True Love
Beyond Ego
If you despise everyone but yourself You truly despise yourself
If you love everyone but yourself Truly, you are nothing but love
What are the pros and cons of ego? Well, that’s an irrelevant question, for there are no pros, only cons. Let me explain.
Pre-dawn Father Sun was all alone in the non-treacle darkness.
Bored, bored, bored one assumes, but in a non-land of darkness far beyond such feelings as boredom, one can never be sure, can one?
Father Sun did not shine for there was neither energy nor space, nor was there time to allow energy (had there been any) to propagate. Father Sun, to be honest, had no such notions as Father and Sun.
One word for this Sunless, Fatherless state might be unfragmented.
One word for our current Sunny, Fathery state might be fragmented.
Fast forward some thirteen billion years (they say) and on this particular planet we are now weighed down by such widely accepted (and hailed) notions as “Greed is Good” running free (and rampant) and cluttering up human consciousness along with its conscience.
I was chatting with a neighbor the other day and we somehow landed on the ongoing Tour de France. I mentioned that the yellow jersey had taken a spill that day and that the peloton, as an act of true sportsmanship slowed down to allow the yellow jersey to catch up since the race has an agreed-upon understanding that you don’t take advantage of a yellow spill.
Well, my-a-little-less-Buddhist-than-I neighbor thought that was just plain stupid. It’s a competition, right? It’s all about winning, right? Too bad if you spill. That’s good for your competitors, right? What does sportsmanship have to do with it? That’s an outmoded concept that no longer belongs in current-day competition, right?
I shook my head and begged to differ about as strongly as I ever beg to do anything.
No, he doubled down and pointed out that a bicycle race is all about winning, all else be damned, sportsmanship included.
Well, I saw that I was not going anywhere near fruitful down that path and said we’d just have to agree to disagree.
In the following day’s race, the yellow jersey himself actually slowed down and waited for his main competitor to catch up after he had spilled, even if just briefly. And that, even the commentators said, was almost unheard of, the yellow actually awaiting an unlucky competitor.
Denmark is a great country, Danes are a great people is what I thought (the yellow jersey is currently a Dane — and, as it happened, he went on to win the race).
It’s all about winning, said my neighbor. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? It’s not all about winning — you also have to live with yourself (unless, of course, you are so deadened to fairness and ethics that you don’t even hear a bad conscience even if screams at the top of its lungs).
The Buddha told a perfect parable about hate. When you hate someone, he said, it’s like you’re picking up glowing embers or coals to throw at that someone. You may hit or you may miss but one thing is certain, you are the only one guaranteed to be hurt as you burn yourself picking up your hot ammunition.
Most people are unaware of this but the true sufferer is indeed the hater. Always.
Always.
The hated might not even be aware of being hated. No suffering there.
Eventually, the hater will end up hating everyone, him- or herself included.
At the opposite end of this hate/love universe, you find the truly selfless. The person so filled with love for everyone and everything that there is no room left for a self to love. I believe Jesus was such a person.
I believe Gotama Buddha was such a person.
And Mother Theresa.
And everyone who has truly shed their ego for good.
© Wolfstuff
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