Only Love

Teach only love: 

clearly something isn't working, a failure on our most basic educational levels, that violence is a viable means of communicating social and emotional frustration and despair at their deepest and most savage point of expression. Our schools teach everything but how to navigate life in a meaningful, compassionate manner, leaving that aspect of life to family and religion. For some, maybe many, this has been a failure too, either a spiritual void in place where the teaching of love should be present, or a religion that pits believers of a one true faith against an enemy of all others. Politics and media are worse still, fueling division and stoking hate towards those who view the world in a different manner. Right now I'm reminded of a quote found in the spiritual texts A Course In Miracles - teach only love, for that is what you are. It seems a lesson we all need to remember. 

teach only love.

it's important to point out here that when I talk about education it's not about our school systems or teachers. Both my parents were educators, and truly this was their vocation, what they were clearly meant to do and their love for teaching children was the underlying aspect of their careers. Teachers provide the foundation from which our entire lives will rise from. No job is more important. For nearly every educator I believe that what they teach is already an expression of love, easily shown through their devotion to their role, opening a young mind to an entire world of learning. At a young age I was taught and continuously encouraged to be curious, a simple lesson that shapes me to this day. Curiosity is the means to explore and love the world, appreciating all that's different than what we know and hold familiar. That one lesson, to be curious and open, offered by so many teachers through the years, it was teaching love at its purest, deepest essence. 

but something isn't working, our culture is broken, guns are worshiped as a fundamental right, and our lives are seen as being worse less than the anger and fear of feeling threatened. This is a failure of education, and again at the most basic level of our own communication. How I respond to you is a vital part of education, an opportunity to teach only love, and it is taught through listening, appreciation for what others might offer, empathy and compassion to bridge the gulf between us. The most fundamental point of education has little to do with schools and everything to do with our own communication. This is on us. No one else will save the world, and surely it is threatened.

teach only love. 

for me, this is why I decided to teach meditation, my own clear vocation, a dharma path displayed to heal myself and others. It's just a moment of peace, nothing more really, and yet so much ripples outward  from this point of stillness. Early Zen Master Dogen taught that meditation wasn't a path towards enlightenment, but that it was enlightenment itself expressed through the act of simply sitting, that we embody the heart of the Buddha every moment on the cushion. And there we have an act of love, an act of utter faith that we are already enlightened and an expression of love right now, this very moment and nothing more is needed but to be it's demonstration. We are all teachers, and as Sufi poet Hafiz claimed, the subject tonight is love, and tomorrow night as well. What we teach...

is only love.

~

Peace, Eric