Unconditional love is loving everything. It is the peace of being one with the Everything. Conditional love is loving some things sometimes and not others. It is an intense physical and emotional state as it's preceded and followed by other emotional states....
Is that so? The Zen master Hakuin was praised by his neighbors as one living a pure life. A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near him. One day, her parents discovered she was pregnant. This angered her parents, especially as she refused to tell them who got her pregnant. Eventually, she told them Hakuin was the father. Furious, the parents told everyone in the community what Hakuin had done and confronted the master. “Is that so?” was all he said. After the child was born, the parents gave it to Hakuin. By then, he had lost his reputation as a righteous man, but that did not trouble him. He accepted the child and took very good care of it as if it was his. A year later, the baby's mother could no longer hold back the truth. She told her parents the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fish market. The girl's parents immediately went to Hakuin. They asked for forgiveness and to have the child back. Hakuin willingly gave them the child and all he said was: “Is that so?” "Is that so?" encourages self-reflection and the questioning of assumptions we hold without doubts. "Is that so?" Hakuin asks the girl's parents to question their initial certainty that Hakuin fathered their daughter's baby and their later certainty that he did not. Ultimately, no one knows who fathered the baby; even the mother might not know. "Is that so?" simply suggests we consider things from many perspectives. This is the essence of wisdom. Wisdom is knowing that perceived truths change (like the girl's claim as to who fathered her baby) and that, ultimately, no thing is truly knowable. The girl's parents lack wisdom. They also lack compassion as they carelessly ruin Hakuin's reputation. Hakuin, a man of wisdom and compassion, knows what he is and is unfazed by who others think he is. Embodying wisdom and compassion, we gracefully accept what comes our way and make the best of it....
All emotional states, other than love, are a form of selfishness. Love too is selfishness when it connects us with some things but not every thing. Soulful love is love of one thing: the everything....
"Does a dog have Buddha nature?" This is the first and perhaps most famous of 48 Zen koans compiled in the early 13th century in "The Gateless Gate." To the question, the Zen Master Zhaozhou responded: "Mu." Mu means "nothing." A dog is a dog. Buddha nature, the innate potential for enlightenment, is a concept. Two seemingly independent things in the now. Yet, all things before and after the now are one thing: nothing, mu....
Kindness connects things of like kind. When we realize every thing is a facet of one thing, the Everything, we connect to all things with love....
What is it now?* One day, a Zen master with a clay pot on a wooden table before him asked several students: "What is this?" Some said it was a clay pot. Another said that it was an artifact. Another said it was an assemblage of clay and wood. Soon there were other perspectives as well. A lively debate ensued, while the Zen master shook his head and laughed. One student approached the table and threw the pot to the ground, shattering it into many pieces. An audible silence enveloped the room, until the student asked: "What is it now?" Silence again filled the room. Some students were shocked and others embarrassed by the aggressive arrogance of the student who shattered their master's clay pot. Then the silence was shattered by laughter from the Zen master and the student. The Zen master and student laughed as they recognized the other students were like the blind men in the "Ten Men and the Elephant" parable. Each certain of a their individual identification of the pot and the collective view that breaking the pot was disrespectful. A pot is a pot, temporarily. All things are ever-changing. The pot cannot be described, as it is different now than it was in the now upon which the description is based. Those who know it can only say that it is what it is whatever it is. *Courtesy of Bill Wisher....
Sometime in late 1988, I found myself on a hundreds long line of people awaiting to ask for a blessing from Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Chabad-Lubavitch spiritual leader. As customary, the Rebbe gifted everyone on line a crisp, new US dollar bill. The gift was a sign of humility; the great Rebbe expressing gratitude to those who ventured to his house. As well, it suggested the bill recipient treat others likewise; that is, on every occasion, treat others with kindness. I imagine all those dollar bills are still around, in wallets and places of safekeeping. They are sacred mementos. My dollar I've kept in my wallet. Now, 36 years later, it has virtually disintegrated. What a loss! It would have been more valuable had I given it to someone soon after receiving it; more valuable to both me and the recipient....
No one is getting out of here alive, but those who realize they are the Everything....
Does a rock have consciousness? Consciousness generally refers to the state of being aware of one's surroundings, thoughts, feelings, and sensations. It is the subjective experience of being alive and having a sense of self as separate from that which is not one's self. However, what exactly is consciousness has been long debated by philosophers, theologians, linguists, and scientists and no consensus has emerged. While a rock is a rock, what is a rock? Is a rock an independent thing or something given agency by our consciousness? If a rock is an independent thing, it may have consciousness that is beyond our general understanding of consciousness. Alternatively, if a rock is an illusion created by our mind, a rock does not have consciousness. Every thing in the now is interdependent and interconnected. That is, every thing is not a thing, but a facet of one ever-changing thing, the Everything. Things in the now that appear independent, like a rock, are illusions created by the mind. As a rock is an illusion, it does not have consciousness. If we don't recognize our consciousness has created the things in the Everything, we have the consciousness of a rock. ...