What's love?

To love another means to understand them.
To love means to see them for who they are.
To love means to support their happiness.
To love means to rejoice in their growth and development.

We can develop this kind of love for everyone. We can move through the world with this love. In this way, we can love friends, strangers and even our opponents.

I see you. I respect you. I can understand your situation and see why you might think that is in your best interest. I might not agree with you, but I rejoice in your efforts to lift yourself so you can live a better life.

What prevents us from loving others in this way? Our own small mindedness. Our own fixation to our position and place. Our own inability to love and accept who we are, much less who others are.

By supporting and growing our own hearts, we can learn to expand our love to everyone. By understanding ourselves more fully, we become more in tune with others. Expand our self-awareness, and we expand our circle of acceptance.

Helpless and Stuck.

As the mind develops, we move from a world of sensory perception to a world of causality.

An infants initial experience of the world is simply what it perceives in its immediate surroundings- its mother, father, sights, sounds, feelings, warmth, emotions, pain and hunger.  If the child does not experience something it does not exist.

This is wonderful because it is an immersion in experience.  It is simple, direct, empirical.

But an infant is helpless because it doesn't know what to do with the things it is experiencing.
Pain is pain.  Hunger is hunger.  Fatigue is fatigue.  Warmth is warmth.

An infant who is hungry doesn't worry about anything else.  At that moment, hunger is the child's world and it doesn't know how to fix that. 

A parent who cares knows how to soothe a baby and it teaches it how to soothe itself. 

Somewhere along its development, the infant starts to realize that things still exist even if they cannot directly experience them.  This is called object permanence and it marks the beginning of a rational, logical mind.  It is the beginning of a mind that can plan and act based on intention. 

This is a grand development, but not without its own problems. 

Neither of these two ways of perceiving the world are true seeing.  If your world is your experience and nothing else you are helpless, failing to understand the significance of cause and effect.  A world in which we operate within cause and effect but get wrapped up in its objects and we get stuck.

A parent who cares teaches their child how to get unstuck. 

Teach your child to get unstuck, how to solve a problem and how to avoid getting wrapped up in a mess.  With that skillset, their innate curiosity coupled with the ability to choose and act will carry them to places that you could never imagine. 

Which is pretty scary, as a parent.

That is why you need to teach them to get unstuck. 

Object permanence.

Object permanence is a big development for an infant. 

Prior to the development of object permanence when things leave their field of perception they cease to exist.  Hide a toy, who cares- still happy and content.  Mother leaves the room, no worry here. 

Around six months of age children start to understand that things do exist when they leave the room.  Mom is gone, and that is a problem.  Why did you take away my toy, I was happily enjoying chewing on that.

This is a key development because it allows the child to develop an understanding of causality and learn to problem solve.  Object permanence allows for a rational, logical interpretation of reality.

What no one talks about is that object permanence also brings with it a host of emotional baggage. 

Hope and fear, attachment and aversion, gain and loss are all dependent on our expectation that things we want will stick around and things we don't want will go away.  The problems is that things that we want don't stay for long, and situations that bother us tend to stick around longer than we like. 

Our rational mind has little power over these strong emotions.

Object permanence is a big development for an infant, but many adults still struggle with the implications that it brings to their life.

When was the last time you were really well prepared with your plan, had it all worked out in your head, and then it fell apart.  How did you react?  How fixated were you on that object?

What is it that you are really hoping for?  What happens if none of it works out?

Are you going to be able to talk your way through it?  Do you really know how to work with your emotions when the going gets tough?  Or is anger and disappointment going to spill over into your day and your relationships?

Object permanence. 

What's the alternative?

Spell check.

Lets pretend for a momant that we didnt have aplications built into our computing softwear that determined when we had made a mistake.  What would that be like.  Would we even notice hour errors.  Would it effect the way we communicate and interact with our world?

Would we create a lot of problems for ourselves?

Spell check is a discipline meant to identify inconsistencies and mistakes.  It is quite different than auto-correct which allows us to keep typing despite making a mistake.  Spell check simply says this is a mistake, then you need to go back and fix it. 

Discipline is much like this.  We often think of discipline as being constrictive or closing us off in some way.  Freedom is a concept that we so cherish that discipline seems antithetical to it.  I can do whatever I want.  This is the way I want to do it.  I don't need to follow the rules.

Of course that is fine, hopefully you will discover your own discipline for improving and breaking through resistance.  Regardless, you need discipline to improve, otherwise you will simply be typing gibberish and everyone will dismiss you no matter how important the point you are trying to make. 

Discipline allows us to progress, it fosters growth.  It points out our flawed action and gross ignorance.  It gives your direct feedback right after you do something.  If your practice is going to be carried off your meditation seat and change your life, it is discipline that is going to be your vehicle.  Committing and then subsequently failing is better than never committing at all. 

Commitment carries you forward.  Never commit and you'll never know when you have gone astray.

Your discipline doesn't need to prescribe every action you take during the day.  The simplest discipline you can have is to do no harm, cultivate positive qualities and train your mind.  

Eschew discipline and you will not accomplish your own aims, never mind the aims of others. 

Everything is impermanent.

Things are impermanent, thank goodness!

The world is too sloppy for permanence.  Imagine holding a permanent black marker and wearing all white clothes.  Oh, and you don't have a cap for the marker.  What a mess!

Impermanence allows for change.
Growth.
Development.
Freedom.
Breaks.
Art.
Expression.
Flexibility.
Movement.

Sure, we are sad at the moment of death.  But you don't want its opposite.
Time to appreciate, rejoice, enjoy.
This life is a sacred ornament.

Asset Protection

It is wise to guard your assets.  Only a fool would waste away his wealth on trivial pursuits and shiny diversions. 

So how do we protect our inner wealth and our most valuable asset- our mind?

Commit your most valuable resource to your practice over an extended period of time.

Your most valuable resource is your time.  We waste a lot of it and that is to be expected.  But if you invest small increments of time over a long period you end up with a lot of growth.  There is not only the protection of your inner wealth and mind, but also the development and an accumulation of great potential. 

Just like investing with money, trying to time the market and invest at the 'right time' most often leads to you missing the opportunity for real growth and development all together.