LOVE ALL - EVEN YOUR ENEMY

Love is the emotion of creation. God loved himself and created the world to see himself in the world. Thus unity manifested into diversity. The cause of this manifest world of duality is Love of the un-manifest unity. Love is our inherent nature, our source. We feel most at peace when we are loving others and when we are the object of love. Love is expansion. Expansion is love. Infinite expansion to include totality of creation is Divine love. Hence we should begin with loving the mother, father, teacher, siblings, spouse, children, expand it to include the community, state, country, world and everything in creation. When we are suffused with love inside, we experience a very loving world outside. “Yad Bhavam Tat Bhavathi”. As you think, so you become declare Upanishads. World is a mirror in front of us.

To the contrary hatred is very damaging to the individual and to the society. It is like cancer. Once it enters into our mind, it destroys our sense of discrimination and destroys us. The harmful effects of hatred spread to the community and to the world at large. Any seed of hatred in us has to be addressed and removed, before it causes destruction of our psyche. It is a weed that needs to be promptly removed. Best way to get rid of hatred and anger is to be aware of its presence. In the presence of its awareness the hatred and anger does not survive. The other technique is to suffuse our self with love and in its presence, hatred/anger dissipates.

It is particularly important not to harbor any hatred towards anybody, even towards our enemies. When we practice to be loving, after a while we become spontaneously loving.  Love all (advesta sarva bhootanam declares Krishna in Gita). Loving all is full expansion to our true potential. We can ill afford to hate our enemy. Jesus said love your enemy. Most of us think how is it possible to love a hateful enemy? It is because we cannot afford to hate our enemy. Hating somebody is constantly thinking about his undesirable qualities. When we hate our enemy as per “yad bhavam tat bhavaathi” we soon will acquire the hateful qualities of our enemy. Thus we become our enemy. 

In order to prevent this happening, we should instead love our enemy. Loving our enemy makes us focus on the spark of goodness in our enemy. When we love our enemy, we ignite the spark of goodness in otherwise a difficult person. This is the very basis for Mahatma Gandhi"s Satyagraha. Thus best way to protect ourselves from the harmful thoughts of our enemies is to love them. Love disarms the opponent and acts as a protective shield around us. It transforms them into better human beings. we love others for our own sake, not for the sake of the other person. Loving others helps us. As we expand ourselves in love, we become more and more peaceful and joyful. This ushers in ananda which is the goal of even the worldly life, leave alone the spiritual life. Love is the antidote for hatred and anger. It is a tonic for peace, joy and happiness. LOVE ALL.