Illusion to Reality

The love I have is always given upon an object – an experience or an end result. I love you. I love the food, I love my pet, I love peace, I love the way you look. I love my body. I love what you said. The love I have is the meaning I give to something I am experiencing. If I am experiencing delight, I am loving the situation. But if I am upset, I can’t love that situation anymore. It can be a situation, an event, a relationship – my love is always about something that I like about.

But how I can call that as love? It is only my mere attachment to that situation that I am experiencing. I am not seeing in myself that my feeling of love is an idea of seeing what is right and wrong. I am bias in my outlook. I can’t see love in a drunkard. I can’t see love in a murderer or a rapist. I can’t see love in those who pollutes the environment for I see them as all wrong. My love is merely an idea of righteousness I am holding on. Where is love?

I love you is because my idea is intact and not been challenged by you. I love you is because I am not been triggered by you. I can’t love you when you do not see the way I see. If I am a person who advocate cleanliness in the house and you may have accidentally left a used cup in the kitchen sink without washing it, I get upset. I can’t love you for what you have done. You are wrong for not conforming to my needs.

I love you because you satisfied my need for pleasure. But what has my need for pleasure got to do with love, or for that matter with you? If love has got to do with my need for pleasure, each time when I think of, say, wanting to have sex, I will feel love towards you. But it does not work that way. I am apprehensive whenever I need sex – there is no love at all at that moment – as I am not sure whether you will give it to me or not. I will scheme my way to attract you into my needs. A painful experience I am not aware off. And because of my wanting that is motivating me to do just as that, when I can’t get what I want, I see you as wrong, as unfair. But if my scheming does produced the result I wanted, I would say “I love you darling”. What a joke! But again, even though you may give in to my need for pleasure I may not necessarily get the “full” pleasure I wanted. For that I may blame you for the result or I blame myself for not good enough to arrive at that climax! No wonder my meditation teacher said that each time I want, I can’t get what I want except suffering.

It will be truer to say I love my ideas rather than I love you or anything that represents what I loved. I love ideas that supports me. I can’t love ideas that opposes me. All ideas in my system are always right, are always the truth to me. I don’t see wrongness in these ideas. If I can see wrongness in myself I am already seeing wrong ideas. I am usually not seeing wrongness in myself but rather seeing myself as wrong – they are not the same. When I see myself as wrong, I am judging myself. When I see wrongness in myself, I am seeing the erroneous views I am holding on. That is wisdom at work. The former is ignorance.

So when I say I can’t love ideas that opposes me, I am saying my ideas are always right. I am also meaning that others’ ideas are wrong. Am I playing God? How arrogant I can be.

All this love thingy is conditional. Or should I say there is no love at all. There is no such a thing call conditional love for love is whole. What is true love then? Is there such a thing? Is there unconditional love then? Is it possible?

The love I have all the while is focused on the object, on the end result – the effect. When wisdom grows in me, I give attention to the cause more than the effect, though many a times the mind tends to hold on to the experience. I recognize the interplay between both cause and effect. I see the wrongness in the effect simply because I was aware of the cause – aware of the wrong ideas I am having. There is no way I could see the effect as wrong so long as I am not aware of the cause. Thus to be aware of the cause and effect is important to the journey of wisdom.

The followers said to Yeshua, “Tell us how our end will be.” He said, “Have you discovered the beginning, then, so that you are seeking the end? For where the beginning is, the end will be. Fortunate is the one who stands at the beginning: That one will know the end and will not taste death.”

– Gospel of Thomas

To recognize the beginning is to recognize the end. Without recognizing the beginning there is no way to come into recognizing the end except to indulge the end. I can’t recognize anger, except to feel angry, until and unless I go to the source of my anger. Otherwise I am simply entertaining anger though I think I am aware of anger. When I am able see the entire picture of this causal relationship I am experiencing unconditional love for myself. I see how my suffering is my own creation and how by understanding suffering comes to an end.

There is no judgment involves here except compassionate understanding. When I understand myself I understand others too. There is merely compassionate understanding of the nature of things as they truly are. Unconditional love springs from this understanding, not from judging what is right and what is wrong. Common love is about feelings. Unconditional love is about understanding.

I can’t do unconditional love. Unconditional love does me. I can only do love as that is not what it is. Love is superficial, unconditional love is complete.

There was once in a retreat I greeted my teacher a good morning, and he stopped with a queer look on his face asking, “What so good about morning?”, and before I could say anything, which luckily I didn’t, he continued on saying, “just morning will do”.

It may sounds queer for my teacher to ask that way, but in truth, I seldom mean what I wanted to say – I may said it out in a very meaningless way to camouflage my uneasiness, particularly when I felt vulnerable in a situation, or I say it out of obligation to reciprocate. I may even say it out just to get attention. All these gestures defeat the purpose of wishing.

But my teacher’s question and statement meant more than that. To him there is no such a thing as a good morning, even though I may mean it as a wish. To put a “good” is to escape the reality of what is, to make good over something that I may not want to face. To make good so as to wish the bad will not come. But we all already know umpteen times, that it is an impossible task to cover up unhappiness, not to mention making it disappear. Yet we keep trying year in and year out, even to the extent of making resolutions not to be unhappy. If I really authentic with myself, I will acknowledge that my experiences of unhappiness are many times more than happiness on a daily basis. Happiness is so elusive.

But because I am not ready to face and understand unhappiness, I will either try fixing it by blaming someone out there so as to make me feel good, or just cover it up with an action, either by going for a drink or moving away from a situation, or even ignore the discomfort within. Can we really ignore? Some has that ability of sweeping it under the carpet, seeing the triviality of facing it, and choosing happiness instead. But does unhappiness ever disappears?

We never take to task to inquire why we are unhappy. Instead we try chasing after happiness, over and over again. Can we truly choose to be happy? We can, except an illusion of it. In reality there is no such a thing call happiness – it is just an act of holding on to an idea of pleasantness. By the way, what are pleasant feelings and unpleasant feelings? Feelings are practically neutral until we give a meaning to it – one man’s feeling may be another man’s poison. Imagined those who goes to gym to develop their muscles – they may either see pain as happiness as each workout brings about obvious results, or, on another extreme, they may see gym as a torturous place when they are force to participate in it. In both cases the pain is similar but our idea makes it pleasant and unpleasant, hence the illusion of happy and unhappy. We can’t choose happiness simply because happiness is an effect. But we can recognize our ideas. When there is wisdom present in that moment of recognition, peace may arise – something more real than happiness.

Happiness is due to our ideas, not something out there. We kept chasing after happiness as if the answer lies in the future, not recognizing that happiness is not about something out there or in the future, but right here in the present moment where our ideas are. I may think having lots of money will make me happy – and if ever that comes true, my happiness at that moment of time is not because of money, but because of my idea behind it. My idea changes moment to moment and if that particular idea about money does not surface at that point of time, whatever money I have in my hand will not bring me any happiness. If I am not aware of this truth I may think it is because I am not having more enough and that will propels me to seek further – what a nightmare of futile pursuit – chasing after something that is not out there at all.

Wisdom is key to each experience of peace. Without having the wisdom to see the truth of what is, my life will be liken to a hamster, running on the wheel, awaiting its end.

Rely on the message of the teacher, not on his personality;
Rely on the meaning, not just on the words;
Rely on the real meaning, not on the provisional one;
Rely on your wisdom mind, not on your ordinary, judgmental mind.

– The Buddha