product of love. Even if our life sometimes seems separated from love, the act of love happened someplace. Love is everywhere around us whether or not we are able to contact it.
Contacting love in our life is possible if we are free of the turmoil that often occupies our mind. Sometimes this happens accidentally, as when something startles us and stops our mind. Sometimes it happens when our mind naturally notices a flower or bird that opens our mind. Then we are left with open space and are able to see beyond the usual static. Although love is necessary to life, it can also be startling and amazing. As a thought experiment, imagine momentarily removing all the aggression and contention from mind. Without the filter we would see evidence of love and kindness everywhere. Grass growing, bees humming, the wind caressing our face. Love is everywhere and not just in rom-coms.
Romantic love instigates hormonal changes to our system that sometimes allow usus feel all is right with the world. This is not only because of that special someone. It is because our mind opened and allowed us a glimpse of its essential heart. Love may be the essential heart of the universe. Everything that exists can be seen as an expression of love. But as necessary to the universe as love is, it is accompanied by destruction. When I have fallen in love, the feeling is always accompanied by fear and sadness. Perhaps I am frightened by a lack of control as I feel swept away, or saddened by the loss of love I anticipate or have experienced. What seems most real to me is that falling in love connects me to the deepest parts of life. All of these feelings are natural to humans. All of the circumstances that provoke these feelings are natural to the universe. When I see a rabbit in the grass my mind always stops and I spontaneously feel love and joy. But that rabbit so happily eating its flowers, will hop into the shadows and into a sad and painful death. But the rabbit continues eating. It is as aware of potential danger around it as its evolutionary state allows, but it is not interrupting its meal. On the other hand, I have indigestion because of a meeting I have later in the day.
Compassion is natural to all life. But so is danger. Much of life does what it can to sustain itself and focuses its cellular attention on living, growing and providing, serene in its unknowing. Most life is a natural and necessary part of the dance of the planet. But, the greatest danger to the balance of life comes from the only part of the planet that sees itself. The one who’s acidic stomach is gurgling as it watches the rabbit hop merrily into the wooded shadows. The greatest danger lies within. This is as true of ourselves and our societies. This is the greatest danger because it is the one unseen. We are so attuned to the danger around us, we lie in vulnerable ignorance of the aggression we cause ourselves and others. It is the work of compassion practice to help us reprogram the mind to balance the openness of loving moments with the truth of the dangers in life. We do this by de-emphasizing the importance of ourselves to ourselves that is clouding the picture. THis is not to say that we are not important. We are just not as important enough to suck the air out of life. Humans are a little like drunken blowhards going on about their workout routine at a party. SIr Harold Pinter wrote a play called “The Party” in which a group of haute society people revelled in their intrigues and drama while occasionally, we have seemingly inconsequential references to turmoil in the streets. By play’s end it is clear the turmoil is a violent revolution that will end everything they know.
The practice of compassion is not just about love. Love is there regardless. Our practice is about addressing the aggression within each of us that blocks our ability to love. It is about removing our willful ignorance. This is not about love over hatred. It’s about seeing the nature of our hatred, so we can look past it to what is around us. So, it is essential to (re)develop wisdom as we cultivate compassion. Hatred is an unnatural expression of natural fears. If we understand this, we begin to see that all beings experience fear, yet only humans express this as hatred. The natural world is rife with aggression. But the lion attacking its prey doesn’t hate the antelope. The lion doesn’t lie in her den ruminating on how the world would be better without antelopes. In fact, that very thought would be a form of suicide. Just as indiscriminately sealing borders or burning books are forms of cultural suicide hiding under the guise of protection. Who benefits if we are so intent on protection that we shut down all the life around us? At that point, what is it we are protecting?
Bodhicitta is the Sanskrit term for “awakened heart / mind.” In the Indian systems, and the Tibetan systems after them, heart and mind are symbiotic. They are necessary components of the development of our spiritual selves. We begin to de-emphasize the ego-self that obscures wisdom in protective self-interest. We do this, amazingly, by loving ourselves. Loving ourselves and treating ourselves with respect builds the confidence we need to be less reactive and less important. We have the confidence to stop protecting our space and open our hearts to wisdom. WE develop the wisdom to see the importance of love. With our screaming self-interest diminished, we are able to see clearly the love in our world without being blind to any danger around us. By owning our fears and not isolating blame on others, we are able to work beyond them and contact the love that is so necessary to our survival.
As our heart and mind re-unite, our life re-unites with the world as it is. Developing living compassion is recognizing the natural love in our heart and extending that out to our world. Love allows us to open and openness allows us to see. Therefore, loving compassion is living compassion as it connects us to life. It does this because it is a natural expression of life. Compassion is self-existing, it need not be manufactured. Our work is to love ourselves enough to find the courage to step out of our protective cocoon and to see the natural love all around us.
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