OPENING TO LOVE

OPENING TO LOVE: DHARMA WISDOM

---

Love Thy Neighbor & Thyself

The Buddha taught that the sincere practice of inquiry leads to an inner experience of freedom and that compassion and loving-kindness are states which arise naturally from this freedom. Similarly, Christ taught, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” not as an onerous duty, but as a path of joy connecting us to one another through that which is divine in all. Of course, the problem we all struggle with is how to find that love for another, particularly a difficult other. Even more challenging for many is feeling love and acceptance for oneself. Implicit in Jesus’ teaching is the prerequisite of loving yourself. If you have self-hatred, it will define the quality of your love – or lack of love – and it will ultimately manifest in your love for another.

You may protest upon hearing this teaching that although you struggle with self-hatred, your love for your spouse is mostly pure, and that certainly your love of your children is pure. I do not doubt the truth of your protestations, but experience has shown me that in the end there is only one love. Love is by its very nature unity, and if you have feelings of self-loathing, those feelings inevitably become part of your relationship with the loved one. It limits the fullness of the experience of love, both for you and the other. Also, if there is acute self-dislike, no matter how much you try to hide or ignore these feelings, they are injurious to those you love, particularly children.

It is important to make the distinction between regret for your past actions or distress over present shortcomings and lack of self-love, which you experience as self-loathing or worthlessness. These feelings of regret and distress are a necessary part of maturing behavior. Skillfully worked with, they help foster what Buddhists call the practice of sila, or ethical behavior.

Of course it is appropriate to experience your faults for what they are, but it is even more important that you hold those faults in a context of compassionate love for yourself. On the spiritual path, you don’t create your identity based on your faults; rather, by acknowledging your shortcomings, you are able to see clearly the harm they cause you and others. This clear-seeing becomes the motivation to develop an inner life so that even the bad moments are not wasted; instead, they are used for spiritual fuel. Moreover, fully opening to the suffering caused by unskillful behavior evokes feelings of compassion, the appropriate response to suffering no matter its origin. Similarly, seeing that unskillful actions are the result of unhealthy mind-states helps you understand the importance of compassion and loving-kindness practice in alleviating those mind-states.

Compassion (karuna practice) and loving-kindness (metta practice) are concentration or absorption meditations in which the mind is focused ever more firmly on a single object. As one of my teachers, Sharon Salzberg, says in her book Loving-Kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness (Shambhala, 1995), the purpose of these practices is to cultivate the intention to embrace all parts of yourself and to overcome feelings of separation from yourself and from others. Thus, you learn to receive and work with your faults as sources of needless suffering, and spontaneously move towards change in order to relieve that suffering. As these practices mature you feel a sense of warmth, good intention, and deep sympathy towards yourself.