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LOVE and CLEAR SEEING by Tarchin Hearn
gentleness and allowingness in our practice may take us much further than determinedly trying to stare down the wall.
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Words, like species and languages, can become extinct. In their youth, words often have great vigour. They are juicy and evocative. In middle age, they slow down and become predictable. In old age, people use them without too much respect and their meanings begin to drift. Perhaps such overuse is the equivalent of cancer or terminal illness for a word. One word which is in the throes of being worked to death is "love". "Oh, I'd love to do that." "I'd love to go to Fiji." "I love ice cream." " I love the Spice Girls" The way love is used in these sentences, one might deduce that it means desire, hunger or even infatuation. Perhaps this is what it has come to mean today. In Buddhist traditions, there seems to be a great reluctance to use the word love without any qualifying phrases. After all, desire rooted in ignorance is pointed to as one of the fundamental causes of suffering. Logically, if love and desire are so similar, we could conclude that love rooted in ignorance is a major cause of suffering. Looking at all the dysfunctional relationships that pass as loving relationships we might have to agree. It seems that in Buddhism, love became replaced by the word loving-kindness. Perhaps this was just to be on the safe side and not mix up a sticky, unwholesome entanglement with something that is extraordinarily precious. Loving-kindness is the translation for metta and is related to maitri which has more the meaning of warm, open, friendliness. As Sakyamuni Buddha's teachings on awakening (Buddha Dharma) evolved into the Buddhism we know today, metta bhavana, the cultivation or meditation of loving-kindness became one of the 40 classical meditations associated with samatha or tranquillity. It is one of the four divine abidings: loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. Although the Buddha himself often referred to the full flowering of these four as a major characteristic of the Awakened state, as time went by, it became commonly accepted in many traditions that only insight could bring liberation. The meditation on love or loving-kindness became more something one might cultivate on the side. Nice, meritorious, but....! I suppose in a world of "striving meditators", if you could imagine such a thing, loving-kindness perhaps feels a bit wimpy, not to mention a bit feminine. I think it's time we looked more deeply into the energy and experience behind the word love. I wonder if, similar to the way we might reclaim a place of natural beauty, restoring the rich diversity of a river system or a block of native bush, I wonder if we could resurrect the word love, a simple, uncomplicated, beautiful word, referring to a rich, profound and wondrous state of being. I suppose there is no reason why a word can't be used in many different ways, but "love" as an attribute of the awakened state is much more than a feeling of warmth and belonging. I would suggest that the magic of love is inseparable from the magic of deep seeing and profound understanding. We are living in a world that admires complexity. It says something about the process of maturing that the first books I wrote were on the subjects of Abhidhamma and the Six Yogas of Naropa, both complex and rather esoteric teachings. Now, twenty years of experience later, the essential work seems to have gathered into a simple yet potent seed of cultivating, friendliness and interest. In actual fact, these two are quite inseparable. To inquire into something we need to get close enough to see or experience it in depth. It's impossible to look deeply into something if we are keeping it at arms length, or are trying to push it away. A degree of friendliness is necessary for insight to flower. The reverse is equally true. Imagine being in love with someone and at the same time not having any interest in them. The idea is absurd. To love someone is to be interested in them. To be profoundly interested in someone or something is an expression of some degree of love. Looking through some of my earlier writings I came across this. "To love without attachment we must learn to look deeply. To look deeply, we must learn to love. Eventually we realize that profound loving and deep seeingunderstanding are not two separate things." Love used in this way refers to a spacious openness. A quality of heart and mind that can embrace any situation just as it is, with a vast capacity to understand and appreciate. It is a long way away from a clutchy, high-energized needing, a business deal, a bookkeepers love with debit and credit columns. I gave to you this much attention, now you owe to me that much. When we look deeply into anything or anyone, the looking will always reveal a networking of causes and conditions, a fabric of interbecoming that is vast and pervasive without any finite boundaries in either space or time. There is a transforming magic in deep seeing. There is a magic in love; magic in the sense that the moment is filled with a feeling of immense spaciousness and possibility. Things seem more intensely alive. The predictable world, filled with its opaque-making hopes and fears becomes transparent, revealing a world poised on that terrifying and awesomely alive point of impermanence, a universe dancing in that impossible place that transcends all paradox. To love someone is not to know a person totally. It is to constantly realize that they are infinitely vast and ultimately unknowable. So the voyage of discovery never comes to an end and the person is a focus of undying interest, continually revealing new facets of being. So many human problems are problems of love and its lack: not receiving love; not able to receive love; not able to give love; not having the opportunity to give love. The problem is love; spacious, awake, allowing openness, and yet the solution is often seen in trying to find the reasons for its lack -- which is perilously close to trying to find something or someone to blame. How is blaming going to restore us to health? I believe it was Aristotle who once said. "The child who is not loved will seek to be admired." If this was true at the time of Aristotle, then one wonders how much has really changed since then. It seems to be painfully descriptive of many people's life experience today. Instead of love we have the cults of political power, media stardom, and intellectual property copyright. Even the teaching of Dharma can stray into dharma politics and hierarchies of control and power. This lack of love and trust in the wonder of life, this desperate effort to control and manipulate situations so that we will get the recognition, the admiration that we have somehow come to believe will fulfil us, has spilled over into violence on a scale that threatens the fabric of life on this planet, not only for humans but for everyone. As meditators, we must be careful not to encourage this madness in our interior life. As has been said by a number of great teachers, "Make a hair's breadth of difference and heaven and earth are set apart." It doesn't need a gross defilement to derail the awakening process. Problems can manifest in very subtle ways. In the name of healing we negate certain sensations and welcome others. We try to get rid of painful situations or at least avoid them and even when trying to gain insight into them, we often have the ulterior motive of keeping them at arms length. Do we have the courage to touch life and, in turn, be touched by it in a straight-on way? Or do we wobble to and fro, blindly led by prepackaged preferences? A little more gentleness and allowingness in our practice may take us much further than determinedly trying to stare down the wall! Look deeply. Feel deeply. Know deeply. This kind of looking is very gentle; a kind of sinking into, a merging with, coupled with a bright sense of aliveness. How can a profound ecological appreciation not simultaneously be suffused with love and loving-kindness? How can love and loving-kindness not be coupled with a profound appreciation of the interdependent miracle that is arising? There is a danger of allowing the word love to continue in its decay until no hint of its original meaning is left. The danger is that we may loose sight of the key that can reopen the door of healing and sane living. Loveless deep seeing is dangerous. Applied science and technology have demonstrated this many times over. Love without insight brings its own problems. It is almost always a recipe for suffering. If we are truly concerned about the well-being of the world, our children and of future generations, we really must take this to heart. The work of cultivating love and loving-kindness is essential for healing at any level of being and it begins right here; right where we are. Please pause with me for a moment and feel your body resting in its chair. Feel the movements of your breathing. A living body is a breathing body. Feel the alternating sensations of warm and cool at your nostrils or lips. Soften into the movements of your chest and abdomen. If you can become very still, you may have a sense of the rhythms of breathing moving throughout your entire body. Become very intimate with this; touching this alive body with kindness and interest. Don't fall into a habitual pattern of "watching your breath", standing to one side, watching and analysing. Instead, feel your body breathing. Meditation is intimate and personal. On the inhalation, allow your whole being to quieten, as if you were listening with every cell of your body. Within this rich texture of stillness, imagine that the entire of your being is saying your name. "Tarchin....." Then on the exhalation, hear it whispering, "I'm here for you". "Tarchin.....I'm here for you." "(Your own name)....... I'm here for you." Breathe like this for a while. If any difficulties arise, you might name them. "Critique, worry, impatience, exhilaration etc. ..... I'm here for you." "Sound of the traffic ..... I'm here for you." No more running. No more fighting. No more escaping. "Present moment.....I'm here for you." Give a few moments of your undivided attentiveness to this present mystery of breathing. Please do this right now. I am pausing in my writing to join you. Very simple. Very direct. Gateway to vastness of being. We certainly haven't exhausted the subject and perhaps the opportunity will arise to continue this at another time. Kindness and interest, this mystery of love is not just for bedrooms, it's not just for moments of meditation. It doesn't need to be restricted to any particular place and time but can flower in the midst of any situation,.... even when we are walking. I would like to end this short essay by sharing with you a poem that birthed into being towards the end of an hour of mindfully walking in the forest. It's called "Sacred Walking".
Come my friend
My foot, my sole
A coolness of breath through nose and mouth
Come dear friend
Brother sun and sister river sound
Walking this path creating.
Come my blessed,
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