Opposites

To understand Love, we must understand the opposites.

Love is often an opposite of either fear, hatred and evil. But Love has no opposite. Fear is the opposite of courage, hatred is the opposite of forgiveness, and evil is often the opposite of good. Courage and forgiveness are both transcendent quality of Love, where they represent Love as a direct experience. Good and Evil are, on the other hand, not really opposites at all. This problem can be understood through the two kinds of opposites. In the truth of Love, we will see that there is a thin line that separates the the nature of opposites: either opposites are complementing or opposing.

Complementing opposites are basically natural: light and dark, hot and cold, high and low, hard and soft. They are all part and whole of this reality. Nothing separates them except in our minds. The experience of complementing opposite is what most spiritual teachings call Oneness.

Oneness is the ultimate sense of unity. It is deep beneath the physical reality we see. It is the essence of connectedness, no matter how different people, things and events may be. In Oneness, opposites do not oppose; rather, they are always one and the same. They are in the same spectrum. Darkness is simply absence of Light, and Coldness is simply absence of Heat. In absence, we define presence and vice versa. At first this would be mind-boggling, but we will further understand this when we understand the next kind of opposite.

Opposing opposites are distorted view of the opposite, an experience we often call Separation.The ultimate separation ingrained in our beliefs is the opposition of good and evil. From here, all natural opposites seem to be always at war with each other: Black versus white, superior versus inferior, strong versus weak, rich versus poor, man versus woman. We have always believed this illusion that it has perpetuated a culture of survival of the fittest. We destroy each other because we both believe the other is an enemy rather than a friend, or we see ourselves more righteous than others. We have become self-centered creatures that our only survival is our concern. This primal instinct has wiped the dinosaur species millions of years ago.

Seeing beyond the opposites leads us to an awakened soul. We would not see that the mind and body are separate, more so of seeing God and humanity. There is no more rift between two opposites, only understanding them as two expressions of the same essence. Deepak Chopra, the poet-prophet of mind/body medicine, says that "good is the union of all opposites; evil does not exist." As we operate on this consciousness, we would never identify evil as the great opponent of good. Good is the all-encompassing circle that includes all opposites that naturally mirror each other. No more enemies. No more evil.

But why do we still think in opposites. One reason: because the nature of Love is completely whole that it cannot be experienced without a conscious mind that can experience it.

Think of a flower. A flower is perfect in itself. It behaves on its own reality without the need of other flowers' appreciation. But a flower is not conscious of its own existence. We, human beings who are conscious of our own, cannot escape the reality of being conscious of others' existence, be it a fellow human, living beings such as plants, animals, and inanimate things such as nature, heavenly bodies. With this consciousness, we see the flower, appreciate and give name to it. This is the experience of seeing the flower, as if the flower experiences itself through us.


Because of this consciousness, we sense our reality as if separate from us, an illusion most thinkers call duality. I am here, you are there. Kahlil Gibran, the poet-mystic author of The Prophet once said: "Is not the mountain far more awe-inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the mountain?" By being down here, we can see the mountain up there. If we are up in the mountain, we cannot see the mountain at all.

This is why opposites exists, not to separate us from everything that exists, but to be conscious of all of them. Love is infinite in many ways, expresses in different forms, and how Love does it is a mystery to all of us. And these seemingly separate expressions of Love, be it in words, deeds, objects, persons, creatures, arts, etc., are all but same manifestation of this Oneness.

This is why opposites exist not to separate us from everything that exists, but to be conscious of all of them.

A man is naturally a man, and his experience is different from that of a woman. They are different forms of the same species: homo sapiens aka human beings. Can we really say that their nature is opposing? How can another human being be born without a man-woman sexual union? It is because of their difference--opposite--that they can complement each other, and their unity bears another creation, or material unfolding of Love that remains intangible and invisible.

It is in this sense of Separation that we can appreciate this sense of Oneness. And the irony is that It is because of this Separation that our consciousness seem to contradict itself. This is known to many as paradox. Christ himself has taught paradoxical teachings, of which loving your enemies is the most well-known. In the realm of separation, truth will naturally contradict in the form of paradox because each opposite can embody the truth of another. Paradoxes are so universal and natural that it traverses all systems of thought. Our notion of opposing opposites tells us to take sides, yet the realization of complementing opposites tells us that we cannot--choosing one means choosing the other. As one meditation teacher puts it, you cannot choose the right wing of a bird more important than the left one. Both of them are important.

Now, we can refresh our ways of seeing opposites. In a paradoxical manner, I am you, and you are me. We both have this same human experience and both of us seek to embody what Love is. So long as we seek for Oneness, through intentions of cooperation, collaboration and participation, rather than competition, domination and manipulation, we are materializing the possibility of Love to exist in our lives, not just a concept, but a true and tangible existence.

Inner Knowing

"But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." --Book of Matthew

Our lives are full of uncertainties. These uncertainties are the result of suffering. We grapple our ways towards many fixations, of making life more secure and comfortable. We have sought ways in which we can stabilize the flow of life through the best ways we know, be it money or job or some sort of meaningful task or endeavor. We always make sure that whatever that is uncertain, which we always fear, must vanish through our efforts of creating a life that is more predictable and measurable. We often design ourselves like cogs in a machine, following the gears of a mechanistic, fated universe. So whenever we encounter the opportunity to change, we often shun them away, or worse we dread them, for these are uncertain choices that do not fit our expectations and assumptions. My former classmate raised a question during our usual group conversations a few years ago: "What happens to our lives after college? We'll finish school, get a job, get married, have a family, have kids, send kids to school, travel places, collect things, shop and buy, yet what will happen next? It is as if our lives is just a cycle of repeating experiences. I guess there is more to life than just these things." Yes, there is more to life. This is for sure. Still, what we are always missing is the certainty, the decision, the courage to take the risk and dare to venture the uncharted wilderness of that more in our lives.

Uncertainty is not just a fact, it is the truth. Through this, we can be always certain that there is more to life. But too seek this more outside ourselves is a futile venture. Because whatever we find outside, paradoxically, is all inside of us. Within us is the power to find the immensity of life. Our very tool is our Soul's Inner Knowing. It is both our tool and our being. The Inner Knowing brings us to this core of awareness, of being deeply certain in the middle of countless uncertainties.

Our Inner Knowing is the sense of our Soul. It knows what it both knows and does not know. It is our connection to the mysteries of Life, to the things we are yet to experience, to the possibilities we desire to achieve. Our Inner Knowing cuts through our vague understanding and brings us to reexamine our decisions and choices, and leaves us a question: "Am I coming from Love?" We become aware through our Inner Knowing when we can sense that deep essence of Love, and we answer our life's puzzle through the test of doing and acting from that very Love. Within this Knowing, we discern the passion of our hearts, on how it wants to express and experience Life in the grandest way possible. Often, the world around us, and the people we know will find that our choices that come from Love will always be absurd. It is because Love never follows the standard of this world. It has its own Inner Knowing. This Inner Knowing is always sure of what it chooses. It is always an empowered choice. And it transforms our Life into its truest fulfillment.

This Inner Knowing is the Kingdom of God and Christ encourages us to tap into it. We could find it nowhere nor sooner. Because it is, in Christ words, within and among us. We never wait for it, for this Inner Knowing only knows that the only moment is this very moment where we can always give the world what our Soul can offer, and that is Love. So we must stop seeking it elsewhere or waiting for tomorrow to let the Inner Knowing come. The here and now is the best time and place we can Love.

And it what ways this Inner Knowing knows and does Love? Our Inner Knowing knows Love if we stop judging and comparing ourselves with others. It does Love if we stop worrying of whatever happened in the past and will happen in the future. There is no Soul better than us, except the illusion that we are being compared and measured. These illusions stop us to acknowledge our Inner Knowing, but remind us that it is there. Soul has no time to wait, for there is really no time at all. In timelessness of the Inner Knowing, we have already achieve our desires, what we just need to do is to recognize them that we do. It is so obvious, but we think our Inner Knowing is still unknown because whatever unknown must be feared of. Fear of the unknown prevents us to seek this mystery, of diving to this overwhelming dimension of our Inner Knowing, of this Love within. Thus the paradox: the more we look for some known goal we are badly obsessed to grab, the more we lose our chance of being aware of the blessings that is right in front of us.

This Inner Knowing is the door leading to our awareness. Once we become aware, we are less afraid of what we don't know. Delving to this unknown, to this mystery of Life is the first step to our own transcendence. Life, however predictable it may seem to be, is no longer reduced into redundant routines. Each experience, even if it is so mundane and ordinary, becomes a sacred moment, where Love radiates into being. We can do things with Love, even as simple as washing the dishes or riding a bus. This awareness of Love moment to moment is the Inner Knowing that knows itself being known, and allows itself to be known in its most unknown and unlikely manner. It directs us into the state what our Soul really is. Inner Knowing is always sure and never fails to be sure, because the only thing that is exact to it is the certitude of Love.

In the unfathomable depths of our being, we have always known our Inner Knowing. It only waits for us to choose to know. There is no other way. Once we do, whatever limited things we know about Love expands. We will finally know that Love and Inner Knowing are both the same. This is the ultimate knowing that finally puts our hearts at peace with Life, and our Soul in the womb of Love.

Paradox of Love

Truth is ultimately paradoxical. None of us can fashion any box of thought that can contain it. No one has any absolute power to make Truth absolute. The true nature of Truth both complements and contradicts itself. There is more to truth than what the eyes meet. There is more to how our senses interpret what we have always thought is real. Reality, after all, in Einstein's physics, is relative. Our own limited realities of Truth can disenchant us in a very drastic way, unless we open ourselves in realizing beyond how we have recognized and accepted them. If reality is dependent on what we choose, therefore, Truth follows suit. But it does not mean that its universality is compromised. Simply put, the Truth of how all Life organically grows is discovered through its DNA, and still the same structure of any DNA remains the same, but combines in infinite ways that makes many creatures different while expressing the same basic features and functions. Likewise, it is the Truth that every human being, despite cultural differences and beliefs, has always the same deep, inner perennial need: to Love and be Loved. If we humans find and express Love through many ways, labels and tools, the nature of Love remains the same.

How paradoxical is Truth? Since Love and Truth are just different words of the same essence that sets us free, why does the contradictory happens? Why are we still enslaved by the trappings of Truth and unable to discern the indescribable essence? To search for Truth is a great adventure, much as to experience Love. Going deeper beyond the surface of our own limitations can we be able to find how Truth and Love become clearly understandable. To understand them is to see the other side, what is unseen. Truth is always deceiving, until we let our inner Truth reveal itself.

This shows us how mind-boggling paradoxes are. The Western foundation of Logic has kept us thinking in terms of polarity: that anything has its opposite, and this opposite opposes the other; that anything has a category, a certain truth where anything can only belong, a compartment of reality that can never be lost. For instance, we have always believed that everything is solid, and categorized them accordingly. Yet our new physics tells us that everything is energy, nothing is solid. It puzzles us to comprehend this nature of reality, because however we can establish the Truth, it becomes more erratic and unstable within the dimension of our limited consciousness. Following Socrates' famous paradox, we can only know the Truth if we acknowledge that we really don't know it. It is only in darkness that one can see inner Light.

Christ foretold it: The Truth will set us free. But how? We must now begin with Love.

Love is the only Truth. We might contend it through time-tested philosophies, doctrines and premises. We might say that Love is just an aspect of Truth. Yes, another paradox: it is and it is not. Love is the trunk of a big tree called Truth. And Love is the big tree itself. We can only see beyond the baffling paradox if we see the big picture: that the Truth remains whole even if we often cut it into pieces. It goes beyond our common assumptions that anything can be divided and separated. Whatever you see incomplete, separated or fragmented is always complete, connected and whole. In this light, there is much to be said about Love.

The Paradox of Love is very true in each of us. We can only find Love if we stop finding it. No one can give us Love but ourselves. Much of our Love deserves the person that we are. We can Love anyone and be Love if we Love ourselves and be Love.

When we Love, we become powerful. But we can only wield power if we throw it away. We don't throw away Love, but the baggage that stops us from Loving, the overpowering manipulation and control we want to impose on others, and the standards of perfection we impose on ourselves. We wield this power but not to be powerful upon others, but to be and have the power of Love inside ourselves. Rather than seeking for the illusion of being perfect by rejecting our imperfections, we must accept them. When we do, we become perfect.

We are butterflies inside caterpillars. Within us, we find our true courage in our fears, our strengths in our weaknesses, our potentials in our frailties. We are humbled if we exalt ourselves, and we are exalted when we humbled down. When we begin to face our own demons, they transform into angels, who are messengers of our true Loving selves.

Beyond these paradoxes is an inherent reality that nothing is really paradoxical at all. That seems to be another paradox, and perhaps the ultimate paradox of all paradoxes: the paradox that there is no such thing as paradox. Because in the ultimate Truth of Love, nothing can be labeled, categorized, compartmentalized, dichotomized, contradicted or simply separated. In the presence of these ways of understanding, the Truth becomes automatically paradoxical. Nonetheless, putting an end to all of them, Truth is simply Truth. And that's how we begin to understand Love.

Wordless Koan

One thing in my wish list is to experience zazen or sitting meditation in the Zen tradition. Although I have my share of meditation experience using other techniques, I am still wondering how a zazen takes place, especially if a koan would exhaust my mind. But even if I really do not meditate the way koan meditators do, my questions on why the world today exists are already koans that wrestle me, and make me exasperated of finding answers. Perhaps the most confounding koan I asked was the absence of God, whom all believed to be an all-powerful being yet remained cold towards the suffering of the world. Those were the old days when I had bouts of maddening angst and outburst of frustrations towards the grueling questions that almost ruined my sanity.

Koans are riddles used by Zen monks to meditate upon so they can arrive on a certain insight. These riddles break their ingrained logical assumptions by putting them in a mode of paradoxical thinking, where every reasoning seems to be absurd. Some of the famous koans are: "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" and "If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him!" Other koans are told as anecdotes, and these are interesting stories with lessons implied, even if they appear puzzling at the end. Like the famous two monks who one day helped a young woman cross a muddy river. Or the story of a goose that grew in a bottle and eventually escaped without breaking the bottle or being harmed. At first, these koans might be unanswerable, since they do not fit any sensible and realistic experience. To answer them seems nerve-racking for an ordinary person, but they can be answered through meditation. There's only a thing that leads to clarity: never take koans literally. Something is being said beyond the words and narratives. Like a nice-sounding familiar idiom, koans jump-start a one's mind to gain a perspective of what is literally seen towards what must be really seen.

Legend has it that when the Buddha delivered his Flower Sermon, he only showed a golden lotus flower to his disciples. Without any word, he remained composed and quiet, with the flower in his hands. His disciples were bewildered of what the Buddha did, except Mahakasyapa, who smiled quietly and got the Buddha's message. Both the lotus and the smile, without a single word, appears to be the first koan, a legendary puzzle that leads to enlightenment. Wordless, yet profound in meaning, like a face that launched a thousand ships, or a picture that paints a thousand words.

I barely have my own zazen experience, yet the truth of koan unfolds in me like a golden lotus. As I explore the world of symbols, I have intuited more through what Caroline Myss, author of the Anatomy of the Spirit, is referring to as the "symbolic sight". Through this gift of symbolic sight, I am able to see the meaning of symbols through every day life, seeing the archetypes that underlie and operate as a reality beyond the limitation of our physical senses. I was able to connect the dots, from what the ancient sages taught, to those that are practically learned wisdom, or those phenomena being discovered by modern science. The experience is like traveling through different dimensions of understanding that cannot be hampered by any single dogma that claims to monopolize the truth. And at the end of this roller coaster adventure is the beginning of an enigmatic silence, which can only grasp the symbolic message what words cannot.

Whenever I am caught flat-footed by a question "How do I Love?", silence appears not just an only option left, but a response that is most appropriate. The question is in itself a profound koan. How I live my life and reveal my inner presence remain both the only indefinable answers that are wrapped perfectly as wordless koans. Among overwhelming questions that are infinitely generated by this curious and baffled society, all the more we are called to answer them not through explanations, but through silence. When Christ told us to lock ourselves inside our rooms to pray - a teaching that is another koan - he asks us to pray inside our hearts. Just as what the Sufis told us that we can only find God when we go into the deepest chambers of our hearts. I have deeply learned that silence is the voice of God that speaks to us. The only job we need to do is to listen.

Yes, in this very time, we all need silence. After many worst events that made noise in our world, being silent does not mean being indifferent, coward or aloof. This is not a silence like just being quiet and never speak. The soul needs silence in order to listen to its own whisper. The great wordless koan calls for our attention, and it can only be read or heard the moment we stop seeking answers outside. This koan, the wordless koan of Love, will remain paradoxical until the time we allow ourselves to understand it. Love, that which cannot be defined by any word, is enough to transform the puzzles of our minds into clarity of our hearts.