We don’t see the cheetah chasing down, killing and eating the delicate gazelle as an act of love but that may be because our understanding of ‘love’ is so limited. Nature may be itself, the manifestation of love. We as ‘self’ are outsiders (“ where self is, love is not”) but our possibility, as you say, maybe is to know it… the “Immensity”.
The important thing is to remember the first rule : do no harm. and to follow that as best we can. Working out what love means is optional.
But those that are searching for meaning might want to consider the question “what determines meaning?”
Granted it would be a good rule for humans to follow like, ‘ love thy neighbor as thy self’. But hasn’t the “harm” already been done with the presence of the ‘self’? K has said and it makes sense, that the killing will stop only when you see that you ARE the other. So the original harm (or sin) may lie in clinging to this illusory ‘me and mine’ out of fear of the unknown of losing it?
By practicing selective awareness, the conditioned brain does harm constantly, so trying to do no harm is futile and self-deceiving.
Theories that go against the practical realities of life are very impractical. These theories are hopefully easier for us to let go of. (not! unfortunately)
You are not free from cause and effect. Cause and effect trumps my understanding of the teachings.
Could you give a couple of examples of such theories? I don’t know what you’re referring to.
You are not free from cause and effect. Cause and effect trumps my understanding of the teachings.
Yes, but it’s better to know that I’ve trumped myself than to believe I can do no harm.
Trying to do no harm is futile.(why? : because you live in this world)
I don’t see feeling anger as ‘doing harm’, as with the female tiger’s reaction: it flashed and it was over… The ‘harm’ is what thought can make of it afterwards, the ‘chewing it over’, the festering of it, the desire to hurt the other back, revenge, etc.
It’s the ‘watching’ of all that that keeps the ‘anger’ from spiraling, from becoming ‘harmful’.
Love, is seeing that the ‘other’ is you?
What’s the theory?
Living in this world, according to K, doesn’t mean one’s brain has to be self-centered.
Is that a theory?
It is until you or I have proven it to ourselves to be fact.
But ourselves are the problem. The self-centered brain can’t do anything that doesn’t perpetuate its self-centered condition, so unless it can do nothing, be silent, empty, choicelessly aware, it can’t cease to be self-centered.