A lot of people don’t like Buddhism, and particularly Zen, because they feel it points a human being into the direction of becoming emotionless. But everyone has an emotional mind that goes around and around, always revolving around a lot of opposites thinking. It’s a lot like the Buddha’s lap of luxury, it is somewhat like our comfort zone-our illusion that we are in control of things. I like this I don’t like that, I am happy, I am sad. And yet the Buddha taught us that all opposites thinking are the very root to all suffering. The Buddha taught compassion and love, and the irony is a lot of people connect compassion and love to being emotional states. Not in Buddhism. Seems many actually confuse those two things with emotions, but in truth they have absolutely nothing at all to do with any of that. If you remove and dissolve your opposites thinking, that’s not called being emotionless. That is called cultivating true love and compassion. Why? because no longer do you live in the realm of making things good or bad, happy or sad., better or worse. At this point, through the cultivation of this sort of understanding-you can allow a love and compassion that is no discriminative to float to the top of the water. Human beings are often extremely attached to emotional states. they find a lot of comfort in running the show. In being experts on matters like good and bad. But if you keep a clear mind non reliant on all of these emotions going around and around-true genuine compassion can grow. because moment to moment, at every snapshot of the camera, you are free to act without any blockage from your likes and dislikes. You have now stepped into the world, in the truest sense, of clear perception. Where everything you view is simply everything you view, having not a thing to do with opposites. Zen is about finding the compassion that is already inside of you. That has always been inside of you. That gold bar deep in your back yard. Suffering is very clear, it causes a lot of reactionary responses in us human beings. Zen means reacting with genuine compassion, not biased. Not discriminatory-but compassion for all beings, no matter who they are or what they have done. This takes a lot of mindfulness and practice.
