~Thich Nhat Hanh Interview
Melvin McLeod: We human beings say that above all else we
want love. We want to give love; we want to be loved. We know that love is the
medicine that cures all ills. But how do we find love in our heart, because
often we can’t?
Thich Nhat Hanh: Love is the capacity to take care, to
protect, to nourish. If you are not capable of generating that kind of energy
toward yourself—if you are not capable of taking care of yourself, of
nourishing yourself, of protecting yourself—it is very difficult to take care
of another person. In the Buddhist teaching, it’s clear that to love oneself is
the foundation of the love of other people. Love is a practice. Love is truly a
practice.
Melvin McLeod: Why don’t we love ourselves?
Thich Nhat Hanh: We may have a habit within ourselves of
looking for happiness elsewhere than in the here and the now. We may lack the
capacity to realize that happiness is possible in the here and now, that we
already have enough conditions to be happy right now. The habit energy is to
believe that happiness is not possible now, and that we have to run to the
future in order to get some more conditions for happiness. That prevents us
from being established in the present moment, from getting in touch with the
wonders of life that are available in the here and now. That is why happiness
is not possible.
To go home to the present moment, to take care of oneself,
to get in touch with the wonders of life that are really available—that is
already love. Love is to be kind to yourself, to be compassionate to yourself,
to generate images of joy, and to look at everyone with eyes of equanimity and
nondiscrimination.
That is something to be cultivated. Non-self can be
achieved. It can be touched slowly. The truth can be cultivated. When you
discover something, in the beginning you discover only part of it. If you
continue, you have a chance to discover more. And finally you discover the
whole thing. When you love, if your love is true, you begin to see that the
other person is a part of you and you are a part of her or him. In that
realization there is already non-self. If you think that your happiness is
different from their happiness, you have not seen anything of non-self, and
happiness cannot be obtained.
So as you progress on the path of insight into non-self, the
happiness brought to you by love will increase. When people love each other,
the distinction, the limits, the frontier between them begins to dissolve, and
they become one with the person they love. There’s no longer any jealousy or
anger, because if they are angry at the other person, they are angry at
themselves. That is why non-self is not a theory, a doctrine, or an ideology,
but a realization that can bring about a lot of happiness.
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