The Essence of Nonviolence Is Love

"The essence of nonviolence is love. Out of love and the willingness to act selflessly, strategies, tactics, and techniques for a nonviolent struggle arise naturally. Nonviolence is not a dogma; it is a process."

-- Thich Nhat Hanh

On the Practice of not Being Jaded (with Some Thich Nhat Hanh Thrown in for Good Measure)

(I'd written this a little over a year ago, but went back to it tonight, thinking of politics, posturing and engaging people with flawed good intentions.)

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I was thinking about someone who passed through my life not too long ago and a conversation we'd once (or twice) had about unconditional love. He'd indicated that anyone who gave it any sort of consideration in terms of its feasibility was certainly trying to compensate for some sort of lack in childhood with which they hadn't managed to come to terms in their adult lives. He brought up single women who adopt babies as an example of people seeking an instant fix to their own similar childhood lacks by taking in a human who'd more or less be forced to love them, by virtue of his or her helplessness and complete reliance on the woman / adoptive mother in question. It struck me at the time that he seemed to have no understanding of the concept of the reciprocity of love, or of the possibility that people might actually seek to love in and of itself, and not necessarily merely desperately seek to set themselves up to be its recipients.

It's along the same lines as people who enjoy giving for the sake of giving versus those who restrict their giving to reward-like affirmations (verbal, physical, et al.) to modify others' behaviour. There are some who dole out "love" as if it's just another component of some sort of reward-based system -- a controlling sort of habit that's ultimately, especially when done consciously, just another variation of emotional blackmail. So I come back to wondering about unconditional love and its place, if any, in human relationships. In the end, does it really all just boil down to baggage and strings? So this got me thinking about Thich Nhat Hanh (1926- ), and a passage of his I'd read and remembered about a more general way to approach those milling about in the world:

When we come into contact with the other person, our thoughts and actions should express our mind of compassion, even if that person says and does things that are not easy to accept. We practice in this way until we see clearly that our love is not contingent upon the other person being lovable.

I guess in a sense, it's about love being more of an approach or mindset when engaging anybody in our lives than it is a tool to define and frame our contexts and relationships. In this sense, according to Thich Nhat Hanh, we need to learn to offer it unconditionally. It's "not contingent upon the other person being lovable". In a sense, love shouldn't be conditional upon someone's loving us back, or someone's being able to give us exactly whatever it is that we want. Maybe it's naive (or side-stepping into the murk) to think of it as such, or to strive to adopt that understanding of it into one's own life and one-on-one relationships, and particularly with romantic interests. And as long as we continue to think of it as a reward we can dole out to the deserving--the worthy, it's difficult to "love" when engaging those with whom we disagree, or those who choose to challenge, discourage or even disparage us. But is that really how we ultimately want to think of love?

Hope as an obstacle

As someone who often gets paralyzed in just trying to suss out possible outcomes, both good and bad, this passage from Thich Nhat Hanh's Peace Is Every Step really resonated with me.

Hope is important, because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today. But that is the most that hope can do for us - to make some hardship lighter. When I think deeply about the nature of hope, I see something tragic. Since we cling to our hope in the future, we do not focus our energies and capabilities on the present moment. We use hope to believe something better will happen in the future, that we will arrive at peace, or the Kingdom of God. Hope becomes a kind of obstacle. If you can refrain from hoping, you can bring yourself entirely into the present moment and discover the joy that is already here.

[...]

Western civilization places so much emphasis on the idea of hope that we sacrifice the present moment. Hope is for the future. It cannot help us discover joy, peace, or enlightenment in the present moment. Many religions are based on the notion of hope, and this teaching about refraining from hope may create a strong reaction. But the shock can bring about something important. I do not mean that you should not have hope, but that hope is not enough. Hope can create an obstacle for you, and if you dwell in the energy of hope, you will not bring yourself back entirely into the present moment. If you re-channel those energies into being aware of what is going on in the present moment, you will be able to make a breakthrough and discover joy and peace right in the present moment, inside of yourself and all around you.

On the practice of not being jaded (with some Thich Nhat Hanh thrown in for good measure)

I was thinking about someone who passed through my life not too long ago and a conversation we'd once (or twice) had about unconditional love. He'd indicated that anyone who gave it any sort of consideration in terms of its feasibility was certainly trying to compensate for some sort of lack in childhood with which they hadn't managed to come to terms in their adult lives. He brought up single women who adopt babies as an example of people seeking an instant fix to their own similar childhood lacks by taking in a human who'd more or less be forced to love them, by virtue of his or her helplessness and complete reliance on the woman / adoptive mother in question. It struck me at the time that he seemed to have no understanding of the concept of the reciprocity of love, or of the possibility that people might actually seek to love in and of itself, and not necessarily merely desperately seek to set themselves up to be its recipients.

It's along the same lines as people who enjoy giving for the sake of giving versus those who restrict their giving to reward-like affirmations (verbal, physical, et al.) to modify others' behaviour. There are some who dole out "love" as if it's just another component of some sort of reward-based system -- a controlling sort of habit that's ultimately, especially when done consciously, just another variation of emotional blackmail. So I come back to wondering about unconditional love and its place, if any, in human relationships. In the end, does it really all just boil down to baggage and strings? So this got me thinking about Thich Nhat Hanh (1926- ), and a passage of his I'd read and remembered about a more general way to approach those milling about in the world:

When we come into contact with the other person, our thoughts and actions should express our mind of compassion, even if that person says and does things that are not easy to accept. We practice in this way until we see clearly that our love is not contingent upon the other person being lovable.

I guess in a sense, it's about love being more of an approach or mindset when engaging anybody in our lives than it is a tool to define and frame our contexts and relationships. In this sense, according to Thich Nhat Hanh, we need to learn to offer it unconditionally. It's "not contingent upon the other person being lovable". In a sense, love shouldn't be conditional upon someone's loving us back, or someone's being able to give us exactly whatever it is that we want. Maybe it's naive (or side-stepping into the murk) to think of it as such, or to strive to adopt that understanding of it into one's own life and one-on-one relationships, and particularly with romantic interests (at least not without a good therapist watching your back -- heheh). Maybe the term (in the English language, anyway) just covers too wide a range of emotions and interactions for it to make any sort of sense to try to examine it in one single blog post.