It is rather strange how the mind works, or rather how this world is governed by opposites. Not that the opposites are two different things occurring at a different moment, but rather, they are actually the same thing, occurring simultaneously, at the same moment, except only one can be experienced at one time. In other words, both are simply the same thing seen from different perspective, as in the phrase opposite sides of the same coin.
If I like someone, I am already disliking the person at the same time. Insane isn’t it? You may hold in disbelief how this can be true until you probe further how the mechanics of the mind works. By nature everything is in constant change, irrelevant the things we see seem not to change, like any object that is within our sight. At the molecular level, everything is changing ceaselessly but since our sight does not have the capability, or rather has not been trained to see at that speed, everything seems to exist in permanency.
Not just the objects of the world is changing, even the mind is changing quicker than we can ever perceive. Imagine the fickleness in our choices or the change of mind in our decisions – they are tell-tales signs how fluctuating the mind is. Look for anything in the world that is permanent and what you get is impermanence. That impermanence is the only permanence, except changing all the time.
Now if this is truly your understanding, not a kind of whimsy thinking, but an actual realization, you will likely find something pretty strange, as there is no such thing such as “like”; as “to like” already implies there is something permanent there for you to hold on to, and that permanency may mean briefly to you. It will be easier to understand through the model of subject and object principle. If both object and subject is changing all the time, like the spokes of a moving wheel in tangent with the ground it is constantly touching, where can there be a possibility of one moment of time where a point of the wheel is in constant touch with the same position of the ground, unless the wheel is not moving, which cannot be the case, since everything is changing ceaselessly. Clinging on to an experience, is hence an illusion.
Now here lies the irony – we don’t need to hold on to anything if we knew things are not going to change. For instance, do you need to hold on to your breath, if you already know air is constantly in supply for you to breathe? It is because we realize the nature of change that we want to hold on to it! Isn’t it strange? It is like we are not accepting what we already know and we try as hard as we can to hold on to it, as if trying to proof nature is wrong. Kind of insane, isn’t it?
Hence when I like you, somewhere deep inside, I dislike you for not being able for me to hold on to you. Of course, ultimately there is really nothing out there that we get in contact with, except all playing up in our mind. How strange!
So don’t be surprised, behind special love, there is already special hate – just nature working its way out to balance the equation of illusion!