Love is the Thing

Its been a tough week. After golfing Monday through Friday last week, it decided to rain this week, curtailing my diversions. Growing wearing of watching "Happy Gilmore" I lured my retired friend out to the course on Thursday under the advisement of the weather channel's "we should be okay for a few hours" forecast.

Not so. It sprinkled, then it rained. Then it stopped, and all seemed well. Then it the monsoon-like torrential downpours ensued. Throughout all the head scratching as to why we were there, 3 things occurred to me: 1) No rush. There were no groups following us, and not ahead meant we could play at the pace we liked. 2). Quiet as the grave. Well, quiet as a rainstorm, anyways. 3). We actually didn't play that much worse than usually. I made one par and my friend made 2. That's a good day for us. We also found this course has lousy coffee.*

But that isn't what this post is about. If you've been following the blog, and I'm told there's no less than 3 of you that read the last post(!), you've read that the message of Jesus is that of Love. It is the simplest of messages, yet often the hardest to practice. Love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus understood everyone loves themselves, so he said that if we only loved others as much, the world would be so much better off.

Enter the next book on my shelf: "How to Expand Love: Widening the Circle of Loving Relationships" as written by the 14th Dalai Lama.

Here's your warning: don't read any further if you're uncomfortable with this idea that religions other than Christianity might have some helpful insight. Or that Christianity "is a relationship, not a religion." This book isn't so much a Buddhist document as it is a practical life application text. There is some overlap to be read with a discerning eye. This is the difference between being "open minded" and "empty minded." Basically, don't believe everything your read. Less of what you hear. But you can still listen and process new information.

The intro of the book is an explanation that the Dalai Lama talks of love and compassion not as a Buddhist, but as a fellow human being. This is this tone he sets for the book.

Throughout the text, the Dalai Lama repeats a common theme, as I indicated Jesus also spoke of above: Love one another. He uses the example of looking at yourself from a third person's vantage point. There's "You", the selfish, greedy, hoarding person you are, and next to you is a group of 100 people, with afflictions and impoverished. From the third person's point of view, it is hard to see why "You" do not share what you have with all those suffering.

Suffering a an important subject in Buddhist teaching. The logic goes that suffering comes from desiring something you don't have but would like (sometimes such that one would say you "Need", but rarely do). Thus, being content with what we have negates suffering and promotes happiness.

"Contentment is the key. If you have contentment with material things, you are truly rich. Without it, even if you are a billionaire, you will not have happiness. You will always feel hungry and want more and more and more, making you not rich but poor." (p. 111)

The idea is to find contentment with what you have rather than looking for what next toy to buy to make you temporarily happy. Once you are content, material hoarding no longer looks appealing and this allows you to help our fellow humans.

In a series of meditation points, The Dalai Lama says that we ought to extend love not only to our closest relatives and friends, but also people we dont' know and even our enemies - those that actively oppose us. Now wait, Meditation Matt? Are you jumping off the deep end? Well, if you know me, you know I'm a little removed from reality to begin with. I might cite an earlier blog about Cataphatic Prayer, which is basically the same concept as meditation. The Apostle Paul calls us to meditate on the scriptures. If you don't like any of these answers, just consider it "thinking about" loving others. But thinking profoundly, and really focusing on it. If you see yourself being kind to specific others when you're not around them, you would become more apt to be kind when you actually are.

The next point is the Dalai Lama backs up the need to love one another based on Reincarnation; we've all be born innumerable times, so everyone at some point has been your nurturing mother or best friend at some point. Every enemy has been your best friend before. Every current friend was once an enemy. So it makes no difference who they are now, we ought to love one another.

I'm not so sure about the reincarnation bit. Mostly I just skimmed over that. Its an interesting theory to think about. In some sense the Dalai Lama here is saying we ought to Love one another to balance out our karma and achieve enlightenment, just as Jesus taught to Love one another so that we might reach heaven. In that sense, its the same Quid Pro Quo rationale, but I think both would argue that isn't the purpose. We ought to love one another because that should be important to us. The reward is not to be the focus.

Another point the Dalai Lama makes is that we should not take any measure of joy in others' suffering. This is often easy to do if they are a bad person, political opponent, or just someone you don't like for whatever reason. Western Philosophy calls this Schadenfreude. So the Dalai Lama is essentially saying that Schadenfreude is not a virtue (p. 138).

Later in the book, speaking of suffering is concept of recognizing our capabilities to overcome situations. Citing an anecdote of personal experience, the Dalai Lama advises that, "If you can do something about a problem, do it; if it is impossible, worry is useless." (p. 151). After considering this, he said he was put at ease in a stressful situation, for it was out of his hands. This reminds me of the saying about knowing the difference between something I can change and something I cannot.

A final note comes on the topic of using others for personal gain. The Dalai Lama asks the reader to consider, "Should everyone be used for my attainment of happiness, or should I help others gain happiness?" (p. 173). I heard a similar question posed in a church service: Should we use people and love things, or love people and use things?

Jesus had little use for things and loved people.

Love one another.


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* Note 1: Picture from above is from a different golf course on a different day. Just here for visual aid. It was far too rainy to be taking pictures.