Why do we hesitate to love? 

Is it because we want to be loved…unconditionally…that we hesitate to give love? We don’t love unconditionally, so how can we expect others to love that way? Is it a fear that our love won’t be accepted? And what is love anyway? Is it accepting others unconditionally, when all the time we want them to accept us unconditionally?

Loving is difficult. We have a problem separating the person and their actions: we even have a problem separating ourselves from our own actions (reactions). The ‘being’ is not its ‘actions’: actions are merely the result of a mistaken view.

We have to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff – the juicy seed from the dried up covering.

Love must come from confidence in understanding our, and others, true nature. We are not loving the chaff, the actions, the mud, but we are loving the attempts to work through the chaff, actions and mud, however clumsy those attempts might be – because that is precisely what we are doing too!

This world is just full of hesitant love.

Showing or expressing love is not a weakness. It shows, or expresses, generosity, patience, discipline, concentration, and wisdom knowledge. These are expressions of our true nature.

If we all gave others what they wanted, and what we wanted – unconditional acceptance – the world would be a pretty nifty place. Of course this is not going to happen outwardly, it can happen within us, and that makes a huge difference to our view.

This is not without its challenges…or gut-churning-mind-exploding-poke-their-eyes-out-inner-conflicts as ego is still hanging around! However, the very recognition of this emotional reaction (the mud) is the catalyst, or cross-road, to changing one’s chaff – or even getting rid of it.

Of course we all want to be ‘one’ with each other. Maybe this happens once in a while, in a meeting of minds, but we are definitely not going to do this altogether, all at once. We can easily jump up and down and chant “Love! Love!” together…but that is not love. That is a commonplace projection, as found in books and songs and films: it is only distraction from the genuine experience.

Buddhists chant pujas to engender compassion, but this is still only loving from afar. There again, we have to start somewhere!

Love is losing oneself, and having genuine empathy for the predicament of others. Therefore…love is fearless.

 May all beings find love and the causes of love.

May we never be separated from the causes of love.

May we dwell in great love.

May this love extend to all those far and near.

No one’s perfect…there is always perfection in imperfection…

Hence, Buddha in the Mud!

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