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The World Through Zen Eyes Podcast
What we do?
Once a week we take a look at the going-ons of the world and say something about ‘em.
The goal?
None, really. Just trying to make heads and tails of the great world roar of Ooommmmmm.
Why?
To try ‘n keep a modicum of personal sanity. And stay off both the meds and the cool aid.
The point?
Points are sharp and therefore violent. We just go around, and round….and round.
Disclaimer:
The views, perspectives, and humor of the speakers and guests of this podcast do not necessarily represent the those of any associated organizations, businesses, or groups, social, religious,cultural or otherwise. The entirety of the podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Topics discussed and views expressed do not constitute medical advice. As the saying goes “Opinions are like bellybuttons, everybody’s got one”.
The World Through Zen Eyes Podcast
Ep. 6 - Fan Mail Episode - "What is self love?..."
FAN MAIL - Send us a comment or a topic suggestion
In our second Fan Mail Episode, a listener asks: "What is self love? Can you love yourself? How to love yourself? Can you love a thing or another? Is loving yourself is just becoming love? If there is no self what's love? "
Dr. Ruben Lambert can be found at wisdomspring.com
Ven. MyongAhn Sunim can be found at soshimsa.org
Welcome back. Here we are again. Here we are again, indeed. I'm Myung An Sunim. Here I'm Dr. Ruben Lambert. We have... another fan mail episode. Wow, two in a row. This
SPEAKER_01:is
SPEAKER_03:exciting. Keep them coming. That's right. It's kind of nice to see that people are not only listening, but are asking questions, that the hunger is there. And of course, we try our best to share our thoughts, perhaps, from... the Zen perspective, from the psychological perspective, from life experience. After all, we are ancient.
SPEAKER_01:From our many years of meditation and our interactions with our teacher. That's right.
SPEAKER_03:So the question, or a number of questions actually, is as follows. Yes. What is self-love? Can you love yourself? How to love yourself? Can you love a thing or another? Or is loving yourself just becoming love? If there is no self, what is love? So those are the questions on the table today. Here we go. Drum roll please, spark and roll. I'm gonna have at it because I'm just gonna start at the tail end.
SPEAKER_01:That could be a whole episode in itself. It is. You're gonna go there,
SPEAKER_03:okay. Let's do it. This idea of no self is really doing something in the psyche, in the minds of the practitioners and those people who sample the Buddhist teaching and who dive into it. Every time that comes up, it really reminds me of the one line from a sutra where regarding the no-self or regarding the idea of emptiness, the Buddha says, for one who has so fixated himself, or attached himself, to the idea of emptiness, even the Buddha can't help them. And
SPEAKER_01:it really kind of is something. That is like silk.
SPEAKER_03:Right, because. Smooth like silk. If you're attached to a thing, and it's in this pursuit of not wanting to be attached, and so if there's no self, then then, But if you're attached to a thing, let's say you're attached to your physical form as the entirety of who you are, it's rather straightforward that we could pinpoint the fact that it is so transient, it is so impermanent, every chala, every moment, it's changing, it's new, and so this idea of impermanence, ergo, in a longer, broader perspective, they know self in terms of the physical being, it's easier to unbind ourselves from an attachment like this than it is to an attachment to a no thing, the no self, the emptiness, the void, because there isn't a definition that is accurate or that suffices. And so to be attached to some phantom idea of which one has no really understanding Because when we say empty, when we say no self, we end up with this exists and does not exist duality. And what I like a number of times, a sort of verbal jujitsu done by the Zen masters is instead of saying it exists and it does not exist, they would say a thing like it does not exist and does not not exist. So it never reinforces the exists, right?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think that isn't that the journey of Zen? It doesn't ever leave you on stable ground to stand on because you might grow roots there and be stuck there. You might make that your new boundary, the extent of knowledge, right? So the Zen masters are very good at uprooting you, shaking the ground beneath your feet and letting you know, hey, buddy. There's a lot more out there than you think. Don't be stuck there, right?
SPEAKER_03:It's funny that you bring that up because someone recently said, oh, you're right up. It's a stale water agitator. And are you supposed to be, you know, are we supposed to be trying to make our minds peaceful and calm and things? No, not always. This is not a one-trick pony. When we need agitation, meaning if we stalled out in our journey, if we just sat down on your laurels of wherever your current level of understanding is, then we need agitation. We need to be agitated. And I think a good teacher does just that. When you are in turmoil and chaos, they pacify. And when you are stale and kind of lazy... then a little bit of prodding and a little bit of the proverbial Zen stick comes out. So this idea of no self, or this question, if there is no self, what is love?
SPEAKER_01:And that is the attachment to no self. Right. Which becomes a whole other disease
SPEAKER_03:within a disease, right? Yeah. So I would like to say, if... How to start, maybe, a better place to start than this idea of no self. It's alluring, it's interesting, it's maybe mystical in a sense, so there's a draw to it. But I would suggest that if one knows what one ought not to do and yet does it, or if one knows what one ought to do and does not do it. The business of no self ought to be left alone. If in our day-to-day lives, and in our kind of regular activities, if you will, if we have acquired the wisdom and the knowledge to know, ah, this should be done, I understand that this is a good thing, I should do the good thing, but I don't. Or, ah, I now understand that these things that I was doing are no longer good, but I still keep doing them. there's much more discovery to be made regarding the self. So the no self is a far, far away land and a business that is very far away. And so this idea of no self, there's a, we have to understand the self And if it turns out that the self that we understood to be the self is false, we at least inspected that thing. And to just jump straight onto some no self thing with no characteristics, et cetera, et cetera, in my opinion, it is a wrong direction to go. Plus, this idea of the pursuit of no self is this ironic sort of flex, The self-flex of understanding no-self is the intellectualization. It's that...
SPEAKER_01:I think it's... Don't some intellectuals in the world of Zen like to refer to the emptiness as a means by which they can just almost show off... their transcendent knowing, just to pierce beyond, okay, you're talking about this, where I'm gonna take you into the realm of the beyond, and then look at
SPEAKER_03:me,
SPEAKER_01:I know more
SPEAKER_03:than you know. And this is an unfortunate thing, and whenever there is some spiritual, well, there's abuse by spiritual figures, and usually the claims are, oh, I have transcendent flesh, it couldn't be. that I'm interested in a person on a sexual level. And so it is a... Leave it. Find out who you are. Find out the first thing. And at the end of the journey, at the end of self-discovery, we do arrive at, well, this isn't the self I was looking for. At least we have covered ground and we know the thing that is or isn't. But just to kind of skip over the whole... gamut of experience and training, actually. Remember those t-shirts that we
SPEAKER_01:used to
SPEAKER_03:make? Didn't we have one? There's attachment to non-attachment to attachment to still attachment.
SPEAKER_01:At the end of the equation. That
SPEAKER_03:was a t-shirt we made. Attachment to non-attachment to attachment to still
SPEAKER_01:attachment. Well, I have a joke. Why don't Buddhists vacuum in the corners? That's right. Because they have no attachments,
SPEAKER_03:right? Yes, such dirty homes
SPEAKER_01:they have. Yes, yes. I think there's a wisdom that, of course, we always have to refer back to. So on a practical level, can't we use both aspects to create the rail guards or to understand the territory in which we're trying to survey and better understand? For example... There's a Buddhist saying or a Zen saying where they say, I see the cup as already broken. Well, in the here and now, right? If you offer me a drink and you give it to me in a cup, how odd would I be? Would I think I'm high and mighty if I say, no, no, no, don't give me that. Water, I'm thirsty, I'm dying of thirst, but I see the cup as already broken, so I won't take the drink right now. This is to... This is mumyong, this is ignorance. This is to now apply a condition that doesn't exist. This is just your ego functioning to show off some knowledge or some intellect that doesn't even exist in the here and now. Now that is one side, right? Don't cross beyond that. If you have a cup and you need to drink water, use it. But then what is the other side? What is the other rail guard or the other boundary that can provide us with some wisdom in our day-to-day life. Well, if you're passing me the cup and the cup falls and the cup breaks, don't lose yourself, don't lose your mind. Then you can apply that wisdom and understand, ah, breakable things break.
SPEAKER_03:I
SPEAKER_01:think this is the healthy balance that is so difficult for people to accomplish because of cheap-chuck attachment or ego that wants to just show off this high and mighty knowledge, right? What is it, oftentimes some schools of Zen, I forgot the phrase right now, when they talk in meditation language, I forgot the Korean term right now, when they, and it reminds me of that story where I think there was- Sonmun Dap. Sonmun Dap, yeah. The use of that in the day-to-day, again, it's just not functional. You can't communicate with, I think there was a- I call that a spiritual weirdo. A Sonmun
SPEAKER_03:Dap. A spiritual weirdo. That would be a spiritual
SPEAKER_01:weirdo. There's that story, right? I think there was a Tibetan monk and a, and a Korean Zen monk that practiced Sun Woon Dap, and I think the Korean Zen monk kept asking the Tibetan monk, he had an orange in his hand, he said, what is that? And then the Tibetan monk would say it's an orange, and it wasn't acceptable for the, he wanted some, pierce the veil and tell me some words from the beyond. What is that? It's an orange. And then I think the end of the punchline was the Tibetan monk leaned over to the host and said, has this guy never seen an orange before? They
SPEAKER_03:don't have oranges in Korea? Right, yeah. Something like that, yes. So I call these bumper sticker slogans. Yes. And so... The know-self, just love yourself. Love yourself. So to know thyself is to love thyself. We have to consider this, everybody's definition of love is so vastly different, and there are so many types of love. There's the love of a parent to a child. There's a love of one parent towards another. There's a love of self. There's a love of a good cup of coffee. There's a love of this. There's a love of that. There's a greedy love and jealous love. There's unconditional love. And love is a two-sided coin. I have to remember that because how frequently, unfortunately do we see pre and post divorce complete overhaul of the perspective that a person has on the other. They've loved them so much 10 minutes ago. and the divorce comes and now what love becomes is hate. And we have to understand emotions. Love and hate in terms of their power, we could take a lot of various other emotions and sweep them under the headings of love and hate. So this idea of love as a only pleasant experience, as the only kind of this lovely thing. People who have been in love know you could love somebody so much that it hurts.
SPEAKER_01:So it's a torturous. People feel a broken heart. Torture by love. They've had heart attacks after that, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:You know, and it's when you have a child and some people feel that overwhelming love for their pet, They want to eat it. I just could eat your face. And it's this almost very visceral kind of violence that comes like you really want to give them a hug until you strangle them. And so, so much in terms of the emotional spectrum of human experience is on one end we have love, on the other one we have hate. And they can both be troublesome when out of balance. And so this love's duality as love and hate being two sides of the same coin, it is a binding element when we think of the, well, when we think of the cycle of reincarnation for one. The thing you hate so feverishly, and the thing you hate so feverishly, that's why we say don't, hate anything. And people say, well, I hate cockroaches. Well, think about it. Be careful. In the time of passing, all of the superficially acquired karmic imprints are overridden by that which is really impactful and usually really impactful on our emotional state. So the thing you really, really hate... You forget everything, but you forget the thing you've really hated your whole life, or you forget the thing you really loved your whole life. And it may seem like, well, you know, then I'm reunited with the... It's not that simple.
SPEAKER_01:But with hatred, there's a magnetic pull there towards the object of hatred. So that... object, that person, that situation, whatever is that you hate, lives inside of your psyche. There's a very strong imprint there. As is with love. As is with love. But some people think, oh, I love someone, and that's okay for it to live within my heart. The hatred, I hate this thing. I hate it so much I want to get rid of it. But what they don't understand is when they enter an emotional state of hatred, you're By definition, not getting rid of it. You're actually creating a very strong imprint. There's a magnetic pull. Literally, I used to see this with high school kids when they had a gripe, when they had a conflict with each other. I would walk with, let's say, a student into the cafeteria. There'd be a thousand kids doing a million different things and talking noise. And this person would be like, there she is. That, you know what? I'm like, there's who? Who? I was like, what? There's a million people in there. No, there she is right there. She's looking right at me. Out of a thousand people in the crowd, her mind magnetically was pulled to that object of hatred. That person lived in their psyche. They couldn't get rid of them. And so... And people have killed people in the name of
SPEAKER_03:love. So all we're saying, we're not saying that love... Okay? Before the keyboard start clicking in the comments,
SPEAKER_01:balance. We have to identify the pitfalls. We have to identify the shadows. So you can understand the whole and how to extract a healthy, balanced type of love. That is the point.
SPEAKER_03:You know, when I first started studying with my unsanim, our unsanim, but... I, as many people, had these very bumper sticker slogans seared into my brain because I've read a lot at the time and adhered and attached a lot to these slogans that I've done no inspection of. There's no nuance. It was just, you know, gobbled up as it were. And Our Insanim has three children. And one time we're sitting there and he's reading something and I'm sitting, you know, we spent so much time together. Sometimes me just barraging him with questions incessantly of all possible sorts. And sometimes we just sat quietly because nothing organically came to be. But one time we're sitting there and I say, Insanim. He goes, hmm. You have three children. I've read somewhere, as we say, that the length of every relationship in our lives has been cultivated over a course of eons. And so the relationship between siblings is stronger than that between parents. meaning in the past lives, they have cultivated this relationship for a longer period of time. And all this whole list of relationships, if you eat with the person at the same table, then you've lived in the same village, that kind of thing. If you've taken a long trip, a hiking trip or some kind of a journey with the person, then you've lived with them or you've known, you've cultivated the relationship for X amount of 3,000 eons. And at the bottom of the list, the longest cultivated relationship was the relationship between between the disciple and the master. And so loaded this into my brain, I ask. So over there, it says that relationship between is the one that's longest cultivated. You have three children. Who do you love more? I have no shame in saying this. I have no... I've really, I guess, had taken the idea of an unsa and a sangja relationship. I have no shame in asking any questions. Right, because it's, I
SPEAKER_01:wanna learn. Right, if you wanna learn, it brings benefit to yourself and others too. Yeah. And so my
SPEAKER_03:ego and shame and whatever, I set all of that aside as best as I could. And so I would ask absurd, perhaps absurd questions, but it wasn't, right? It was a question that I had. And, you know, as masters do, the most brilliant answer came back. So- We have to understand the gravity of this, right? I'm asking a father of three children, grown by then, but, you know, and then I'm just his student. Right. The just is not the right word here because, yeah, the relationship between unsa and a sangja is something really special. But to kind of throw that at somebody, it's sort of heartless.
SPEAKER_01:Sure.
SPEAKER_03:And, you know, against the social norm and the social grain, but I don't care. I don't care. Who do you love more, me or your children? And he goes, I love each one of you enough. Yes. Game over. Checkmate. And this is such a simple and yet such a, I thought, brilliant answer because what one needs is not what another one needs. So not only is it what is enough, what is the correct amount, so it's not some manic kind of love, and also what is then, for each individual case, each individual basis, you know, it's, and then it changes, it's a floating thing. So you have two children, right, you don't love one more than you love the other, but if one is sick, they get more attention So one could say in the moment of weakness or sickness, more love is poured onto the one that is sick and that needs attention, but that doesn't take away the love for the other one. It's just in
SPEAKER_01:the time. This really takes into account human rights, the human rights of each individual, because the concept of enough, in order to understand that, you have to really understand the individual. and understand what are the things in which they need, when they need it, and how much is satisfactory to them. Because so many times, in the act of love, it's egocentric. How many times do you see children being spoiled or children being suffocated and smothered by love? Because one of two things. A misunderstanding of more is better, which we know It's like medicine or Tylenol or anything, just because you take more. You could
SPEAKER_03:turn yellow from
SPEAKER_01:taking too much vitamin C. It doesn't mean it gives you a more potent effect, right? There's a therapeutic range. So even if you're hugging someone, I mean, I've seen kids get hugged to death. Strangled. Strangled, basically. Constricted love. And then sometimes the act of giving love is you're not doing it to give enough love. love to the other person, there's some emptiness inside of the individual. So it's a selfish act where they're doing it to fulfill themselves. And again, there's this correlation or there's this interconnection between two people when there's a point of contact. But when it's solely for me, then you're not gonna take into account the other person's condition. Are they tired? Are they fatigued? Do they have a headache? Maybe they don't want to receive a hug right now. So we have to understand that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so what we have, what is self-love? Can you love yourself? How to love yourself? Can you love a thing or another? Is loving yourself just becoming love? I was asked once And this is one of those questions where it's a question, but behind the question, there's a sort of what we call a challenge question. One person asked me, we talk so much about compassion and Zen and life and the need for it. How much compassion do you have for me? Well, having had the teacher that I had, I did my jujitsu. And it's true, right? I asked, how much can you handle? Right? Because that's the thing. These are the philosophical questions that we throw, but they're not real questions. Or if they are real questions, then it is a real answer. Yes. How much can you handle? Like you said, pouring too much onto a person can be overwhelming. And that's what we get then is smothering love. And there are cases where under the pretext of love, smothering love can cripple a child. Cripple, it can destroy relationships. So it absolutely needs some balance. So I would say that the other thing to consider in terms of self-love is that self-love is first and foremost self-honesty. And it means self-knowing. If you know yourself, you could love yourself. If you don't know yourself, you can't love yourself. You don't know how. You don't know what kind of love it needs, et cetera, et cetera. But also this honesty element is... self-love has become and self-care has become this, like I said, bumper sticker slogan. And without nuance, without wisdom, they can very well become poisonous things. Because one could say self-love or self-care, without this true honesty that one has with oneself, it could become laziness and complacency. I need self-care, I need self-love, I need self-care, so I'm gonna run away from responsibilities of life. And we're not talking, to those listening, we're not talking about where you really, I'm not being dismissive of psychological need for love, emotional need for self-care, I'm sorry, and we need that, but we have to be honest with the timing of it. Sometimes it's very easy for kind of laziness to be like, oh, I need self-love, so I'm not going to do a responsibility that I need to tend to under the guise of self-care and self-love. So there's an element of honesty that's very much... Because we could become... Avoidance becomes a thing where you run away from... from whatever situation. And sometimes you need the time out for yourself. Sometimes you need the self care. Sometimes you need the same love, self love. But sometimes if that becomes avoidance of a situation, then, then it's going to be there when you come back. And it's like these grading papers or, or sifting through bills or through your mail. It's just keeps on building and building and building. And you can't, tend to it ever then, because it becomes such an overwhelming pile that then it becomes something that you're absolutely being overwhelmed with. But initially, if we have the self-honesty of what self-love I need, we have to also be honest with ourselves that am I being avoidant? Am
SPEAKER_01:I avoiding being lazy? Am I using the idea of self-love as like a loophole to be lazy? and just say, oh, I'm just loving myself. I'm not gonna get off my couch, right? So I think with anything, this can go back to this concept of enough. Everything has to have an understanding of when is it enough? And in order to know when it's enough, you have to have those two things you're talking about, honesty and self-awareness, self-knowledge, right? Because- Love thyself, love thyself. Yes, right? If you have a cup, and you have an amount of water that you wanna pour into it, you have to understand the measurements. If you have a 12 ounce cup and you wanna put a gallon of water, that's just not gonna match. It's gonna overflow and you're gonna, there's gonna be spillover, you're gonna lose so much water in that act. And so yeah, so I think that people need to be self-aware of their limitations, just like charging a cell phone. Any action that is good, you have to understand the causes and conditions for it to be good. If your cell phone is low on battery, plug it in and charge it. But then I believe in the electronic field, there's this understanding that if you just leave your battery charging, you start to damage it.
SPEAKER_02:Right,
SPEAKER_01:that certainly was the case at one point in time. I don't know if it is that way today, but I think the idea stands to what I'm saying. It's like, okay, I'm going to sit on my couch to rest. You're going to recharge. But then when your body's recharged and it's time to get up and do something, if you continue to sit on the couch, that which was beneficial to you now becomes damaging to you, right? It's also the same way with a cast. When an arm is broken, you put on a cast. You can't use that. and your muscles actually become, they get atrophy. But when that's healed and you keep the cast there, it's now, you're creating a hindrance and actually creating long-term damage. What was once therapeutic becomes now terrible and a hindrance for
SPEAKER_03:your health. So we have to make sure that our self-love is honest and that it's not also selfish. Because self-love, selfishness could very well, if that's my way of selfishness, any new avenue that I could exploit, I will. And so self-care and self-love can very easily be exploited by a selfish nature of a human being. you know, that I need to tend to myself. And again, this is, we're talking balance. We're not saying it doesn't exist. You know, I hope that's clear. But, you know, a hungry cannibal in his attempt for self-care will eat you. Right? So... There is an element of self-care, and usually when we talk about self-care, it's this, we have to tend to myself first, and that is true. You have to tend to yourself so that you're able to tend to the world and tend to others in need, et cetera, et cetera. Again, it's this balance idea must be present, as is this idea of, so we have how to, How to love yourself. And in terms of techniques, there's slew, and I think what we frequently end up talking about are principles and not so much in terms of techniques, because certain situations require, we really have to know what exactly is the story to give advice to a person, well, you know,
SPEAKER_01:to
SPEAKER_03:customize it.
SPEAKER_01:Right, there... Therefore, I wanna now plug, because it goes along with this, we have Teva to Abbott, or you have therapy with me if you can get through my waiting list. But those are the moments or opportunities for us to get to know more of the details and offer you some specific techniques to remedy whatever situation you're going through.
SPEAKER_03:So. And I bring this up to say that self-care can also, so how to care for yourself, I would say one big element is that We have to have confidence, confidence and respect for oneself. And again, these words just on their own can mean so many things and they're subjects to being twisted a bit, not in the direction that I mean them. And how I mean them is confidence means know myself, know my level of understanding, know my capacities and act out of that with confidence, which is different than pride. And I believe we've mentioned
SPEAKER_01:that in another
SPEAKER_03:episode. This idea, there's a difference between pride, which is overextending oneself, overdoing, doing too much. So self-care means have confidence in yourself where you are. And honesty, then again, honesty is going to come into play here.
SPEAKER_01:To add to confidence, remember out there that comparisons are the thieves of your confidence, right? People that often tend to compare themselves usually is they engage in what they call the upward comparison, leaving themselves feeling like there's some kind of deficit or feeling inadequate. And I tell people about the flowers. So if you're in a field of yellow flowers and there's a red flower, it grows, thrives, releases its scent into, it's got its own beauty. It's beautiful, unique. It does not, even though it's surrounded by yellow flowers, it doesn't now submerge back into the dirt because I'm different than everyone else. So understand who you are. Understand, again, your capacity. Don't go beyond that. Don't overextend yourself. But within the space in which you feel comfortable, where you feel some sense of mastery or expertise, Let that radiate out into the world.
SPEAKER_03:And
SPEAKER_01:don't let comparisons rob and steal your confidence.
SPEAKER_03:That's right. Self-love is self-knowing, self-knowledge, self-understanding. It's going to be a big element in your whatever the expression of self-love that you're going to have. With that then comes an element of a measure of honesty. So self-honesty, you have to be honest whether your self-care regimen and your self-love regimen really is what it presents itself to be. Or has it become some kind of a way to get out and do something that in the end actually ends up not being productive and not being helpful and healthful and it's going to undermine something.
SPEAKER_01:And I think when you're not being honest or genuine with yourself, in whatever activity you're trying to perform, if you're trying to, let's say, pretend that you're a black belt in martial arts or pretend that you're a doctor or a surgeon or a teacher, after some time, and especially if you're around people that are all of those things that I just mentioned, the truth will come to the surface. Yeah. and people will discover very quickly that you're not being honest and you're not being genuine. And so their love for you will very quickly diminish. So there has to be a sense of self-honesty there in order for you to be your genuine self, in order for you to thrive within the space of the skills that you have developed for yourself. What has been your input throughout all of these years. Don't try to put feathers on and pretend you're a chicken. Very quickly. It does not make you a chicken. And people will notice. Sure.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so let's go through this list. What is self-love? In my opinion, self-love is self-knowledge. If you understand yourself, you can love yourself. They are almost the same. because you've taken the time to look into self, you've taken the time to inspect yourself, to spend time with yourself, so I think one, and of course
SPEAKER_01:two. And I have to say, meditation is a great tool to use to unravel all of these steps that you're about to delineate for the world. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. So that is self-love. Can you love yourself? Absolutely. You ought to. You should.
SPEAKER_01:You must. And psychology says that. We understand that people that have this inner voice that's very harsh and very critical, guess what? When they look at others, they're going to lash out at them. They're going to judge them with the same mind in which they judge themselves. We have that phrase, right? Grumpy old man. A grumpy old man, how do they treat other people? They repel other people. You look at the movie, old school movie with Jack Nicholson, As Good As It Gets. It's a classic. And he had OCD and every time he sat down to eat, he was very harsh and very nasty to the waitress. And then when the waitress got to know him and dug into his life, she was able to peel back the onion and she knew that he was really suffering. But when she touched his heart and his heart evolved, she was able to get some compassion out of him. The moment in time where there was this cathartic experience for Jack Nicholson in that movie was when he was able to conjure up these words, you make me want to be a better man. Then his life changed. But he had a very thick shell, a very, very thick skin, not allowing anyone to get in. And all that he showed was anger and resentment because that's the way he felt inside. And that's what he projected out into the world. And all he did was repel. Relationships didn't allow anyone to get close, except for that one heroic waitress that was able to get there and touch his heart. So yeah, so loving thyself is gonna, having a good positive relationship with yourself doesn't end there. It then, like everything we talk about, there's a spillover effect that's gonna radiate out into the world.
SPEAKER_03:The other element of love, self-love and self-care is also self-respect. And Again, these words could mean so many things. What I mean in this case is if you make a plan, as many do for, let's say, the New Year's resolutions.
SPEAKER_01:Ah, yes.
SPEAKER_03:If you make a plan, you know, like an engagement, like let's say you and I decide let's go to eat.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:and we've made a plan, and something comes up, of course, we have to then, it's like, listen, it didn't work out, I'm sorry, but we try to honor that. So the honor and respect, mutual respect for another person is seen as a understandable way of living in the world. What of the promises that we make to ourselves that we violate? How little then we could say, of self-respect do we have? If we make a promise to myself and I violate that promise to myself, I would never do that to another person to the degree and the ways in which I do it to myself. That is absence of self-love. So respecting yourself enough to, that if you've made up your mind, you've made a decision that you want to do something and you stick to it, it's also an element of self-love because you have to respect yourself. So yes, you can love yourself, and these are the ways. How to love yourselves, we've talked about that. Can you love a thing or another? Absolutely, we do it all the time. How to love a thing or another? Enough. Love it enough. Love it in a way that it wants to be loved. Don't impose your love. Don't imprison. Don't smother.
SPEAKER_01:Try to understand and have compassion for their experiences because their experiences have shaped their concept or idea of what is love. And so when you understand that, you know how to feed them that love.
SPEAKER_03:And there's another question here that says, or is love... is loving yourself just becoming love. And this is kind of one of those, you just melt into the great thing that is love. And well, I would propose that one melts into oneself entirely and completely. The self-discovery entirely and completely will lead to We hear so frequently, God is love and those type of things, but that term love in that case is, again, so many definitions of it. It's more, because if we look at the sort of Judeo-Christian principle, right, then if you're The biblical God, and if you're picking up sticks on the Sabbath, then it's kind of off with your head. So if God is love, but God is also jealous God, as we read. So the terms really have to be defined of what we mean by that. So is loving somebody just us becoming love? I think it's too reductionary. But we lack the language to... express what it is that we're trying to express. So we shuffle through the dictionary and we find, well, this one is suitable. And what we get is these terms and these words and these names for things. You know, for all the 84,000 sutras, how many terms are used to describe... Consciousness or mind or heart or self or tamna or your true nature or your essence or your womb of enlightenment. There's countless words because today this is more suitable in the context. But there really, so many of them are used interchangeably, but we have in the language. And so we do the same thing. You had brought up the Rumi... And there is a poem, and perhaps we're close with it, just because. I
SPEAKER_01:actually read this poem at my sister's wedding.
SPEAKER_03:It is a, well, let Rumi speak for himself. A lover asked his beloved, do you love yourself more than you love me? Beloved replied, I have died to myself, and I live for you. I've disappeared from myself and my attributes. I am present only for you. I've forgotten all my learnings, but from knowing you, I've become a scholar. I've lost all my strength, but from your power, I am able. I love myself. I love you. I love you. I love myself. This translation doesn't do it now that I read it. I believe the last lines are, if I love you, I love myself. If I love myself, I love you. It was another translation. Obviously, Rumi's work is translated. This topic of love and the subject of love and its various, various expressions we tend, in the Zen tradition, we tend to go with compassion more than love. We view love as this, that there is this dual thing, the other side of it is hate, and hate can become love, and love can become a hate, and there's this transformative, volatile kind of possibility there. Whereas compassion, we could say compassion is a love, with a dose of wisdom. And so it balances it. And so we end up then with this idea of, well, what is love? And we've talked about that. Can you love yourself? And we've talked about it. If you pinch of wisdom to each one of those, they become balanced states. If they are not, if one doesn't understand oneself, then we are at a danger. And The self-discovery is an act of love in this context, if we want to talk about that. As far as that last bit, and the first one that we've addressed, namely, if there's no self, what's love? Tend to yourself. Yes, please. I would say, tend to yourself. Even if it's a transient self, even if it's a self that is not the ultimate greatest self, but this is the self that we have right now. So tend
SPEAKER_01:to it. Right, but I just want to really fast refer back to Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha. Because remember on his journey, he initially started with a chit-chat, an attachment to the idea of no self, because masochism was the... torture the body in order to find this great enlightenment. And he followed that path to where he only ate like a grain of rice a day. He can touch his stomach and feel his backbone. And then that's when he had his first initial great enlightenment. And in the movies such as Little Buddha, you'll hear a boy with his grandfather on the river passing by saying, if you leave the rope, they had a lute. which is like a little guitar. And the grandfather's teaching the grandson how to play it. And he says, if you leave the string too slack, it will not play. If you tie the string too tight, it will snap. And then that's where he got it. He had his great enlightenment, which we say, it is the house of natural law. So we can't dismiss it. Don't throw it away. Love yourself. Maybe the greater self is beyond it, but It includes. Instead of saying no self, it gives you the sensation of throwing this body away. But if it's a part of the self, if it's a part of you, it might not be the whole you. Don't let it become a limitation. But since it's a part of you, it's your vehicle, the house of your spirit, tend to it. Don't leave your house dirty. Don't leave your house a mess.
SPEAKER_03:If the experience of the true self or the, as some people would say, the no self, is in the tomorrow, but you don't tend to the today, this is for end of eternity will go like this. That's why tend to yourself. Love yourself. Know thyself is to love yourself. Be honest in your self-love. Balance it out.
SPEAKER_01:Have respect.
SPEAKER_03:have respect for yourself, understanding for yourself, and then that practice of visiting those things upon oneself also means visiting those things upon others in our lives, close or far. To that end, my name is Myung Han Sunim. Take care of yourselves and each other. Until
SPEAKER_01:next time. I'm Dr. Reuben Lambert, from my heart to yours. Remember to subscribe and like, and if you like what you hear, pass it on to somebody else. Help spread the word. Thank you. Thank you.