Searching for thought on which to meditate this morning, I
was thumbing through my well-worn (falling apart, actually) copy of Jack
Kornfield’s Buddha’s Little Instruction
Book and came across a statement that really grabbed me. It said simply,
“There is the path of fear and the path of love. Which will you choose?” As I
began to contemplate this seemingly simplistic statement, it occurred to me
that much of the strife, political and otherwise, that we see all around us
relates strongly to this statement.
The path of fear manifests itself in many, many human
attitudes and actions. It is the path of
divisiveness and the path of exclusion. Choosing the path of fear, we believe
that we need to be sure we have unfettered access to guns so we can be armed
for the conflict and personal attacks that we are told are sure to be coming by
those who have also chosen fear. Called readiness by some, it is born of dark
imaginings about the intentions of our “enemies.” The path of fear is the path
of discrimination, bias and hatred for “the other”, whoever the other might be.
The path of fear causes us to see our relationship with others as some kind of
competition, whether those others are a different gender, a different race, a
different religion or a different socio-economic group; a competition in which
someone must lose (them) and someone must win (us). It is couched in the belief
that those who are unlike us are hell-bent on taking what we possess and
relegating us to some amorphous lesser status. It is couched in the belief that
who we are, how we worship, and who we choose to love are a threat to those
with whom we disagree. The path of fear teaches us to exclude all those people
and thoughts with which we take issue because if everyone is “like us” then we
have little to fear. The path of fear teaches us to grasp and accumulate
whatever we can to better our lot in life, rather than sharing resources to
better us all. The path of fear is one of hyper-vigilance and the result is
never to find tranquility or peace.
The path of love is a direct result of recognizing that we
are all one, that we are indeed our “brother’s keeper.” The path of love
teaches to be inclusive and celebrate the diversity of people and nature that
is all around us. The path of love causes us to seek the answers that will benefit
all living beings and the environment, rather than those that will allow us to
exploit each other and the earth. The path of love causes us to focus on our
similarities rather than our differences. It causes us to be willing to forego
judgment and to look for common ground. Dr. Albert Schweitzer believed that the
greatest human calling is service in benefit of our fellow human beings. It is
only the path of love that leads us to that service, whether it be small acts
of ordinary kindness or great acts of philanthropy. To choose the path of love
is to choose to spend our lives in harmony with the world and people around us,
rather than in discord and distrust. On the path of love we recognize the
Buddha-nature (some would call it the spark of the divine) in each person with
whom we come in contact, and therefore meet them in a place of peace. The path
of love is not without sorrow, but it is without hatred, and it allows for forgiveness
in place of anger or a desire for vengeance. It is the path to a sense of peace
and well-being that is simply not possible on the path of fear.
To quote one of my favorite poems, by Robert Frost, “I chose
the path less-travelled-by…and that has made all the difference.”
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