Love. What is it? For me, love has been easier to feel than to describe.
It seems to have something to do with attraction, since I want to be closer to people and things that I love, while the opposite is true of people and things that I hate or dislike.
Every night I say "love you" to my wife before we go to sleep. She says the same to me. It's a ritual that means a lot to me, in part because it makes me feel good to know that if I die in my sleep, those would have been the last words my wife would have heard from me.
Bumper sticker sentiments, such as God is love, strike me as almost totally meaningless. They sound fine, but they lack the concreteness of feeling love for someone or something that clearly exists, which isn't the case with God.
As noted before, this is why the title of Zen master Henry Shukman's book, Original Love, gave me some pause before I decided to buy it from Amazon. Fortunately, after reading 105 pages I'm liking how Shukman looks upon love.
Basically, love is about spaciousness, which he relates to awareness being able to encompass anything and everything we can be aware of.
Love is like space in the sense that it gives space for things to be the way they are. It allows us to be in a troubled state. When we're no longer at war with the state we're in, our sense of identification can switch from being wrapped up in the trouble and relocate to the state of acceptance.
So while the trouble is still there, our identity can migrate from the knot of trouble to the broader context that is accepting of that knot. It's the sense of love that pulls us there. Love is a magnetism.
It's like gravity, except that rather than drawing us toward an object, it draws us into its spaciousness, which can comfortably hold the difficulty. Love loves what is difficult, which makes it no longer difficult. Explore this for yourself and see if you agree.
But what is the source of this love? It's actually simple too.
Once we are less narrowly focused, once we uncouple attention from what it has been contracting itself onto. we sense simply more of the space of awareness. Rather than being stuck in one little quadrant of awareness, we recognize more quadrants.
...One of the very features of original love is its unlimited awareness. At the deepest level, all forms of awareness are forms of it. It not only is aware of all, but also allows all experience to arise, and immediately and unconditionally meets it.
...The path to awakening, to original love, can be summarized as follows. We start to settle down. We start to lessen the hold of the hindrances.
The suffering many of us have lived with as a vague background condition -- a sense of lack, of deficiency, or a hunger, a hankering after things not yet here -- has come to the fore, and we are getting to know it more clearly. As a result of allowing it to be as it is, it is starting to dwindle and at times release itself.
As this happens, we begin to open up more to our actual experience in the here and now. We notice the whistle of the wind in the trees, the distant hum of traffic, and the sounds of a neighborhood. We relish the play of light and shadow, and we feel the magnificence of the weather, whether sunshine, cold mist, or crackling thunderheads.
...We are returning to a natural appreciation for being, for the gift of living itself, without any need for accomplishment.
There are things about my wife that annoy me, just as there things about me that annoy her. Same is true of our dog. She can be annoying at times, and I'm sure I can annoy our dog. However, love is able to encompass those annoyances, making them appear less important in the overall light of love.
This is why what strangers do can be especially annoying. Typically I'm only aware of my irritation about their action, lacking the context of love that makes it much easier for me to accept the annoying things my wife and dog do.
One place where I frequently get annoyed is the circuit training weight room in my athletic club. Two of the three times a week I exercise at the club is just before my 4:30 pm Tai Chi class. I arrange my arrival at the club so I'm able to get my workout in prior to driving to downtown Salem for the class.
Not having a lot of leeway in that schedule, I get irked when someone is sitting at a machine that I want to use, phone in hand, staring at the screen as if it was the most important thing in the world, rather than doing what I believe people should do with a weight machine: exercise!
Recently I've been experimenting with having a more spacious awareness of the situation in line with how Shukman views love. I look at the person with the phone on the machine that I want to use in the limited time I have left at the club not as someone who is trying to irritate me, but as someone who is doing something important to them.
That thought alone changes my attitude. I realize that they may be communicating with a friend or loved one or business associate. They may have a much more vibrant social life than I do. They may not have any sense that I, or anyone else, is waiting to use that weight machine.
My annoyance is fueled by narrowly limiting my awareness to (1) what I want to do, and (2) how an action of someone else is preventing me from achieving that want. As soon as I view the situation more broadly, seeing the other person as having their own wants and needs that are just as important as mine, I feel my irritation lessening. Sometimes it disappears completely.
A small step, to be sure. But I'm grateful that some of what Shukman says in his book, and in his The Way app that I have on my iPhone, is having a positive effect on me.
People are married to their expectations, their desires.
These are the things they "love"
=> their desires.
Than they go out into the world world to find those that are "MADE" responsible to fulfill these desires and if the don't they will be pushed in one way or another to deliver.
That "pushing" can and is done in many ways, soft, harsh, clever, creative ...you name it
IF it does not work finally divorce is taking place ..the discarding of something or somebody and a new one is sought to do a better job.
The old sages came to understand that psychological mechanism that causes Dukkha or suffering and developed ways to deal with these desires.
There is nothing there in the streets of the world. Whatever happiness, love or whatever, if it exists is only to be found inside the house.
The ultimate teaching is telling the world to love their enemies. These teachings are not about the enemies nor about their actions that made them seen as enemies. Not at all, these teachings have nothing to do with the enemies. Nor does these teachings say that you should love your enemies, not at all they are not even advising you ...they just tell you that love or whatever is YOURS and it is up to you whether or not you give it out and only for your own reasons.
Understanding these simple teachings sets you FREE
Posted by: um | January 24, 2025 at 07:40 AM
I like what Suzuki Roshi said in this vein:
“Even though you try to put people under control, it is impossible. You cannot do it. The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in a wider sense. To give your sheep or cow a large spacious meadow is the way to control him. So it is with people: first, let them do what they want, and watch them. This is the best policy. To ignore them is not good. That is the worst policy. The second worst is trying to control them. The best one is to watch them, just to watch them, without trying to control them.”
― Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice
Posted by: sant64 | January 24, 2025 at 10:51 AM
Very good, more wisdom from Henry Sukman. His expression of being here now is quite important – and reads like poetry: -
“As this happens, we begin to open up more to our actual experience in the here and now. We notice the whistle of the wind in the trees, the distant hum of traffic, and the sounds of a neighborhood. We relish the play of light and shadow, and we feel the magnificence of the weather, whether sunshine, cold mist, or crackling thunderheads.
...We are returning to a natural appreciation for being, for the gift of living itself, without any need for accomplishment.”
Yes, he addresses the fact that we have become habituated to ‘living in our heads’ in the sense that we tend to see life through a series of conditioned concepts, through thoughts, opinions and ideas. It’s sad to say that such have become the norm producing the inevitable on-going climate of anxiety, distrust among neighbours and nations – and generally the separation from each other, nature and ourselves.
Posted by: Ron E. | January 25, 2025 at 02:38 AM
@ Ron E
It seems a matter of choice, selective choice
Those that narrow their awareness to to the here and now, they too attribute meaning and value to what they are aware of.
It seems that humans can direct their awareness, their consciousness, their thoughts to distant "objects" , Where objects can be everything you can imagine, or to a restricted selection as available through the senses in the here and now ... bu ... in all cases they have to give what is theirs to it.
John Butler, was an farmer in his early days and farmers are used to restrict their attention to the here and now but that by itself doesn't make a person a sage, a zen master etc. ... they have to became aware of their awareness.
It reminds me of an Indian tale. A king, grateful for the help received from a charcoal burner, donated the man an field with Sandalwood trees., When He, the king passed by many years later, the man was still making charcoal, this time of the precious sandalwood and very little was left. The King told the man to bring the remaining pieces to the market and on receiving lots of money for it the man was shocked and felt sorry upon which he asked the king to give him a new piece of forest.
So it seems that the here and now is not enough. One has to attribute meaning to it and value and THAT is only appreciated in a small circle of humanity
Posted by: um | January 25, 2025 at 04:16 AM
Hi um. Nice to hear from you. "So it seems that the here and now is not enough. One has to attribute meaning to it and value and THAT is only appreciated in a small circle of humanity."
The thing with the here and now is that it is always so, whether we are aware of it or not. In fact, it is the only thing that we can ever know for sure, everything else, our thoughts, concepts etc. are just thoughts and concepts happening here now.
I take your point - although I'd reckon that more people slip into the awareness of here/now at times when they are just sensing, say a view, a fresh fall of snow or witnessing a birth. But yes, it's soon all lost in the constant stream of thought.
I don't know about attributing meaning and value to it, that just makes it into another thing, an object to be pursued and added to the construct of me and mine. But hey ho! whatever happens just happens whether it's in the form of a Hitler or a saint - or us wrecking the planet!
I was out walking along the coast earlier where age-old rocks were being pounded by the sea. Even if we destroy ourselves and the organic world around us, the million year-old rocks will still be here, perhaps ready to see another, somewhat different organic world. Nothing is lost or wasted in the universe.
Posted by: Ron E. | January 25, 2025 at 07:18 AM
@ Ron E.
https://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/chuang-tzu.htm
These are all different translations of the conversations between the cook Ding and the Duke. They are seen as an example as to how live life.
It is my understanding that Ushiyama Roshi does the same when he at the end of his "Master Dogen's Zazen meditation hand book" when he points at the way how a driver drives a car after combining the different elements as an example of how to do Zazen ..after having explained that zazen and living life are one and the same thing
Yet .. although living the here an now, being aware of it, the common driver does not appreciate his driving beyond being boring
Obvious they are aware and not aware at the same time.
P.S.
If you live somewhere a the west cost that walk must have been impressive
Posted by: um | January 25, 2025 at 08:21 AM
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately..." Thoreau emphasizes living with purpose and connecting with nature.
Posted by: Ron E. | January 26, 2025 at 02:42 AM