Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan.Linehan  How do you love evil without condoning it? |
Love is a feeling.
I have 2 cats and I love them a lot. By this I don't mean that I "say" I love them, I means that I can feel it. It's a feeling, it's not intellectual. I don't love them because I'm told that I should or because it's expected or because I fear not loving them. I don't love them because of things I've done in the past or things I aspire to do in the future. I don't love them for any reason that I can articulate, but I do know that I love them.
Despite this one of my cats will antagonize the other and attack the other. Very cruel, very mean. I don't love him any less but I cannot condone that behavior so I take action to stop it. I still love him when he attacks, when he is violent and cruel.
I can honestly say that I usually feel compassion and love for most of the evil bastards throughout the world. It helps when you realize that they act out of ignorance and delusion (in the same way that all humans act out of ignorance and delusion) but it helps even more when you meditate long enough to realize that All Is One. When All Is One there is no alternative to loving all things. You can disagree completely with someone's behavior but still feel love towards them. This comes from feeling internally that All is One.
This is not an intellectual exercise - the mind will not resolve these paradoxes.
Awareness in the moment determines Right Action alone. There is no guidebook for behaving properly. Proper behavior can only flow out of being Present in the Now.
When they say "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions" they are referring to the ultimate fallibility of the intellect. The intellect can take you only so far, and then you need to transcend it and find a deeper intelligence - a deeper guidance. In this thread there are many people trying to rationally understand things and trying to sort out rationally what their behavior should be.
I tried this for many years - using my logical mind to try and find what the "right thing to do" would be. Logic wants a formula that tells you exactly what to do in every situation so you can know ahead of time. Logic is all about consistency and prediction. Reality is not consistent and cannot be predicted. No matter how hard we try, our logical minds can never give us these answers at a truly satisfactory level. Only stillness, awareness, or whatever it is you want to call it (the stuff you find in insight meditation) can inform you. It acts like intuition but it is actually deeper than typical right-brain intuition - it is guidance. Meditation doesn't give you new concepts though, it transcends concept. It's not a way to discover a logical proof, it's a way to stop requiring logic because you now have a better system.
Once again I'm reminded to point out that all these concepts, ideas, thoughts, arguments - they are just signposts pointing to "It". We are all looking for
It whatever
It is. There are many signposts but you cannot
say what
It is. Just like in The Matrix when Morpheus says,
"No one can tell you what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself."
The Matrix represents the human mind which exists in ignorance and delusion - no matter how much we learn or think or experience. When Jesus acted he did not act out of logic and he did not know what he was doing beforehand. He acted from this place of Stillness and Oneness, from this higher level. It is not logical and so he did not try to logically explain what he did.
The only way to integrate all of Jesus' actions into a coherent whole is to realize the deep place from where his actions flow. You could call this place the eternal Now. Jesus was not a pacifist or a pragmatist or a Jew. He did not base his actions on the 10 commandments or a non-violent ideology or the eight precepts or even a principle such as "compassion" or "love". When Jesus acted, there was no internal dialog saying, "Is this the loving thing to do? Is this the compassionate thing to do?"
Instead, his love and compassion flowed from a deep place. There are times when he acted violently and times when he used harsh words. But in hindsight we can see how all these things he did flowed from an inner knowing of compassion and love. No doubt that when he did many things, he couldn't see the outcome. That is the nature of this guidance and the nature of being human. You Feel that it is Right but your mind cannot See it.
Learning to act from the same place that Jesus acted from is what most of us aspire to do. But we won't find this skill on the intellectual level. We have to go deeper into the Now to find it.