Learn to Love

In searching for the Tibetan script for a Tara mantra, I came across a profoundly disturbing website. It was filled with image after image of Tara, her mantras, etc. And it was dedicated solely to the praise and pursuit of anorexia. My first reaction was anger; how dare anyone use her name in such profanity. Then I felt sadness, for if anyone needs Tara it is this young woman. Both were my monkey brain trying to distract me from the truth. If anyone needs Tara, it is me.

Being drawn to Tara is not a sign of praise, it is a sign of desperately needing help. Those of us who are called to her are not good people. We posses a secret self hatred that drives us to create our own suffering in the most literal of ways. We cut, we starve, we pick, we binge, we purge. Tara is the Bodhisattva of curing self-hatred. (That is not to say that you must be these things to be called by her; she is a saviouress of many other things too.) Like Christ, she comes not for those good souls, but for we damned. She has set herself the impossible task of saving all women, and so she must stop that horrible sickness so common in women; the belief that we are bad beings, deserving of punishment, that we must force ourselves to be prefect.

Somewhere we forgot that, as women, we are each representations of the goddess, life-givers incarnate. We are each sacred in our own, as varied as the goddesses mankind has worshiped over time. We are not all Venus, nor should we try to be. Even the Romans knew that.

Modernity has taught us that we are flawed, removed from perfection and divinity; that we must be tamed, corseted and tied in order to be worthy of worship. But all this does is obscure the truth. In seeking false perfection, we betray ourselves and our sisters. What begins as hatred of self is projected outward. We learn to hate other women for the perfection they have that we do not. We all wander around brimming with jealousy and hatred of ourselves, of each other. Our daughters inherit our prejudice, they learn our private rituals of debasement. An entire generation of women are raised in perpetuation of this banality. We no longer need men to vilify, devalue or abuse us, we do this to ourselves.

This is why feminism has failed. We will never have equality until we can uplift each other. We will never be respected until we respect ourselves. Until our sons and brothers see us as strong, as beautiful, until we have regained our place as daughters of the goddess, we will still see our sisters suffering unspeakable things. Their burden is ours.

Tara comes to us to teach us to love again, to love ourselves, to love our sisters. We broken vessels are her emissaries; if we can learn to love ourselves, every woman can. Think of her when the urge to cut is strong, when you want to harm yourself so bad it hurts. Say her name, her mantra, cry out. She will make you strong. She will make me strong. Let today be the last day we rejoice in our own suffering, let today be the first day we save ourselves.

Reality is a Cult of Illusion

Look around you. Take a good look. Do you see someone you dislike, perhaps a stereotype of another society, one faction of a social group pitted against yours? It's easy to think you're enlightened, that you are an American, that you come from the most-forward thinking country on the planet, and are therefore on the front lines of tolerance in society. But that, my friend, is one giant lie told to you by your monkey brain to excuse the other things you say.

How many times have I heard a white person look around the room and then confide to his friends that though he is not a racist, that he is sick of white people being mistreated and accused of racism, that he is denied work in favour of affirmative action, that his life is so terrible because of everything the black people receive. Or the mexicans, because of course, they are the "new black." A really clever monkey brain will tell you that it is illegal immigrants who do all of this, not just one specific race or culture. Those of us who are smart enough to recognize these views as the hatred that they are also tend to think that if we aren't guilty of these... that we aren't guilty at all. Not so, our monkey brains are just more clever.

Look closer at yourself, you will find them. Are you a member of a subculture? Are you a geek, hippy, stoner, raver, goth, punk, emo, nerd, musician, artist, circus performer, freak? Do you identify with the odd, the uncanny, and generally everything disliked by mainstream society like the number 13, Halloween, black cats and witches? Are you a witch? Are you a Pagan? Do you actively seek to undermine the man? Do you hate those who represent his ways? Do middle class, blonde, tanned, perfect, hollywood, conservative, consumerist, capitalist, people piss you off? Did you hate cheerleaders in high school? Listen to yourself. When you go out in public, do you view these people the way you always did? Do you see it as us versus them? You are racist too. You hold hatred for a culture, for your fellow human beings. You spread anger, fear, hatred and misery in the world. Especially those of you enlightened enough to hear what I'm saying. If you pray, meditate, do yoga, or any other sort of esoteric process, you are more damaging to the world than a flock of racists when you have hatred in your heart. Your thoughts influence the world more strongly because you practice that.

When you walk out into the world with hatred, with the idea that someone else is making your life miserable, dragging you under, tearing you down... you are making it so. You are programming the universe to listen to your expectations. You are sending energy to your adversaries, emboldening them to attack you more. You are filling the world around you with negative energy and attracting very ugly things to you, no matter how noble you perceive your struggle to be.

Do you want a better life? Do you want to live in a better world? Do you pay lip service to world peace? Then get off your ass and do something about it. Go out in the world tomorrow and LOVE. Love every human being you come across, no matter what their culture, social status, career, appearance, anything. Pretend they are all your friends. Watch what happens.

On Love

"Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence." - H.L. Mencken

I found this posted on facebook today, it was one of my friend's fortune cookies. It struck me as incredibly profound and wonderfully true, and very important. I've been thinking lately about what I learned from reading Herman Hesse's Siddhartha. What I took away from that book was that Buddha found enlightenment in the river. Which, aside from the Taoist thoughts I have about that particular detail, means that he found enlightenment in the middle path. He left both hedonism and asceticism to find his balance - in nature. I have interpreted this to mean, that there is a way to live life in harmony - in the middle path. What does this mean? What does this have to do with love?

Love is like food, sex, intoxicants, magic, relationships, etc. We glorify and define it along societal standards that tell us what love is, where we will find it and whom it will be with. All of these expectations are attachments to the constructed idea of love. And the post-modern American love at that. Remember, this is not Chinese love or medieval Gothic love or even Greek heroic love. It is NOT love at all, but rather an idea of what we think it should be. This is our imagination taking over reality and supplanting the truth with hurtful fantasies that we are addicted to. This is our imagination triumphing over our mind and reason. It is another sick generation of the monkey brain.

Does this mean we can't have love without also suffering? I don't think so. I think the issue is real love - compassion and caring for another human being while also being in full knowledge of them, especially their perceived flaws. As long as we truly see the people in our lives for who they are, as long as we don't expect them to live up to some Hollywood standard, we can have healthy productive relationships. But when we project those desires and demands for imaginary perfection onto another person, we hurt them. We hurt ourselves. They rebel, (and wouldn't we all) and then we get hurt and angry and lash out at them for failing to fulfill our expectations. True love is unconditional, without demands. It just is.

To attain a stable relationship, to have peace in love, we must be willing to work for the truth. We must see our loved ones as they truly are, and accept them for that. If we cannot do it - then we don't really love them. We just think we do.