Love and Liberation: An interview with Thich Nhat Hanh, Melvin McLeod Love, in Buddhism, always begins with yourself, before the manifestation of the other person in your life. The teaching of love in Buddhism is that when you go home to yourself, you recognize the suffering in you. Then the understanding of your own suffering will help you to feel better, and to love, because you feel the completeness, the fulfillment in yourself. So you don’t need another person to begin to love. You can begin with yourself. True love does not just choose one person. When true love is there, you shine like a lamp. You don’t just shine on one person in the room. That light you emit is for everyone in the room. If you really have love in you, everyone around you will profit—not only humans, but animals, plants, and minerals. Love, true love, is that. True love is equanimity. In general, the insight of inter-being will help remove discrimination, fear, and the dualistic way of thinking. We inter-are—even suffering and happiness inter-are—and that is why the insight of inter-being is the foundation of any kind of action that can bring peace and brotherhood, and help remove violence and despair. That insight is present in every great spiritual tradition. We need only to go home to our own tradition, and try to reveal that, to revive that. The five mindfulness trainings are a very concrete practice of love. In our tradition, the Buddhist tradition, we learn how to apply the trainings in our daily life. They are for action, not for speculation. You don’t just sign a petition; you make it into your life, your path. Then you are happy because you know that you have a path of understanding and love. Since you have a path of understanding and love, there’s no reason why you have to be afraid of your future anymore. Then you can share your path, your way of cultivating understanding and love, with people in other traditions. They don’t have to become Buddhists; they can go back to their own tradition and recognize the equivalent of the five trainings there. Our purpose is not to convert people to Buddhism. Our purpose is to live Buddhism as a path of understanding and love. You can continue to be a Jew, a Christian, or a Muslim, and you can do exactly the same thing as we do in the tradition of Buddhism. We use the Buddhist language and practice, you use the Muslim language and practice, but we arrive at the same result. That is why it can be called a global spirituality or global ethic _Excerpt from : Shambala Sun, Love and Liberation: An interview with Thich Nhat Hanh, Melvin McLeod
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 19:47:00 +0000
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