Lines that don't exist
What is common between love and hate, pain and peace, win and loss?
They say there is a fine line between love and hate. Have you ever wondered why?
Because of compartmentalization. How can two contradictory emotions co-exist for the same subject? This is because the conflict occurs not because of the subject but because of the cognition, the attached identity/identities in the observer.
For example, say I alternatively feel love and hate for the subject of writing. Sometimes I love it and at other times I hate it.
Some of the identities I may be attaching to: of a writer, of a winner, of a creator. Whichever I am using, I will feel the stereotypical expectations of that identity and if the observed world is not according, I may feel non-alignment. Depending on the attachment level, I may feel love or hate.
If I am attached to the winner persona, I will see my writing culminating into a win. But say, someone criticises it correctly, I may feel like a loser and hate it.
If I am attached to the identity of a writer, and I unable to write well according to my own expectations of how a writer should behave, I may hate the outcome.
These are merely examples, and there may be more than one identity operating at any time.
The truth is to realise these are our own constructed interfaces. They don't have any existence of their own.
Once we truly understand it, every thought and word would espouse that detachment. When no clinging remains, no suffering also remains. There is equanimity, a neutral acceptance of everything that comes, and out of that acceptance a freedom emerges: the clarity of what is real. This reality is what we need to work on, build on, solve for and live in. There is no going back then.
This freedom is about the awareness of the conditioned self. That whatever we are, we exist out of our choices. We create ourselves. Each intention matters. This conditioning is what binds us. But it also can be unwound. By our will.
Acceptance of this conditioned self is being able to love all of this world. This love is not the one that we often hear about. This love is co-existence without judgement. Just to live is enough.
When we accept this world, we start seeing the various causal chains through which it comes about. We understand we also exist due to those causal chains. We begin seeing everything in an unbiased manner. We understand we are neither unique nor special. We don't get rights just because we exist. The universe keeps moving regardless of our presence. There go the delusions of entitlement.
We understand that the world is what we make of it. A stone is a stone is a stone. It doesn't become a stone until we name it. All reality is thus empty of an inherent nature.
Acceptance creates empathy. When nothing remains special any longer, everything becomes a source of peace. There is a quiet joy just to be.
This doesn't mean we stop working. Or we stop solving. We work to undo our delusions. We work to help others see reality clearly. There is no egoic satisfaction in a win. There is no hatred or sadness in a loss. They are both the same thing: the reaction of our entrapment with an identity to an event in the universe which happened out of our conditioned choices. When we truly see it, we laugh at our sorrows and keep striving regardless of the losses, the pain and the suffering.
Pain is real, but our reaction to pain is always in our choice. The mother bears pain in childbirth because the pain brings a child. But a man with a painful disease may hold the world and the gods in contempt for his condition. His reaction is also within his choice. Pain is common to both situations, but the first one is acceptance and second rejection. Suffering comes when we reject, but pain comes to both.