Buddha, Buddhism, compassion, desire, emptiness, empty, Enlightenment, final goal, illusion, love, Meditation, Mind, root, self, true self, Truth, Uncategorized, Zen

Q239. If love and hate are neutral and both are illusions, then, what difference does it make whether I am loving or cruel?

A. It’s true that love and hate are neutral and both are illusions. In fact, it doesn’t make any difference whether you are loving or cruel. To realise the truth means to realise that everything is empty and feel oneness with the whole universe. Then, your feeling of love and hatred cannot help but be different from the feeling that you have had before realising the truth.

Above all, when you feel your hate as empty, your hate seldom develops into being cruel. Your cruel feeling, if or when it occurs, is not as strong or acute as before and doesn’t last long even though you don’t struggle to control your emotion. Rather, your cruel feeling turns into sympathy as you feel oneness. That is called compassion.

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In fact, as many people become unhappy because of love as do those who become unhappy because of hatred. As often as not cruel feelings result from love. If you realise the truth mentioned above, you will not be obsessed with, or attached to love, to the extent that your love makes people feel burdened or even tortured rather than happy. And you will not become so frustrated by the loss of love, if it happens, that you stray from your normal life. That is called wisdom.

 

 

©Boo Ahm

 

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

final goal, meditaion, root, self, true self, Zen

Q110. What shall I do when I have hatred for my friend for no particular reason?

A. Loving someone and hating someone, or loving someone today and hating him tomorrow, and the other way around is the way we live our lives. You don’t have to be worried about the fact that you hate your friend. The key point here is that you don’t know the root of the hatred you have for your friend. Saying you hate your friend, you actually don’t know who it is that hates your friend and who your friend is because you don’t know what you are. In brief, you don’t know who hates whom.

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Either trace back your hatred of your friend to its root, or ask yourself what makes your body hate him, instead of repressing emotion. When reaching the root, that is finding the answer to the question, you will realise all emotions you feel are only illusions and then you can accept everything you experience like seeing a movie.

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway